Cardano price jumps 18% after smart contract launch announcement

The price of Cardano (ADA) cryptocurrency rose 18% in 24 hours on the back of founder Charles Hoskinson’s statement that the launch date for smart contracts would be disclosed soon as part of the Alonzo upgrade.

Brief Update https://t.co/mDR4U0BFBW

— Charles Hoskinson (@IOHK_Charles) August 10, 2021

The upgrade will enable the deployment of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications.

The Cardano Foundation also launched its own native NFTA tokens. The new tokens are native Cardano assets and do not require additional smart contracts.

NEW DEV BLOG: How we minted the NFTAs, and why we went for this standard

Tokens built on #Cardano are native. Unlike Ethereum’s ERC-20 tokens, Cardano doesn’t require a smart contract.

Check out the article for more: https://t.co/n2q73f3AfF#CardanoDeveloperPortal

— Cardano Foundation (@CardanoStiftung) August 11, 2021

NFTA stands for “Non-Fungible Tokens of Appreciation”. They will be awarded to developers who helped create the Cardano Developer Portal.

As of writing, ADA was trading at $1.77. The coin ranks fifth by market capitalization.

In March, the Cardano network underwent the Mary hard fork with support for creating native tokens.

In July, the Cardano Foundation unveiled the development plan for the next five years. By 2026 the organisation aims to increase the platform ecosystem’s user base to 1 billion.

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