Cardano Surges Past Peers Amid Strong Whale Demand

Cardano (ADA) surged to the top last week, outperforming other top-100 cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. The asset's price increased by 11.52% over seven days, from $0.1646 on July 27 to $0.1836 on August 3, with a peak of around $0.922.

The network upgrade dubbed Van Rossem or the Van Rossem hard fork, which occurred on July 18, was Cardano's first fully on-chain-governed hard fork. This update reduced smart-contract execution costs and added new Plutus functions, marking a key step in the Voltaire governance era.

Large whales, wallets holding between 100 million and 1 billion ADA, purchased more than 240 million ADA over the past week, valued at $44.06 million. This group of investors controls approximately 39.18% of Cardano's circulating supply.