The Cardano project made some noise on the cryptocurrency market in August 2021. At the same time, the Solana token showed active growth, but the fate of the coins turned out differently. In the fall, SOL/USD repeatedly updated its historical maximum, and ADA/USD was not able to develop its advantage and got stuck in a long consolidation, which ended with a fall in price and the collapse of the entire market. But the project is more alive than dead, or at least the developers want to assure us of this. Whatever it was, summing up, the results of the year and plans for the future and the Cardano project are Napoleonic.

Success of Cardano

The main success of the outgoing year is when the Cardano Foundation called the update of the historical record of the cryptocurrency at $3. In general, the cryptocurrency has risen in price by 950% in 2021. The developers were satisfied with the increase in the number of unique addresses in the altcoin network, which amounted to 1200%.

After a powerful rally in August, the coin took the third place in terms of total capitalization in September on the eve of the Alonzo hard fork. But later the project stalled after the replication of rumors on the web about the incompatibility of smart contracts and the ADA network.

Considering that most of altcoin's growth occurs in the month of August, I believe that the project has dumped its token and this has had an effect. But short-term, since the price increase was not supported by fundamental factors, such as the release of new products or the start of cooperation with hedge funds. This was especially necessary after the failed update of Alonzo. Now the developers are trying to convince us that the project is alive and ready to develop.

Plans for 2022

As of December 28, Cardano is in sixth place overall with a capitalization of $46.9 billion. The coin costs $1.46 and is within a wide range of fluctuations. Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano, believes that the project will take a big leap forward in 2022. Developers are going to expand the ecosystem by launching their own DeFi protocol. In addition, it is planned to create and implement a separate open-source sidechain for large companies, as well as launch a P2P exchange linked to ADA Pay.

The plans are truly Napoleonic and aimed at expanding the institutional audience, which is an essential component of the functioning of the DeFi sector. The bias towards large corporations suggests that the team has found its target audience and there is every reason to believe that the Cardano ecosystem will have great value. But there are doubts about the conversion of this value into ADA quotes since the institutional audience is mostly concentrated in Bitcoin.

Technical picture of ADA/USD

As for the technical picture, the altcoin began to recover after a two-month fall. As of 09:00 UTC, ADA/USD quotes are around $1.46. The daily chart over the past 7 days has been dominated by bulls with local, but with sharp attempts by sellers to regain the lead. The coin is stuck in the resistance zone of $1.6 and judging by the picture of the last four days, the bears are very close to driving the bulls into the stalls.

On December 24, a "bearish engulfing" pattern was formed, after which the buyers' forces began to melt. The green candle from December 27 has a long upper wick. This indicates the pressure of sellers from the level of $1.6, and therefore a decline is likely to the area of $1.4, where the local support area passes.

Technical indicators show bearish signals: the MACD completes an upward momentum, and the stochastic implements a bearish intersection and declines to the middle of the bullish zone. In general, the technical picture around ADA indicates the presence of local bullish impulses, but in general, flat movement will prevail until the end of the year.

The ADA project has lost the interest and trust of investors after an inarticulate autumn period. In case of successful implementation of plans for 2022, the situation may change, but right now the project has a long way to recover, both reputation and quotes. Despite this, I consider Cardano a "dark horse" that can take its chance and break into the top 3 in capitalization again due to the value of its ecosystem.