The total number of smart contracts on the Cardano ($ADA) network has surpassed 1,000 for the first time as the blockchain’s decentralized finance (DeFi) space grows steadily with its total value locked well above $70 million.

According to Cardano blockchain insights shared on Google’s Data Studio, there are over 1,000 Plutus-based smart contracts on Cardano as of today, January 27. Plutus, it’s worth noting, is the “ smart contract platform of the Cardano blockchain” that allows users to “write applications that interact with the Cardano blockchain.”

The price of ADA exploded last year with the rollout of the widely anticipated Alonzo hard fork, which brought in smart contracts into the network, allowing it to compete with other blockchains such as the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Ethereum (ETH), and Solana (SOL).

The Alonzo hard fork is part of the network’s “Goguen” era, named after Joseph Goguen, an American professor of computer science from the University of California and the University of Oxford. The Goguen era comes after the Shelley phase, in which Cardano became a decentralized blockchain and community members became validators.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson has notably revealed he believes projects like Cardano will be “ “as ubiquitous as the internet and used by billions” in the future. The Cardano network notably led the cryptocurrency market in developer activity last year, with Kusama and Polkadot behind it.

The blockchain’s first usable decentralized finance application, MuesliSwap, was launched earlier this month after conducting an under-the-radar offering, and quickly surpassed $2 million in total vale locked. The Cardano network has seen its load surpass 90% weeks after the launch of SundawSwap, a “native, scalable decentralized exchange and automated liquidity provision protocol.” The exchange is backed by cFund, Alameda Research, and Double Peak Group.

As CryptoGlobe reported, the number of addresses holding ADA has grown in December to a new all-time high of 4 million, according to CryptoCompare’s latest Asset Report.

DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed by the author, or any people mentioned in this article, are for informational purposes only, and they do not constitute financial, investment, or other advice. Investing in or trading cryptoassets comes with a risk of financial loss.

IMAGE CREDIT
Featured image via Unsplash