Cardano price shoots up 12% on Shelley announcement

The price of Cardano (ADA) has just spiked considerably following news that the long-awaited Shelley hard fork is now imminent.

Cardano is now trading at $0.063 after gaining 12% in the last day, continuing more than two months of growth. Overall, the cryptocurrency is now up more than 170% since reaching its 2020-low on March 12, 2020, making it one of the best performing altcoins in recent months.

Trading volumes for the cryptocurrency have also climbed dramatically in this period, rising from just $81 million per day in mid-March, up to more than $120 million by mid-May, and finally up to more than $400 million today, following a sudden surge that began yesterday.

Why? Because Charles Hoskinson, CEO of Cardano parent company IOHK just announced that Cardano's Shelley upgrade will begin rolling out between June 30 and July 7. The new update is slated to introduce a wide range of changes to how the Cardano blockchain operates, boosting efficiency, and handing over control of the blockchain to the Cardano community.

"Shelley-era functionality will deliver true decentralization through its advanced Ouroboros consensus algorithm and scientifically researched incentives scheme," a press release stated.

The new blockchain will be managed by stake pools (nodes), which are tasked with running Cardano's novel Ouroboros protocol. Cardano users will be free to delegate their ADA to a stake pool, and share in the incentives it receives for helping to maintain the network. This process is somewhat similar to that used by other delegated Proof of Stake blockchains, like Tron. But, after all this time, hopefully somewhat more improved.