The price of ADA, the native cryptocurrency of the Cardano blockchain, soared to a seven-week high of $1.13 on Thursday, a level not seen since early February.
The latest price action comes with increased trading volumes, extending ADA’s weekly gains to nearly 35% to make it the best performing cryptocurrency in the top ten list over the past seven days, according to CoinMarketCap.
The boost in the price of ADA can likely be attributed to the news that Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the U.S., is now offering staking for the asset.
Staking is the process of actively participating in transaction validation (akin to mining) on proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchains.
Unlike Bitcoin, which relies on the computing power of tens of thousands of computers, PoS blockchains are secured by people committing a portion of their crypto holdings to the network. In return, they receive a share of newly minted coins.
Similar to Ethereum, Cardano leverages smart contracts to enable the development of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications or creating non-fungible tokens (NFTs).
Solana, NEAR post double-digit gains
Several other cryptocurrencies have posted double-digit gains over the day too.
The famous meme coin Dogecoin is up 13.9% in the past 24 hours, currently trading at $0.13, while NEAR, the native cryptocurrency of the Near Protocol, is up 9%, trading at $12.23at press time.
Elsewhere, SOL, the token underpinning the Solana blockchain, is up 10% to the current value of $100, while the price of Harmony (ONE) is up 6.9% to $0.15.
As for the leading assets on the market, Bitcoin is up 2% and Ethereum is up more than 3%. The entire market capitalization is currently hovering around the $2 trillion mark.