Cardano

Billionaire investor Tim Draper has backed a new accelerator designed to turn Cardano-based startups into investor-ready companies. The accelerator will focus on decentralized finance projects built on the Cardano blockchain. Draper's support is expected to provide mentorship and funding opportunities for participating startups. The initiative aims to strengthen the Cardano ecosystem by helping early-stage ventures mature.

Sony Group's crypto asset exchange S.BLOX began handling NIGHT and Cardano on August 24. This marks the first time NIGHT has been handled by a domestic crypto asset exchange service provider in Japan. NIGHT is the native token of Midnight, a privacy-focused blockchain developed by Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson. The NIGHT listed this time is initially issued on the Cardano network, and after the native chain becomes operational, NIGHT on Cardano and NIGHT on Midnight will circulate at a one-to-one ratio.

Charles Hoskinson, founder of Cardano, said at the 2026 Wyoming Blockchain Symposium that artificial intelligence and agentic commerce will be the key to bringing the next billion users into crypto and fueling a new bull market. He expects AI agent technology to become a major part of the economy by 2030, and revealed that Midnight will launch trading through AI agents before the end of 2026, allowing users to create wallets for AI agents and provision tokens to trade across platforms. Hoskinson also noted that interoperability between blockchains is increasing, and the industry must move beyond old narratives about speed and cost to deliver tangible everyday benefits to billions of users.

Cardano has reached a new milestone in its decentralization journey, with its Nakamoto coefficient climbing to an all-time high. The record coefficient indicates that a greater number of independent entities would need to collude to compromise the network, reflecting enhanced resilience and distribution of control. This achievement underscores Cardano's ongoing commitment to becoming a fully decentralized blockchain platform.

Cardano's ADA token saw daily trading volume jump more than 33% over the last 24 hours, marking one of its strongest trading sessions in weeks as the asset extended its recovery from June lows. The surge gave bulls their first significant advantage in months, with ADA breaking above several important technical resistance levels.

Cardano's ADA token surged nearly 10% in 24 hours to around $0.189 as the network shifted focus to the Dijkstra era, its next major development phase. The rally came after the van Rossem hard fork on July 18 upgraded the protocol to Version 11, improving Plutus performance, ledger consistency, and node security. Intersect, the organization supporting Cardano's open development, confirmed planning for Dijkstra has begun, with key features including Nested Transactions, Linear Leios, and Peras under the Ouroboros Leios research programme. The Haskell node team aims to deliver Nested Transactions and Linear Leios to the mainnet by the end of 2026, while governance processes will let stakeholders shape future hard forks. ADA still trades roughly 95% below its September 2021 record high of $3.09, and sustained gains will likely depend on measurable adoption rather than roadmap announcements alone.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson criticized Ethereum's governance model and said the cryptocurrency industry needs an insurance layer to mature. In a CoinDesk interview, Hoskinson argued Ethereum lacks an on-chain treasury for sustainable funding and relies on a few influential organizations, noting that allocating 5% of protocol revenue to the Ethereum Foundation would provide $390 million annually. He contrasted this with Cardano's on-chain voting system, which he said offers a more sustainable long-term model despite slower development. Following a recent bridge exploit, Hoskinson proposed optional insurance products for wallets and cross-chain bridges, funded by premiums and collateral pools, to compensate victims and incentivize better security practices. He expects the next wave of crypto adoption to come from integrating blockchain with identity, privacy, insurance, and real-world financial infrastructure rather than simply increasing transaction speeds.

Large Cardano holders have accumulated more than 25.6 billion ADA tokens, a supply absorption level not seen in 3.5 years. Wallets holding between 100,000 and 100 million ADA are driving the accumulation, even as retail investors sell off their holdings amid a depressed price trend in 2026.

Ethereum Foundation developers are looking for a way to save the network from the critical growth of its database and have turned to the architecture of its main competitor. Researcher Toni Wahrstätter proposed introducing elements of the UTXO model into Ethereum, a model that has been successfully used by Cardano for years.

Cardano price rose for four straight days, with weekly gains reaching more than 32%. Notably, Cardano has outperformed the rest of the top 20 cryptos by market capitalization in seven-day gains. The majority of the top 20 saw weekly gains in the range of 1% to 18%; a few exceptions include Zcash and Bitcoin Cash, which were up 20% and 23%, respectively. A few tokens in the top 20, such as Unus Sed Leo and Canton, were down weekly.

The Cardano blockchain is approaching full readiness for its V11 hard fork, officially named "van Rossem," according to recent ecosystem data. The upgrade marks a significant milestone for the layer-1 network, with major exchanges Binance and Coinbase reportedly preparing for the transition. Further details on the specific improvements or timeline were not immediately provided.

The Ethereum-based crypto Pepeto is days away from a Binance listing after raising $10.3 million in its presale. Pepeto aims to deliver faster transactions and lower fees on Ethereum, with tools nearly finished and led by a former Binance developer. Meanwhile, Cardano’s price is showing bullish signals, with Benzinga targeting $0.57 by year-end from its current $0.155, a potential 3.7x return. Large ADA holders are also buying into Pepeto’s presale, which analysts say could yield 100x returns on listing day, driven by viral momentum similar to Shiba Inu’s historic rise.