A mild stablecoin market cap uptick and progress in Bitcoin DeFi were the shining lights in the quarterly update of the state of the Cardano ecosystem.
Market intelligence platform Messari highlighted these details in the Q2 update report of the Cardano ecosystem. The piece highlighted how the ADA ecosystem fared in the quarter alongside significant developments and upgrades.
Cardano Stablecoin Stands Out in Underwhelming Quarterly Metrics
Notably, the Messari report spotlighted a downtrend in key ecosystem metrics in the second quarter of 2025. The market cap of Cardano declined by 13% from $23.88 billion to $20.7 billion quarter-over-quarter. This reflected in the ADA price, which closed at $0.57, down 14% in the same period.
Transaction fees in USD followed this dump, declining 45% QoQ to $724,600. The number of daily active users and daily transactions also declined, mirroring the drop in the price of Cardano.
However, the Cardano stablecoin sector experienced slight growth. Specifically, the stablecoin market cap increased to $32 million, representing a 5.8% rise from the previous quarter. This highlights that the network is making progress in harnessing the stablecoin boom in the broader cryptocurrency market.
Nonetheless, Cardano’s DeFi TVL receded considerably, as the network continues to struggle to match its contemporaries. The metric dropped 20% to $259.2 million in dollar terms, and 7% to 452.7 million in ADA in Q2 2025.
Bitcoin DeFi, On-Chain Governance and Other Developments
Notably, Bitcoin DeFi premiered at the Bitcoin 2025 Conference in Las Vegas. The Charles Hoskinson-founded Input Output Global (IOG) and Fairgate demoed running Cardano smart contracts on the Bitcoin network using the BitVMX and UPLC-to-RISC-V compiler.
The exhibition demonstrated how Bitcoin holders can utilize Lace Wallet to exchange Bitcoin for the Minswap tokens, with fees paid in BTC. The debut attracted accolades from Hoskinson, who welcomed DeFi to the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Furthermore, Cardano had its first on-chain constitutional committee election under the Cardano Improvement Proposal (CIP) 1694. This was part of its roadmap after the Voltaire Era debut, aiming to forge a decentralized governance system.
In other developments, details of the ongoing Glacier Drop came to light in Q2 2025. Midnight is currently distributing 24 billion NIGHT tokens to eligible users, with 1.2 billion reserved for XRP holders. A previous report from The Crypto Basic shows that over 11,000 addresses have already claimed, with the first phase closing on October 4.
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