Why does ADA soar against the market trend and grab the third spot in market capitalization while the overall market is weak and undergoing a leadership change again?

Cardano's native token ADA has surged by 13% in the past week amid an overall weak market, rising by 269% in the previous month. With its current market value, ADA has now become the third-largest cryptocurrency in the market. What is driving this price surge?

Hard Fork Imminent

Apart from Fantom, which surged due to Andrew Cronje's return to development and Alamada's investment, Cardano has been the best-performing smart contract public chain project since the beginning of this year, with a rise of about 680%. So, where is the driving force behind the price coming from?

The upcoming hard fork upgrade in March of this year may be one of the main reasons driving the price. Tim Harrison from IOHK, the main development team behind Cardano, wrote:

"After the Mary hard fork, Cardano will become a decentralized multi-asset (MA) smart contract platform."

This means that smart contracts, decentralized finance (DeFi), and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) will all enter the network. Although these functions have long been realized on Ethereum, the high GAS fees on Ethereum currently have led to second-layer solutions and "Ethereum killers" becoming popular investment targets in the market.

Institutional Endorsement

Some analysts believe that another factor driving the price increase is related to a previously reported news, that cryptocurrency investment fund FD7 Ventures based in Dubai announced today its plans to sell Bitcoin assets within the next 30 days to increase the company's holdings of Cardano (ADA) and Polkadot (DOT).

Gerald Votta, a spokesperson for investment research firm Quantum Economics, stated in an interview:

"Given that Cardano's token price is only $1 and the platform has undergone long-term and cautious development, from a profit-maximizing standpoint, this may be a wise choice for FD7."

However, Polkadot, which has also been mentioned by FD7 and has shown a highly correlated trend this year, has not performed as prominently as ADA during this time, still following the market downturn. Therefore, it is still uncertain whether ADA's rise is related to FD7's endorsement.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson, in an interview, stated that he himself does not know where the market's driving force is coming from.

"If I knew why the price would perform like this, then I would be a businessman, not a builder. I focus on the growth of the Cardano ecosystem and the adoption of our industry in developing countries."