Cardano bids farewell to the "ghost chain"? Leios upgrade key progress confirmed, ADA price rebounds over 20% since the beginning of the year

At the beginning of 2026, the Cardano (ADA) price experienced a noticeable rebound, rising from around $0.30 to nearly $0.40, with a staged increase of over 20%. This trend has once again brought the previous doubts about Cardano’s “ecosystem stagnation” and “ghost chain” into focus. The market is more concerned with whether this rally is driven by short-term sentiment or if there are substantive changes in the fundamentals.

From recent information, one of the core catalysts is the confirmation of phased progress in the Leios upgrade plan. According to publicly available technical tracking data from IOG, the main improvements for Leios are approximately 67% complete, with overall technical design at 46%. Although aspects such as “verification of 1000 transactions per second” and testnet deployment are still in early stages, the roadmap is relatively clear. As a long-term scalability and performance upgrade plan expected to continue until 2026, Leios is seen as a key infrastructure for Cardano’s future breakthroughs in performance bottlenecks and for improving developer and user experience.

In addition to technical expectations, institutional “confidence votes” also support ADA. In Grayscale’s latest adjustment of its smart contract-related investment portfolio, ADA accounts for 18.55%, second only to ETH and SOL. Considering that this fund focuses on the long-term smart contract sector, this allocation is interpreted by the market as a reaffirmation of Cardano’s technical route and ecosystem potential, also weakening the narrative of being marginalized on an emotional level.

From a market structure perspective, short-term momentum is cooling down. Technical indicators show that RSI has fallen back to near the neutral zone of 50, and CMF is slightly below zero, indicating that after a rapid surge, the inflow of new funds has begun to slow. However, overall trading volume remains at a relatively healthy level, suggesting that market participation has not significantly declined, but is more characterized by wait-and-see and strategic positioning.

Overall, ADA’s current rebound appears to be a phased reassessment driven by “confirmation of technical progress + institutional allocation expectations.” In the short term, the price may oscillate within key ranges; the medium to long-term trend will largely depend on whether subsequent milestones of Leios are achieved as planned and whether the Cardano ecosystem can continue to deliver value in practical applications.