Cardano Price (ADA)

Cardano Price History and All-Time High

ADA has gone through two large boom-and-bust cycles since it began trading in October 2017. The table shows the main turning points from CoinGecko: daily closing prices, except the all-time high and low, which are CoinGecko's records.

On 14 October 2026, ADA was about 93% below its all-time high. Other price trackers show slightly different peaks, because each averages a different set of exchanges, and some record one exchange's highest trade of the day instead of a daily average.

What Cardano Is and How It Works

Cardano is a public proof-of-stake blockchain for payments, tokens and smart contracts. Charles Hoskinson, a co-founder of Ethereum, and Jeremy Wood started the company behind it, now called Input Output (IOG), in 2015, and the network went live on 23 September 2017. The coin is named after Ada Lovelace, the 19th-century mathematician. Three organizations have led its development:

• Input Output: builds most of the core software.
• The Cardano Foundation: a Swiss non-profit.
• Emurgo: funds and builds businesses on the network.

The main parts of the design:

• Consensus: Cardano uses Ouroboros, a proof-of-stake protocol whose security proofs were published in peer-reviewed papers. Time is divided into one-second slots, and a new block is added about every 20 seconds. Stake pools take turns producing blocks in proportion to the ADA delegated to them. Every five days, a new epoch starts and rewards are paid.
• The eUTXO model: Cardano records balances as unspent outputs, like Bitcoin (what UTXOs are), and extends them so each output can carry data and be locked by a script. Because a transaction's outcome depends only on its own inputs, it can be checked before it is sent: fees are known in advance, and a transaction that would fail can be caught before it reaches the chain.
• Smart contracts and tokens: smart contracts arrived with the Alonzo upgrade on 12 September 2021. They are written in Plutus, which is based on the Haskell language, or in newer languages such as Aiken, while Marlowe targets financial contracts. Tokens are native: they live in the ledger alongside ADA and need no smart contract to send.
• The eras: Byron (the launch), Shelley (staking and decentralized block production, from 29 July 2020), Goguen (smart contracts), Basho (scaling) and Voltaire (governance). They overlap rather than follow one another.

Cardano Governance Today

Cardano is one of the few large blockchains where coin holders vote on-chain on protocol changes and on how the shared treasury is spent. The rules come from CIP-1694 and arrived in stages:

• Chang (1 September 2024): the first hard fork of on-chain governance.
• Plomin (29 January 2025): full governance, including DRep voting and treasury withdrawals.
• The constitution: drafted at conventions in Buenos Aires and Nairobi in December 2024, ratified on-chain in February 2025 and in effect from 23 February 2025.

Three groups take part, and each type of decision needs a set share of the right groups to pass:

• Delegated representatives (DReps): they vote with the ADA that holders delegate to them. Holders can also vote themselves, or choose to always abstain.
• Stake pool operators: they vote on hard forks and certain technical changes.
• The Constitutional Committee: it checks that each decision follows the constitution. Its members are chosen by the community: four new members, elected in a DRep vote in July 2026, took their seats after an on-chain action passed by DReps and stake pool operators on 1 September 2026.

How it works in practice:

• The treasury: part of every epoch's new ADA, plus a share of fees, goes into a treasury held by the protocol. It stood at about 1.38 billion ADA on 11 October 2026 (Koios). Spending it needs a treasury withdrawal approved by DReps and the Constitutional Committee. In 2026, holders approved ₳27.7 million for Input Output's consensus research, including Leios (enacted 29 May), and ₳120 million for AlphaGrowth's Cardano PRIME program (enacted 17 August), the largest withdrawal of the year.
• The first hard fork under full governance: on 18 July 2026, the van Rossem upgrade moved Cardano to protocol version 11, cutting smart contract costs and adding new cryptographic functions. It was the first hard fork voted on by all three groups, passing with 77.6% of DRep voting stake, 52.7% of stake pool operators' stake and six of the seven Constitutional Committee members.
• How Ethereum differs: Ethereum has no on-chain vote, and its upgrades are agreed off-chain by developers and client teams (how Ethereum governance works).

In his own words: in October 2025, Bitcoin.com interviewed Charles Hoskinson about governance, digital asset treasuries, quantum computing, US crypto policy and plans to bring Bitcoin-related features to Cardano. The 33-minute interview is below.

ADA Supply

ADA's supply is capped at 45 billion coins:

• In circulation: about 37.55 billion on 14 October 2026, according to CoinGecko. On-chain counts range from about 36.8 billion to 38.9 billion, depending on what is included (Koios).
• In the reserve: about 6.07 billion on 11 October 2026 (Koios), released by the protocol over time.
• How the reserve is released: each epoch, 0.3% of what remains in the reserve is paid out, together with transaction fees. 20% goes to the treasury and the rest to stake pools and their delegators. Because it is a share of a shrinking reserve, new issuance falls every year, and the cap will never be reached exactly.

At launch, about 31.1 billion ADA existed, according to cardano.org:

• Token sale, October 2015 to January 2017: about 25.93 billion.
• Input Output, then called IOHK: 2.46 billion.
• Emurgo: 2.07 billion.
• The Cardano Foundation: 648 million.

How ADA Staking Works

Staking on Cardano means delegating your ADA to a stake pool from your own wallet. The ADA never leaves your wallet and is never locked, so you can move or spend it at any time, and there is no penalty if the pool misbehaves.

• Getting started: registering your wallet's stake key costs a 2 ADA deposit, which you get back if you stop staking. There is no minimum amount.
• When rewards arrive: the first rewards arrive about 15 to 20 days after you delegate, as long as the pool produces blocks. After that, rewards are paid every five days and are added to your balance without any action from you.
• What it earns: rewards have worked out at about 2% a year in 2026 (about 2.1% before pool fees, epochs 650 to 659, Koios). The rate depends on the pool's fees and performance and falls slowly as the reserve shrinks.
• Choosing a pool: a pool that grows past a set size, called saturation, pays its delegators less. Over time, reliable pools with low fees that stay below saturation pay the most.
• Voting: since the Plomin upgrade, you can only withdraw rewards once your wallet also delegates its vote, to a DRep or to the Abstain or No Confidence options. Rewards keep building up until you do.
• Tax: staking rewards are taxable income in many countries; see how to report staking income.

Scaling and the Roadmap

Cardano's main chain handles a modest number of transactions per second, and most of its scaling work aims to raise that without weakening its security model. Where each project stands on 14 October 2026:

• Hydra (live): Hydra lets a group of users open a "head", trade off-chain at high speed and settle the result back on Cardano. It moved into its adoption phase in February 2026, and the latest release is version 2.4.1 (2 September 2026).
• Leios (in testing): Ouroboros Leios changes how blocks are produced so the network can process far more transactions. It has run on a public test network since 23 June 2026. The first phase of the Dijkstra hard fork, which would bring it to mainnet, is targeted for the end of 2026 with no date set, and like every hard fork it needs an on-chain vote.
• Peras (planned): Peras would make transactions final within minutes rather than hours. It is planned for a second phase of the Dijkstra upgrade, targeted for the second quarter of 2027.
• Mithril (live): Mithril lets wallets and apps sync from certified snapshots of the chain instead of downloading all of it.
• Midnight (live): Midnight is a privacy-focused partner chain linked to Cardano, with its own token, NIGHT. NIGHT launched on Cardano on 4 December 2025, Midnight's own network produced its first block on 17 March 2026, and smart contracts that anyone can deploy went live there at the end of September 2026.

Latest Cardano Developments

This list is dated and refreshed every month. Checked on 14 October 2026:

• 8 October 2026: the Cardano Foundation spun out Veridian, its digital-identity business, as an independent company.
• 7 October 2026: programmable tokens (CIP-0113) went live on mainnet. Token issuers can now build rules such as freezes and sanctions checks into a token; ADA and existing tokens are unaffected.
• 6 to 11 October 2026: epoch 660 carried about 1.78 million transactions, the most of any epoch on record (Koios).
• 1 September 2026: four new Constitutional Committee members took office after an on-chain vote.
• 17 August 2026: a ₳120 million treasury withdrawal for AlphaGrowth's Cardano PRIME program was enacted, the largest of the year.
• 7 August 2026: Grayscale filed to withdraw its proposed Cardano ETF, together with its Hedera and Polkadot ETF filings (SEC EDGAR).
• 18 July 2026: the van Rossem hard fork moved Cardano to protocol version 11.
• 23 June 2026: the Leios public test network went live.

A spot ETF would hold ADA for its shareholders. Buying ADA yourself means you hold the coins, can stake them and can move them, but you also carry the job of keeping them safe.

Buy, Sell and Store ADA with Bitcoin.com

• Buy: you can buy ADA on Bitcoin.com with a card or bank transfer. Depending on where you live, the purchase goes through MoonPay or Onramper, and the ADA is sent to your own Cardano address, which starts with "addr1". Have a Cardano wallet ready before you start, because the ADA goes straight to it. The minimum and the fees are shown before you pay.
• Sell: you can also sell ADA on Bitcoin.com for local currency in the regions our partners cover. You send ADA on the Cardano network from your own wallet, and the payout goes to your card or bank account.
• Store: the Bitcoin.com Wallet doesn't support Cardano today, so you'll need a wallet that does. Lace, built by Input Output, supports staking and vote delegation. For larger amounts, a hardware wallet that supports Cardano, such as Trezor, keeps your keys offline. Whatever you use, write down the recovery phrase and keep it away from anything online.

Risks of Holding ADA

• Volatility: ADA has fallen more than 90% from its 2021 peak, and it has lost most of its value in a single year more than once. It can fall sharply again.
• A smaller ecosystem: Cardano has fewer developers, apps and stablecoins than Ethereum or Solana. If that gap doesn't close, demand for ADA may not grow.
• Delivery risk: Cardano's upgrades have often arrived later than first planned. Leios and Peras still need to ship and be adopted.
• Governance disputes: on-chain governance means treasury spending and upgrades can be contested, and decisions can go against what a given holder wants.
• Concentration: large holders, exchanges and the biggest stake pools control a significant share of ADA and of block production.
• Regulation: in June 2023, the US SEC claimed ADA was a security in its lawsuits against Binance and Coinbase. It dropped the Coinbase case in February 2025 and the Binance case in May 2025, but rules for crypto assets are still changing in the US and elsewhere.
• Scams: fake "ADA giveaways", fake staking sites and impersonated wallet apps are common. No real staking service asks for your recovery phrase.

This page is for information only and isn't financial advice. Only invest what you can afford to lose, and speak to a licensed financial adviser if you're unsure.

Figures checked on: 14 October 2026.

Sources:

• CoinGecko (prices, supply)
• Koios (on-chain data)
• cardano.org and Cardano developer documentation
• Intersect, Input Output and the Cardano Foundation
• CME Group, Bitwise and SEC EDGAR