Cardano (ADA) has extended its recent recovery, hitting the highest level since Dec. 12 and surging 25% above the year's low. The rally aligns with a broader crypto market rebound, where Bitcoin pushed past $92,000 and total crypto market cap reclaimed $3.2 trillion.
Open interest spikes to three-month peak
A key catalyst comes from the derivatives market. ADA futures open interest jumped to $856 million, the highest since Oct. 10 when liquidations topped $20 billion. The metric had bottomed at $603 million on Dec. 19 before slowly trending upward. Rising open interest signals that traders are using more leverage to bet on the token. The positive funding rate further confirms the bullish sentiment.
Midnight mainnet, Leios upgrade on the horizon
Beyond market momentum, Cardano's development pipeline is drawing attention. The team led by Charles Hoskinson is preparing to launch the Midnight mainnet later this quarter, described as a vital component of the Cardano ecosystem. Midnight leverages zero-knowledge cryptography to enable privacy-focused dApps. Separately, the Leios upgrade, expected later this year, will introduce parallel processing, pushing transaction throughput to thousands per second and matching competitors like Solana and BNB Chain. The Pentad proposal is also under consideration, aiming to bring stablecoins, oracles, and analytics tools to the network.
Technical setup: bearish trend lines but a bullish target
On the daily chart, ADA bottomed at $0.3278 on Dec. 31 and now trades at $0.4125. The Relative Strength Index has climbed above the neutral 50 mark, while the Stochastic Oscillator has entered overbought territory. However, the price remains below the 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages, and the Supertrend indicator still flashes a sell signal. Despite the bearish structure, Cardano could likely rally to retest the key resistance at $0.5102 — a level that acted as a floor in February, April, and June last year. That would represent another 25% upside from current prices.