Cardano is facing a new round of criticism after well-known crypto market analyst Ali Martinez, known as Ali Charts at X, stated that the evaluation of the network is not close enough to its actual usage. His thesis is stark: if adoption doesn’t materially improve, the price of the ADA could face further downside if the basic level of support breaks down.
In a post titled “The Most Useless Chain in the Crypto Market,” Martinez described Cardano as a chain with a huge market cap but relatively weak onchain traction. He wrote, “Cardano is among the largest cryptocurrencies by market value, but the level of actual activity on the network remains relatively small.”
Can Cardano fall another 80%?
He then tied this directly to the DeFi company, stating that “the amount of capital tied up in Cardano’s DeFi ecosystem has never exceeded $1 billion, and it’s historically only a fraction of what’s tied up in competing platforms like Ethereum. Even some of the newer chains, like SUI, have already moved on.”
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This gap between assessment and network performance is at the heart of his bear case. Martinez argued that when “a network is worth billions, but only a limited amount of capital and applications actually use it, the price can increase more due to speculation than actual demand.” In his opinion, Cardano has not yet established the kind of stable product-to-market fit that tends to sustain long-term capital inflows into crypto.
He sharpened the comparison by placing Cardano alongside two ecosystems that he says already have more clearly defined roles in the market. “Unlike Ethereum, which has a dominant position in DeFi, or Solana, which has achieved high-speed consumer applications, Cardano does not yet have a clear use case that consistently attracts users, developers and investors,” he said. Not only is Cardano smaller than these chains, but it is still not locked in a sector where it is the default place to operate.
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Martinez also pointed to Cardano’s development model as a structural limitation. “My other concern is the pace of growth and the increasingly competitive environment,” he said. “Cardano follows a research model that prioritizes academic review and formal testing. While this approach can improve security and design quality, it has also resulted in slower features compared to other blockchains.”
This slower cadence, he suggested, had a compounding effect. “Although Cardano launched in 2017, smart contracts were not introduced until 2021, giving competing ecosystems several years to create stronger network effects with more developers, applications and liquidity.” In crypto, where network effects can become self-regulating, late arrival to key product layers can be as important as technical design.
The market performance of this thesis reaches a chart level. Martinez said $0.245 is important support to watch. If this floor is decisively broken, it will see the possibility of a move to $0.112 or even $0.051, which would mean another 50% to 80% decline from this area.
He called the breakout certain, noting that it “hasn’t happened yet,” but said traders waiting on the sidelines could see a short setup if the level fails, provided risk is tightly managed.
At press time, ADA was trading at $0.2668.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com
