The market cap of Cardano (ADA) nearly doubled in nine days in February 2021, amidst a growing buying activity from investors during this time. Cardano stood out due to its close relation to Ethereum, as well as a detailed transaction history in its ledger - potentially making this digital coin more secure than others. Compared to both the Bitcoin market capitalization, as well as the Ethereum market cap, Cardano was not as popular.

Swiss cryptocurrency Cardano (ADA) witnessed a price surge of nearly 100 percent in seven days in early February 2021, amid high interest from investors. One reason for this interest is the digital coin's close relation to Ethereum (ETH), as mathematician Charles Hoskinson co-founded both virtual currencies. Moreover, like Ethereum, ADA has an open-source format, meaning anybody can develop this currency further. As of June 30, 2025, one ADA token was worth 0.56 U.S. dollars.

The dominance of Cardano increased more than four-fold in 2021, although figures in November 2021 were lower than at the end of August. Within the crypto world, this so-called "dominance" ratio is one of the oldest and most investigated metrics available. It measures the coin's market cap relative to the overall crypto market - for instance, it shows how strong Bitcoin is compared to all the other cryptocurrencies that are not BTC, called "altcoins". In the case of Cardano, the dominance somewhat reveals the coin's growing popularity as an alternative to Ethereum, it being a popular blockchain for Decentralized Finance (DeFi) applications.

The price of the native coin from BNB Chain (formerly BSC) grew by 50 percent in late 2021 but was much lower in 2022. On June 30, 2025, for example, a single BNB coin was worth more than 654.92 U.S. dollars - a value that is very different from the all-time high of 600 U.S. dollars in November 2021. Regardless, Binance Coin ranked in the top 10 most expensive cryptocurrencies in 2022. Noticeable is that the price increase of BNB in November 2021 coincides with a similar price change for Ethereum (ETH) - a cryptocurrency where BNB initially originated in 2017 before coming to its own years later. BNB’s history: From reward token in 2017 to an ecosystem after 2019 As the name suggests, Binance Coin or BNB originally started as an extension of the Binance.com trading platform - the most used cryptocurrency exchange in the world. It initially functioned on the Ethereum blockchain network as an ERC-20 token, offering incentives to owners like reduced trading fees, affiliate rewards, or a lottery ticket system (“Launchpad”) that let users invest in new, Binance-selected crypto projects. In 2019, however, BNB moved away from the Ethereum network and migrated to Binance’s self-developed blockchain: Binance Smart Chain or BSC (called BNB Chain since February 2022). Here, BNB started to support a chain that initially did not focus on hosting decentralized apps but focused on high transaction speed and being able to handle large amounts of traffic. DeFi and GameFi: the main segments for BNB BSC, however, made significant strides in 2021 partly due to traffic overload and high gas prices on Ethereum as well as the growing interest in both Decentralized Finance (DeFI) and NFTs. Much like Cardano, Solana, and Terra, Binance Smart Chain consequently became a valid alternative to Ethereum: The total value locked (TVL) of BNBs blockchain within DeFi, for example, ranked only behind that of Terra and Ethereum in early 2022. Another area where Binance’s blockchain and token play a significant role is that of GameFi - or “play-to-earn” blockchain games that are powered by cryptocurrencies. Some of the more well-known and most popular NFT games like Alien Worlds and Axie Infinity run on the blockchain behind BNB.

The staking values of both Solana and Cardano made up around ** percent of their circulating supply, a percentage significantly higher than for Ethereum. This difference stems from how the cryptocurrencies are created. Ethereum 1.0, similar to Bitcoin, relies on a mechanism called "Proof-of-Work" or PoW, and is similar to mining: Lots of processing power is used to verify transactions on the blockchain and those who do all that verification work — the "miners" — get rewarded with a predetermined amount of crypto. As this process became more energy-consuming and too complicated for individuals to perform — alongside the rapid growth of decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols that demanded even more verifications — another mechanism appeared: "Proof-of-Stake" or POS. Here, people — or "validators" — commit — or "stake" — their own cryptocurrency in an automated system — often a wallet, where people will simply hold their crypto — which at certain times will randomly pick a person who gets to validate a batch of blockchain transactions. Same as before, validation leads to new cryptocurrency as a reward — essentially acting as interest after initial investment. As the amount of crypto needed can be considerable, there are also so-called "staking pools" where groups of people gather the coins needed for — or "delegate" to — an external validator, and still get the rewards. Cardano and Solana only use proof of stake, whereas the relatively new Ethereum 2.0 is also relying on it.