The quest for dominance between Ethereum (ETH) and its most obvious rival, Cardano (ADA), is taking a whole new shape, with new metrics defining how well each protocol is faring. A sneak peek into both protocols' decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, per data gleaned from DeFiLlama, especially as it relates to the Total Value Locked (TVL) metric, shows that Cardano has a clear lead.
Per the DeFiLlama data, there is a significant plunge in the total ETH tokens locked within its smart contract; however, the reverse is the case as concerns ADA. For a better perspective, while the total ETH locked in its DeFi protocol as far back as January was pegged at 18.28 million units, the current figure has now plummeted back to 13.33 million units at the time of writing.
Cardano, on the other hand, saw the total TVL in its DeFi smart contracts pegged at 198.65 million ADA tokens as of Jan. 1, and today, this ADA lockup has grown to 571.92 million, an indication of consistent growth and embrace of new applications making their way onto the Cardano blockchain.
More upsides for Cardano
While the individual token lockup in DeFi smart contracts is in favor of Cardano, the protocol still lags behind in other significant areas. These areas include the exact market capitalization of Ethereum when compared to that of Cardano. This wide disparity in token market capitalization also compliments the overall dollar value of TVL on both protocols.
However, amid all these, Cardano has a significant upside that investors can watch out for. The effort to consistently upgrade the Cardano network remains a very promising push that can attract more Web3.0 developers who can build dApps to rival those on the Ethereum blockchain.
It may take some time, but overall, Cardano has the chance to become as big, or even bigger, than Ethereum.