Since the start of the year, Cardano (ADA) has gradually grown into a competitor for other blockchains in the field of decentralized finance (DeFi). On the first day of the year, about $50 million was still tied up in all DeFi applications on the network, but the total value locked (TVL) a lot higher. It recently reached a new milestone of no less than 400 million ADA and the counter is now even up 465 million ADAwhich is equivalent to more than $176 million at the current Cardano exchange rate.
Minswap is one decentralized exchange (DEX) which can call itself the largest DeFi application on the network. Immediately TVL of $65.57 million, it accounts for more than 37 percent of the total value of asset that is embedded in the network. The transaction volume on this popular DEX has meanwhile increased considerably due to the hype about some meme coins.
Popularity Cardano DEX is increasing
On May 1, the volume on Minswap was still equal to $ 1 million, but this has now risen to more than $ 20 million on May 28.
MIN is the utility and governance token of the popular DEX on the Cardano network. Liquidity providers are rewarded with these MIN tokens and holders of these tokens can also vote democratically on protocol changes.
The price of MIN has shot up by about ten percent in the past seven days. However, it is important to keep in mind that MIN has a market cap of only $24.8 million and ranks 558th on the CoinMarketCap stands.
Meme coin hype
A while back, meme coins were a much-discussed topic in the crypto news as there was a certain hype within the crypto world about these tokens. Pepe (PEPE), for example, managed to establish itself out of the blue among the big boys in the industry.
This hype now seems to have flown over to the Cardano network in a way as a significant portion of the increased volume on Minswap comes from Cardano-based memecoins Snek (SNEK) and Bank (BANK). SNEK now even has a market capitalization of USD 80 million, making it the eighth largest meme coin.