Cardano's ADA jumped 12% to $0.27, its highest level in five months, in a move decoupled from a flat broader market. The rally accelerated after founder Charles Hoskinson posted a chart of the price spike with the hashtag #LeiosIsComing, turning attention to the network's coming scalability upgrade.
ADA rose 12% to $0.27, its highest level in five months, while Bitcoin and Ethereum traded with little change. The move marks the coin's deepest rally since May.
The rally began with the launch of a DeFi platform and then accelerated sharply after a public reaction from Cardano's founder. As the price moved higher, Charles Hoskinson quoted a 15-minute ADA/USDT chart showing the price jumping from around $0.244 to around $0.264, adding a single hashtag to his repost: #LeiosIsComing. The post became the day's main teaser and shifted market attention to the network's upcoming scalability upgrade.
What's driving the Leios teaser
The Linear Leios technology, specification CIP-164, is designed to dramatically increase the blockchain's throughput. The existing Ouroboros Praos chain will continue to provide security and block chronology, while larger endorser blocks are introduced in parallel. Transactions in these blocks are verified by stake pools using BLS signatures and added to the ledger in batches.
Since June 2026, the technology has been tested on the Musashi Dojo network. Under stable conditions, it has demonstrated a sixfold increase in data processing speed, with an estimated potential improvement of 10 to 65 times.
RealFi launch and a bullish chart signal
The initial boost for ADA came from the October 1 mainnet launch of RealFi, a platform for tokenizing real-world assets, and the integration of the USDr stablecoin into Lace, Liqwid and SundaeSwap. On the chart, this produced a Golden Cross, in which the 50-day moving average crossed above the 200-day moving average, while the daily momentum index reached 68.69.
What could stand in the rally's way
Despite short liquidations near $0.264, the rally is largely narrative-driven: trading volumes on Cardano's decentralized exchanges are not rising in proportion to the price. The long-term trend could also be hindered by the fact that Leios integration is scheduled for late 2026 as part of the Dijkstra hard fork. Stake pool operators will need to register their keys manually ahead of the hard fork.
Source: U.Today
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