Cardano Outpaces Ethereum 7% Intraday As ADA/ETH Ratio Declines 13% Since April

Over the first week of July, the debate between Cardano and Ethereum intensified as ADA rallied 7% intraday, outpacing ETH’s 5% advance. However, the longer-term ADA/ETH chart shows a 13% decline from April, reflecting a stark divergence in performance during the second quarter. Ethereum finished the quarter up 36% while Cardano closed it in the red.

Analysts closely monitor this ratio as it signals capital rotation from the established smart-contract platform, Ethereum, to newer chains like Cardano. Until this ratio stabilizes, ADA’s rebound remains a contrarian bet.

Beneath the price movements, the development momentum tells a different story. GitHub data places Cardano fourth in raw developer commits for June, nine spots ahead of Ethereum. Over the same period, Cardano logged a development-activity score of 2.29 compared to Ethereum’s 0.74, indicating a steady cadence of incremental upgrades rather than major hard forks.

Daily usage metrics also support this strength. Active Cardano addresses jumped 24.6% week-on-week, while Ethereum slipped 14% to 453,000. Historically, such shifts in user activity have preceded mean-reversion moves in the ADA/ETH pair, most notably the November 2024 rotation that carried ADA 286% higher in six weeks.

Ethereum’s fundamentals remain robust. The Prague/Electra (Pectra) upgrade in May improved throughput and wallet user experience, enhanced staking security, and paved the way for institutional products such as layer-2-powered ETF wrappers. Bullish cases predict this pipeline could push ETH toward $4,900 before year-end, while cautious strategists warn the upgrade may do little to arrest ether’s 45% year-to-date underperformance against bitcoin and Solana.

Cardano’s rebound thesis is built on three pillars: network expansion, the roll-out of Hydra and Mithril, and a valuation gap. Active stake addresses on Cardano recently crossed 1.3 million, indicating growing long-term conviction. Hydra and Mithril, which enter public beta this quarter, aim to triple throughput without compromising security. Despite July’s price pop, ADA changes hands at 0.00023 ETH, far below the 0.00052 ETH rotation peak reached last December.

If on-chain activity remains elevated and Hydra transactions begin routing high-volume decentralized applications (dApps), the rotation spread could narrow sharply. This could set the stage for ADA to outperform into the fourth quarter, especially if investor fatigue sets in after Ethereum’s Pectra buzz.

For now, disciplined accumulation and spread strategies remain the smart way to play the divergence. Until the ADA/ETH ratio prints a higher low, Ethereum retains technical dominance. However, fundamentals, developer commitment, rising use-case throughput, and the valuation gap add weight to an eventual Cardano vs. Ethereum rotation rebound narrative.