Cardano Shelley Testnet Kicks Off: More Than 5 Billion In Staked ADA

It’s happening – the Cardano Shelley testnet has been live for around 24 hours and so far, the ADA holders have staked more than 5 million ADA coins which are now worth around $195 million. The Cardano latest news show that IOHK took to Twitter to report than more than 240 staking pools have gone online ever since Shelley went live.

On top of this, about 120 staking pools during the first day of operations were carried out alone. According to the roadmap behind Shelley, IOHK is well on its way to reaching a target of 1,000 staking pools. As they tweeted:

“Our incredible #CardanoCommunity have put in a remarkable effort this weekend, with over 240 pools (+ counting) getting ready for staking.”

ADA holders have been waiting for the launch of Cardano’s Shelley incentivized testnet in which the participating users will be able to earn real ADA rewards, which they will reportedly receive by the end of the testnet period.

The IOHK team also said that the Cardano Shelley testnet is going well, and they offer the participants a rewards calculator through which they can calculate the estimated amount that they can earn from staking ADA tokens.

For instance, users who stake 100,000 in ADA (worth around $3,600 at press time) could earn around $260 per year in staking rewards. The Shelley mainnet will reportedly go live in early 2020 from when staking will become available to all users. So far, staking has been going well – and people who don’t understand it can best refer to it as the process of locking funds in a crypto wallet to support the operations of a blockchain network.

At the end of this November, the Cardano Foundation also launched AdaPay which is an ADA payment gateway from merchants. This was developed in collaboration with the enterprise-grade fintech platform Coti as a solution which lets merchants accept ADA payments with “near instant” settlement in 35 fiat currencies – directly in their bank accounts.

Meanwhile, today’s altcoin news and market updates show that cryptocurrencies are taking another hit. Currently, Bitcoin (BTC) is at $7,100 while Cardano’s ADA token is still at $0.036 with a 1% drop on the day. The biggest loser in the top 20 is Cosmos (ATOM) which lost around 7% overnight – while the biggest gainer is Mindol (MIN) with a 24% increase in the same period.