Cardano jumps more than 23% in a week as whales buy 240 million ADA

Cardano's ADA token stayed in focus after rising from around $0.15 in late July to a one-month high of $0.199 on August 4, before trading at about $0.191 with a 16.92% weekly gain. The move came alongside whale accumulation of more than 240 million ADA in five days, even as Santiment data showed 7,070 fewer non-empty wallets than two months earlier, suggesting retail participation has yet to fully return. Cardano also reached a new decentralization milestone, with blockchain data tracker Chainspect showing its Nakamoto coefficient rose to an all-time high of 16. The metric measures the smallest number of independent entities that would need to collude to disrupt a network, and a higher reading generally signals broader control and stronger censorship resistance in proof-of-stake systems such as Cardano. The rally coincided with several ecosystem developments between July 30 and August 5. Cardano and Injective established their first Inter-Blockchain Communication protocol connection on testnet, developers shifted attention to the upcoming Dijkstra era after the van Rossem upgrade, and work continued around Leios, Hydra, Mithril, Pyth integration and fresh Catalyst funding. Governance changes also moved forward. Cardanoo put elections for its Constitutional Committee on-chain, opened a portal for testing future constitutional proposals, and enabled ADA holders and their representatives to vote on a separate proposal covering technical settings. Separately, EMURGO said it had resigned from the Intersect board with immediate effect and planned to deregister its delegated representatives following community criticism tied to governance participation and the delegation experience within Yoroi Wallet.