Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson has said that the Cardano blockchain has the potential to surpass Solana in terms of speed if a key network upgrade is implemented.

In an X post, Hoskinson expressed his conviction in the benefits of the Leios upgrade on improving speeds on Cardano. This upgrade will be the second major one since implementing the Chang hard fork in early September.

Hoskinson compared the Cardano Rust node with Leios. The former is used to build wallet applications and boost interactions with Cardano. According to Hoskinson, while the Cardano Rust node served users, the Leios upgrade would offer more by increasing transaction throughput.

“The rust node gives us no new differentiating features for users. Leios makes us faster than Solana without losing decentralization
,” Hoskinson stated.

Hoskinson also shared a development roadmap for Cardano evaluating different scalability solutions, including Hydra and sidechains. He noted that efforts to roll out the Leios upgrade would be implemented in Q4 2024.

Nevertheless, the Leios upgrade has attracted mixed reactions from the crypto community. According to one X user, Cardano developers had failed to mention and drive attention to Leios in the past, with the upgrade only coming to the limelight when a community vote was underway.

“It’s shocking that Leios is only now getting serious attention. This should have been a top priority from the start, not just an afterthought when votes come into play. Your approach seems reactive rather than proactive & it undermines Cardano’s potential to lead in innovation,” the user stated.

Analyst Predicts Cardano Rally to $15 

The recent development comes as analysts predict that recent upgrades and technological developments on the Cardano blockchain could stir an ADA price rally to $15.

According to one analyst on X, the ADA price usually follows a cycle in which market pessimism is followed by a parabolic rally. This rally also happens around a year or two after the Bitcoin halving event.

(Source: TradingView) 

ADA was now in the third stage of this price cycle, which will likely see the price soar from $0.329 at the time of writing to $15. Per the analysis, this surge will likely happen in 2026-2027.

If ADA’s price follows these historical patterns, its market cap will soar to $500 billion, surpassing Ethereum. 

However, such gains will largely depend on the Cardano network usage. The Chang hard fork has stirred interest in the blockchain by making it more decentralized. Therefore, creating more projects on the network will boost ADA utility and drive gains.