ADA, aglow, leads rally

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Skepticism over the end-of-May crypto rally's legitimacy continues to fester but there was no debate about Cardano early Tuesday. Investors were buying in.

Cardano's native asset, ADA, spiked nearly 30% over 24 hours, according to CoinGecko. That move was notched as of about 7:30 a.m. (EST).

ADA is the sixth-largest digital asset based on its total market capitalization of roughly $22 billion.

Decentralized finance (DeFi) activity has been on the rise across Cardano, a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) layer-1 blockchain that has risen to the fore among the ranks of so-called Ethereum killers. Last August, Cardano launched its Alonzo fork bringing forth a fountain of DeFi applications. As in nearly 100 of them. These include Meld, a lending protocol, and a slew of decentralized exchanges (DEXs), such as Minswap, Sundaeswap and WingRiders.

ADA also appears to have received a boost, Decrypt said, from the launch of a new Ethereum-Cardano "cross-chain" bridge that eventually could see Ethereum-run ERC-20 tokens flow freely and in fungible fashion between ecosystems.

Other ADA catalysts in play, per CoinDesk, include an uptick in the issuance of native assets on the network – more than 5 million assets have now been minted on Cardano –as well as an upcoming network upgrade that would increase scaling.

ADA at last check was about $0.65. In September of 2021, ADA reached an all-time high above $3.

Mirror Protocol (MIR) has run into and, apparently, out of trouble.

Yesterday, The Block reported how Mirror – built on the old Terra blockchain, which in the past month collapsed, forked, and was redubbed Terra Classic – had fallen prey to a $90 million exploit. The incident took place back in October of 2021 – but went unnoticed until last week.

Another exploit, allowing for the inflation of Terra Luna Classic (LUNC) used on Mirror as collateral, was spotted over the weekend.

This latest exploit allegedly resulted in $2 million being drained from several Mirror pools, and in the process putting the entire system at risk of a total wipeout, CoinDesk said.

However, as of this morning, the bug, discovered in the LUNC pricing oracle, had been fixed, according to a tweet from FatMan, a Terra community member closely following the situation.

Nerves remained frayed.

"Mirror was only few minutes away from catastrophe," said Arman Shirinyan at U.Today.

Mirror Protocol is a DeFi platform that allows users to create and trade synthetic "mAssets" that mirror other assets.

MIR, which as of Tuesday ranked as CoinGecko's 480th-largest asset, fell 9% to $0.28 in the past 24 hours. Last April, MIR was nearly $13.

Bitcoin tried on $32,000 earlier today although the largest crypto was more like $31,600 as of 8:45 a.m. (EST). Still, since bottoming in the mid-$20K range, BTC has now managed to restore one-third of the losses endured during a hellacious risk asset swoon earlier this month.

Cointelegraph noted a $32,200 BTC print earlier today on Bitstamp.

A second consecutive day of bullish momentum failed to sway dubious analysts.

"The rise has been sold," tweeted M_Ernest, citing dwindling inflows into spot markets.

Caue Oliveira, analyst at BlockTrends, flagged underwhelming buying among large entities, emphasizing on-chain data showing a drop off in whale movements.