Cardano (ADA), the 10th largest cryptocurrency, is higher 20% weekly, outperforming the rest of the top 10 cryptocurrencies.

Cardano is preparing for the Chang hard fork, which will stagger the release of governance functionality, easing adoption and onboarding for those with new or additional roles in governance.

Preparations for the Chang hard fork hit a significant milestone this week with the release of Cardano node v9.0, which marks the end of primary development work for the bootstrap phase of on-chain governance, with just minor updates required to incorporate Cardano constitution elements.

This latest Cardano node v9.0 version introduces highly anticipated features, including support for Plutus v1 reference scripts and Plutus script signature support via CIP-69. This milestone is crucial to realizing the decentralized governance envisioned in CIP-1694.

Cardano price jumps

At the time of writing, ADA was up 5.65% in the last 24 hours to $0.4227 and up 20% in the last seven days.

The anticipation of the Chang upgrade seems to have created fresh enthusiasm in the Cardano community, as seen in the ADA price. The optimism is not far-fetched as historically, Cardano has shown positive performance ahead of major upgrades.

On-chain analytics firm IntoTheBlock highlighted this trend, noting that ADA surged 130%, from $1.35 to $3.10, in just a month before its previous hard fork in 2021.

The current optimism around the Cardano price is not only supported by the anticipated upgrade but also by the broader crypto market recovery. In addition to the gains in its USD pair, ADA is also performing well in its BTC pairing. Cardano is on track to mark its fourth consecutive day of gains against Bitcoin, indicating sustained market strength.

In the coming days, the market will closely monitor the ADA price patterns to determine if it can maintain its surge.