Cardano's ADA traded around $0.22 on Monday, extending last week's roughly 12% recovery and moving above its 50-day and 100-day exponential moving averages near $0.2038 and $0.2029. The next major technical reference is the 200-day EMA, placed around $0.2401 to $0.2464 depending on the chart source. Near-term resistance sits between $0.2270 and $0.2464, while support is clustered from $0.2030 to $0.2080.
The Cardano Foundation said on September 15 that it joined Mastercard's Crypto Partner Program. The collaboration focuses on cross-border payments, business transactions and stablecoin settlement, adding another enterprise-facing payments initiative to the Cardano ecosystem. Meanwhile, Cardano-linked updates said Ouroboros Leios testing reached about 1,000 transactions per second in simulation. The upgrade could reach mainnet this year if development continues as planned, though simulated throughput differs from live network conditions.
Technical indicators improved alongside the news. RSI readings were near 58 to 64, MACD turned positive, and trader Jesse Olson said ADA should close the week with a buy signal based on a reversal candle, RSI signal and green trend dots. Cardano's total value locked was reported near $57 million, while open interest stood around $430 million.
A separate governance vote added complexity. Cardano delegated representatives rejected a proposal to withdraw 12.29 million ADA from the community treasury to fund Input Output's Pogun Bitcoin DeFi product. The final Koios summary recorded 35.67% of DRep voting power in favor and 64.33% opposed. The Cardano Constitutional Committee had cleared the proposal unanimously, but the DRep body did not. As a result, the ADA remains in the treasury, while Cardano forfeits the revenue-sharing terms Input Output had offered: 20% of Pogun earnings back to the treasury until initial funding was repaid, followed by a perpetual 5% return on Cardano-related products.
Charles Hoskinson said on September 18 that Input Output would no longer default to launching future products on Cardano and would instead choose whichever network best serves each product. He added that unfunded product traffic could route elsewhere and that another ecosystem could receive exclusivity in exchange for support. Hoskinson still described Cardano as the strongest technical fit for Bitcoin DeFi and said Pogun would still arrive within 90 days, roughly by mid-December 2026. A separate Input Output initiative, RealFi, is expected to launch on Cardano in October 2026.
