Catching up on Cardano for the first time in over a year. Life has kept me away: Selling my business, starting a new career, raising young boys, getting a divorce, moving. It's been a lot. Hoping to see some familiar faces as I plug back in.

$ADA is up 167% in November ADA's price, although still significantly undervalued, is a reflection of the value being created on Cardano in the long run. So, I decided to summarize some of these underlying factors: 1. Cardano's Core Strengths What excited me about Cardano back in early 2021 still excites me today: the rigorous scientific, peer-reviewed approach, security and stability, focus on decentralization and strong community, PoS consensus mechanism, UTx model, etc. From Shelley to Voltaire, a lot of roadmap progress has been made in 4 years. 2. Governance Cardano is miles ahead of most other blockchains when it comes to implementing a complete on-chain governance system. Combined with its treasury and community-building initiatives, I'd argue that it's in a league of its own. Doing governance properly is crucial for avoiding common blockchain death traps, such as concentration of power, misaligned incentives, community fragmentation and forks, stagnation, and loss of trust. In other words, a good governance system is necessary for longevity, as it turns Cardano into a self-sustaining ecosystem. Cardano's slow and steady approach with a focus on longevity and fundamentals is about to pay off. 3. Regulatory Compliance & Leadership @IOHK_Charles might be controversial, but he's undeniably one of the most influential people in crypto today. He will be spending a lot of his time in 2025 working with lawmakers and members of the incoming Trump administration to foster and facilitate U.S. crypto policy. With Charles leading the way and a fully functioning on-chain governance system, Cardano's is primed for adapting to and thriving in this uncertain regulatory landscape. ...It also doesn't hurt that @GaryGensler is leaving. 4. Interoperability Cardano continues to work towards increased interoperability. The most obvious and exciting integration is with Cardano's UTxO bro, Bitcoin. @BTC_OS has built a one-directional Bitcoin-to-Cardano bridge, which could allow Cardano to tap into Bitcoin's deep liquidity. Best-case scenario, Cardano could become Bitcoin's primary DeFi layer. Other exciting interoperability updates include the development of Midnight, a 4th generation privacy blockchain (meta chain): 🔹@InputOutputHK is talking to XRP about a possible partnership 🔹Charles confirmed that ADA holders will receive the largest distribution of Midnight's token via a glacier drop. 5. Scaling Cardano is often dunked on for being slow, and a part of me understands why. But it takes less than 10 minutes to understand why this is not a long-term concern. Hydra and Leios are key scalability solutions that are in active development. Although it won't happen overnight, these innovations will work together to significantly boost TPS (1 million TSP? 👀) by offloading txs to a layer 2, enabling parallelism, and reducing congestion. 6. Adoption Despite being a Top 10 cryptocurrency by market cap for years, Cardano has consistently been ignored and underappreciated. As a marketing guy, I have my theories as to why that is, but I can also see it changing over the next couple of years. A superior product always beats superior marketing. It's why I kept believing in Cardano. But now imagine a superior product with superior momentum and marketing. I'm expecting the first five factors above, combined with general price-action hype as ADA returns to a fair valuation, to turn 2025 into Cardano's biggest year to date. Not just in terms of ADA price but, more importantly, in terms of active users and ecosystem growth. Increased interest will bring new users to the blockchain, from meme coin degenerate traders to RWA project founders, exponentially growing and enriching the ecosystem. As a community, we will capitalize on this by utilizing our governance system to create innovative growth initiatives. Not because we're such a special, hard-working community (although that's true) but because, if done right, the system is set up to incentivize it. That is what organic, non-VC-backed marketing and growth looks like. I have been talking about these things since 2021, and some of you for longer, but now that the price is pumping, people might actually listen and care, so let's spread the word. (Disclaimer: these are just my personal opinions. Always DYOR and draw your own conclusions)

From the time I began writing this post to finishing it, $ADA went from 167% November growth, to 183% 🤷‍♂️