Longtime Cardano supporter and crypto commentator Dan Gambardello said ADA’s precipitous decline has exposed deeper frustrations within the Cardano ecosystem, even as he claimed the project’s underlying technology remains among the strongest in crypto.
In a long one after on X, Gambardello framed the problem as bigger than just the price. He argued that Cardano’s decline of more than 80% from 2024 levels should be seen in the context of a broader decline in the altcoin, and not as evidence that the network itself is failing. Still, he said the market’s weakness has intensified long-standing concerns about ecosystem support, leadership, public optics and Cardano’s relative isolation from the broader crypto market.
“Let me say… Cardano is down over 80% from 2024, along with so many altcoins. It’s not because Cardano is failing. It’s because altcoins are being demolished,” Gambardello wrote. “So please try to separate the price and anything I write here. To be clear, this is not me opposing the project.”
Why is the Cardano price crashing?
Gambardello said he remains a supporter of Cardano and still believes ADA can participate if a broad altcoin bull market returns. However, his criticism was aimed at what he described as years of missed opportunities. According to him, Cardano had the reputation, funding and top-10 market position needed to define its own story and strengthen its ecosystem, but failed to fully capitalize on that influence.
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The post stood out because Gambardello has been one of Cardano’s most visible long-term advocates. He recalled switching from Litecoin to Cardano before the 2020-2021 bull market, a move he described as one of his best investments in crypto. At the time, he said, Cardano’s setup looked attractive as staking came online, the community expanded and the project presented itself as a serious answer to the blockchain trilemma of scalability, decentralization and security.
That belief has not disappeared. Gambardello called Cardano “an amazing project” with “some of the strongest fundamental technologies in crypto,” adding that it is “not game over yet.” But he said his views on certain ecosystem dynamics have changed because expected progress has not materialized.
“To put it simply, it has been frustrating over the years to see things not happen,” he wrote. “Things that would have helped the Cardano ecosystem so much. I don’t need to go into details, but along with many of you, I have voiced my opinions on these things time and time again.”
Gambardello said Cardano has remained “very isolated” and has repeatedly gone through periods of “unnecessarily bad optics.” The most immediate trigger for his message was the recent announcement that TapTools, a widely used analytics and ecosystem platform from Cardano, is being discontinued. He described TapTools as “the center of Cardano” and said its closure was exactly the kind of loss the network could least afford during a tough bear market.
His frustration wasn’t just that a project was closed. It was the response, or, in his opinion, the lack thereof. Gambardello said he had expected a visible effort from leadership and the community to rally around an important ecosystem front, even if it didn’t mean an immediate bailout.
“I’m not saying that every major project deserves a bailout, but when Cardano’s frontend and basically the dashboard are about to close their doors, you brainstorm… and you do so with positivity,” he wrote. “When you lead an L1, you rally the troops and the community with a clear determination to ensure that the heart of this L1 does not have to close their doors, especially in the worst crypto bear market ever.”
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Gambardello contrasted the TapTools situation with the Cardano Foundation’s communications on other initiatives, including the Brazilian Olympics and Token2049-related activities. He said these efforts may be worthwhile in themselves, but they seemed misplaced as a central Cardano platform prepared for closure.
“Shutting down TapTools is the last thing Cardano needs right now, and it seems like it was a ‘oh well’ moment,” he wrote. “Cardano needs to keep his best players in the game at the moment and that is not what happened.”
The broader problem, he added, is that negative developments often lead to drama at X, further exacerbating the reputational damage. Gambardello said the “constant drama” surrounding Cardano has become exhausting, especially for people who have championed the project for years.
That exhaustion helps explain why he has been diversifying his content, focus and portfolio for more than a year, he said. Gambardello rejected the idea that this shift amounted to betrayal, instead presenting it as a normal response to changing markets and changing risks.
At the time of writing, ADA was trading at $0.16.
Featured image created with DALL.E, chart from TradingView.com