Cardano says it has added smart contracts to its network after the alonzo upgrade - while its ada token runs into profit-taking

• The alonzo upgrade brought smart contract capability to the cardano network Sunday.
• Ada has dropped around 20% since an all-time high of around $3.098 on September 2.
• Cardano "promises a lot but whether it can actually deliver remains to be seen," one trader said.

The cardano network now offers users the ability to run smart contracts, following a major upgrade over the weekend, increasing its competitiveness with larger rival ethereum.

The network's developers, Input Output HK, confirmed on Sunday over Twitter that the planned "alonzo" upgrade had rolled out successfully.

In a blogpost the same day, cardano said it had deployed "plutus smart contract capabilities", following the completion of the alonzo hard fork.

"That's probably the most significant change in the history of the protocol," cardano founder Charles Hoskinson told Insider in a recent interview, in reference to the recent upgrade.

This upgrade will allow the implementation of smart contracts on the blockchain, enabling a new sweep of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and programmability. Cardano will now be able to compete with the likes of ethereum, a much larger network, earning itself the nickname of potential "ethereum killer."

The alonzo upgrade, named after American mathematician Alonzo Church - considered one of the founders of computer science - will allow the network to be used for decentralized exchanges, house non-fungible tokens and run oracle programs that draw in external data to trigger smart contracts.

"They will now get to build it with cost predictability and formal methods and all kinds of other things that we think in the long term will build much more sustainable, secure and ultimately useful applications for users," Hoskinson said.

Cardano's ada coin recently became the third largest by market value, at $75 billion in size, although it is still dwarfed by bitcoin, the most widely traded digital coin, which has a market cap of $836 billion.

Ada has fallen around 23% since hitting an all-time high of around $3.098 on September 2 according to Kraken as investors took some profit following the long-awaited upgrade.

"The cardano smart contract upgrade was an epochal moment for the ecosystem but its success depends upon adoption by developers and the number of dApps integrated into the cardano network, Alexandra Clark, sales trader at digital asset broker GlobalBlock, said.

"Ultimately, cardano promises a lot but whether it can actually deliver remains to be seen," she said.

Ada was last trading around $2.388, down around 8% in the last 24 hours by 06:45 ET, according to Kraken data.