Cardano (ADA) is actually performing the most in the corrective phase of the crypto market, although the price of ADA still has a long way to go to beat the record highs against Bitcoin.

The ADA wave of growth recorded on Feb. 26 when buying volume soared to record highs, helped ADA climb 27% from a low of $ 0.98 to establish a new ATH milestone at $ 1.29 and becomes the 3rd largest cryptocurrency by market cap.

The impetus for the project built throughout February, Cardano (ADA) opened fire to approach the major upgrade, aimed directly at Ethereum, after integrating the Mary upgrade to Cardano’s testnet on Feb. 3. The upgrade enables smart contract functionality, helping to transform the blockchain into a multi-tier network similar to Ethereum. The Mary protocol will be running on the Cardano mainnet in early March this year.

The latest price hike coincides with Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson announcing Mary will appear on mainet on March 1. ADA quickly spiked to $ 1.17 after correcting pressure on the cryptocurrency market pushed ADA back below $ 1.00 on Feb. 25.

After that, ADA’s transaction volume rose to a new record of $ 12.8 billion. The open interest rate for ADA futures also increased to $ 580 million, overtaking Litecoin (LTC) to become the third largest derivative market.

Smart contract functionality is a key component of the Mary upgrade and is expected to usher in a new era of functionality for the Cardano ecosystem. Once integrated, decentralized financial applications will be able to operate on the network and provide a new solution for users looking to grapple with the high gas fees on the Ethereum network.