Is artificial intelligence the next frontier for this crypto?

Although it has not received much attention from investors, Cardano (ADA -3.01%) been on a roll lately. It is now up 35% for the year, and has kept pace with market stalwarts such as Ethereum (ETH -1.98%), which is up 40% for the year. Additionally, the metrics typically used to value Cardano – such as Total Value Locked (TVL) – are also trending up, a sign that the blockchain’s recent push into decentralized finance (DeFi) may be paying off.

But a potentially really exciting growth area for Cardano is still being overlooked by investors. Ever so quietly, Cardano appears to be making a push into artificial intelligence (AI), and this could give it a huge competitive advantage against other blockchain networks that have yet to embrace the future of blockchain-based AI. A new move into AI would of course support a much higher valuation for Cardano.

Cardano and SingularityNET

Key to Cardano’s push into AI is SingularityNET (AGIX 2.44%), which is one of the standout AI crypto tokens of the year. Up nearly 1,000% for the year, SingularityNET has attracted investors’ attention largely thanks to its track record of cutting-edge AI projects, such as the AI-powered humanoid robot Sophia.

Image source: Getty Images.

SingularityNET is a crypto token, not a coin, which means it does not have its own blockchain and needs another blockchain to function. SingularityNET was originally launched as a token on the Ethereum blockchain. However, in May 2021 it began the process of fully migrating to the Cardano blockchain. Going forward, SingularityNET will be a token that uses the Cardano blockchain for functionality, security and stability. You can see this as a big win for Cardano — it managed to lure away a hot AI token from Ethereum based on its superior performance and capabilities.

Now it seems that Cardano is increasing its support for SingularityNET. For example, in February, Cardano announced that it will soon launch a new custom staking portal for SingularityNET token holders, making it very easy for them to stake AGIX tokens and earn passive income.

If you think long term, Cardano’s embrace of AI could be very exciting. Cardano can use SingularityNET as a showcase project to attract other AI developers and users. Over time, Cardano may become the “go-to” ecosystem for AI, just as Ethereum became the “go-to” blockchain ecosystem for non-fungible tokens (NFT) and DeFi.

If Cardano is ever going to become an AI leader, it will most likely require the continued growth of Hypercycle, a new sidechain connected to the Cardano blockchain specialized for AI. According to SingularityNET, this Hypercycle sidechain is critical to making blockchain-based AI projects cheaper, faster, and more usable than anything Big Tech can produce.

Will AI help boost Cardano’s valuation?

Investors keep asking, “What can you use Cardano for?” If the answer is “artificial intelligence,” it could be big. Until now, the most common complaint about Cardano was that it wasn’t really good for anything. It is so academically oriented, and so slow to bring new innovations to market, that nothing major ever seemed to go “live” on it. As a result, investors have never given a huge valuation to Cardano. Its all-time high is only $3.10, which it reached at the very peak of the crypto boom in 2021. And its 52-week high is only $1.24.

Of course, much of this discussion about AI and Cardano is highly speculative, since no one really knows if blockchain-based AI is going to be a thing. But it’s hard to ignore the growing number of headlines about “Cardano’s AI project” (ie SingularityNET) and not just be a little curious. The more you look under the hood of Cardano, the more interesting things get. If AI ever becomes a central focus point for Cardano, watch out. This overlooked coin could approach all-time highs much faster than anyone could have imagined.