The Cardano (ADA) stablecoin Mehen (USDM) will be launched on March 16 this year. Mehen confirmed this on his website. If all goes well, this would be the first fiat stablecoin on Cardano. USDM will initially be available in 19 undisclosed U.S. states.

Mehen could be an important step for the ADA ecosystem. After all, Charles Hoskinson's brainchild has yet to hold its own against the competition.

With a market capitalization of US$26.8 billion (USD), ADA is the tenth largest cryptocurrency in the world. Its competitor Solana (SOL) has a market capitalization of 76 billion USD, almost three times as much, while Ethereum (ETH) has a market capitalization of 476 billion USD, more than 15 times as much.

Cardano has also lagged behind the competition in the DeFi sector. At USD 493 million, ADA's total value locked (TVL), i.e. the amount of capital stored in DeFi contracts, is only a fraction of the competition. In comparison, Solana has USD 3.6 billion and Ethereum USD 56 billion. This is based on data from DeFillama.

As stablecoins play an important role in the DeFi environment, USDM could become a gamechanger for Cardano. However, the project has always focused on sustainable development activities. Patrick Tobler, Cardano developer and founder of NMKR, an NFT platform, said in an interview that ADA also has other use cases.However, the cryptocurrency is more decentralized than, say, Solana, which could pay off in the long run, the developer told me.

With 600,000 active wallet addresses, Cardano reached a new annual high yesterday, Wednesday, March 13. The Cardano-DEX Danogo writes this on the X platform (formerly Twitter). On a 24-hour basis, ADA is up about 1 percent.