Cardano (ADA) is starting Monday on a slightly upbeat mood, reclaiming the key $1.30 level, on the back of promising fundamental developments and a somewhat positive mood among investors towards the crypto market in general. At the time of writing, ADA/USD is trading at around $1.32.

According to its Co-founder, Chares Hoskinson, it could take a few more weeks for the Alonzo upgrade’s mainnet launch, which was expected sometime this month. On Hoskinson’s recent livestream over YouTube, he detailed that more work was needed to be completed for the hard fork which will bring Alonzo capabilities to nodes. The second phase would focus on building the infrastructure to allow users to run off-chain and on-chain code and build full dApps.

Even as users as well as critics look forward to the big launch of the next phase, more interesting developments are also giving traders reasons to invest in Cardano’s ADA. The network could get its very first DEX as soon as Q3 once the smart contracts capabilities are launched. Cardax has raised $1.5 million from its first community sale to develop and implement the native trading platform on Cardano’s ecosystem using the Extended Automated Marker Maker (EAMM) protocol.

Meanwhile, experts are offering mixed signals from technical analysis. Leading crypto analyst Michaël van de Poppe remains optimistic that the Ethereum killer could experience a strong rally this year, forecasting a surge by as much as 800% against the US dollar. On a more immediate term, however, the monthly chart of ADA/USD points to more bearishness in store after which its price could see a considerable rally.

Key Levels to Watch

On the 4-hour chart of ADA/USD, most of the moving averages are suggesting a bullish bias among investors. However, leading technical indicators MACD and momentum are flashing sell, pointing out the possibility of sellers on the horizon too.

Cardano’s price is holding just above the pivot point at $1.31 and has some way to go to get to the first resistance, which is sitting at the $1.40 mark. A strengthening in the bullish momentum can see ADA cross this key level and test next resistance at $1.49 before breaking above the $1.50 level as well.