Cardano (CRYPTO: ADA-X) shot up nearly 18% leading up to the early hours of Wednesday.

What’s Moving? ADA traded 17.59% higher over 24 hours at press time and 28.12% over a seven-day trailing period.

The Charles Hoskinson created cryptocurrency moved 17.35% and 15.62% higher against Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Ethereum (CRYPTO: ETH) respectively.

BTC traded 0.09% higher at $45,728.57 and ETH traded 1.45% higher at $3,171.80 over 24 hours.

Since January, ADA has soared 882.62%, while BTC and ETH have returned 57.21% and 327.88% since the year began.

Why Is It Moving? Hoskinson tweeted a video on Tuesday in which he touched on the upcoming Alonzo hard fork of the cryptocurrency that will implement smart contracts functionality.

“Everything seems to be on track,” said Hoskinson — adding, “It looks like we are on track for Friday to announce the date.”

Announcing the announcement, Hoskinson said, “It will be before the Cardano summit.”

Cardano was among the ten most mentioned cryptocurrencies on Twitter Inc’s (NASDAQ: TWTR) platform at press time. In terms of mentions by #favorites, it topped the list compiled by Cointrendz.com.

Recently, Cardano's rival Ethereum went through a network upgrade dubbed the London hard fork and has since then been rallying.