I ask this as a serious question and not at all to be critical of Cardano in anyway. With global macro economic conditions everything is falling right now and crypto is taking it particularly hard.
As the price of ADA falls the returns being made by even the larger pools must be making it very difficult. I run a small pool which has basically made no money since the beginning but I run it for interest and educational reasons and also because I would like Cardano to succeed. Surely however the costs of maintaining reliable infrastructure is already costing considerably more than the returns which would force the larger pools with better infrastructure to close up being replaced by hobbyists and enthusiasts running Cardano nodes on much cheaper and less reliable hardware. If ADA keeps dropping does there come a point where the network becomes much more centralized with so many pools dropping off. Yes there are thousands of pools running now but how many of these could be said to be reliable nodes and well maintained.
If we want Cardano to succeed we have to be able to ask and address the difficult questions and I think this is a fair one. If my thought process is wrong then I am happy to hear others views on this.
This is a generalisation: Anyone who was going to sell has already sold. All the fast money, lambo to the moon, pump and dump crowd has gone, leaving only the true believers. Current holders will sell only if they are forced to pay for living expenses. They are not traders and they are unlevered.
In other words, the bear market has increased the percentage of holders that are long term focused. Current holders are not just financially invested but heavily personally invested in the success of the technology. These people are not going to attack the network and if you want to buy their tokens, it is going to cost a lot more than the current market price. Furthermore, running a stake pool is cheap and can be done from your Mum’s basement with a cheap computer and reliable internet connection. Many (maybe even most) current holders have the ability to run their own stake pool.
It might be somewhat counter-intuitive, but I think Cardano’s security might actually be greater in the depths of this bear market simply because of “who” owns the majority of the Ada.
Well the ADA price does in fact have an impact on the network security.
The lower the price per ADA is, the cheaper it would get for an attack to borrow/buy >50% of the supply (which is probably still an insane amount of cash you would need). But yes in theory the price does have an inpact on the network security.