Crypto Scoop: Cardano Heads to Africa After Mithril Mainnet Upgrade

The crypto market has been unstable throughout the week, with top cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum moving between bullish and bearish phases. In this edition of the crypto scoop, we’ll provide you insights into the latest crypto updates:

• How Top Cryptocurrencies are faring
• Cardano Heads to Africa After Mithril Mainnet Upgrade 
• XRP Keeps the Waves Coming, Records Nearly 200,000 Active Addresses
• Binance To The Rescue: Curved Finance Receive $5 Million Funding
• RocketX and Hedera are Here to Create Magic 
• Circle Fully Enters Into Web3 With New Wallets 

How Top Cryptocurrencies are Faring 

Bitcoin continues to struggle in the crypto market. Apparently, the trajectory of the apex cryptocurrency seems unknown. At one point, it looked certain of crossing the $30k level but never did. It moved around the $29k level before dropping down. At the time of writing, the price of bitcoin is below $29.5k. 

Other major altcoins in the market continue reacting to bitcoin price movements as ETH continues to maintain the $1800 range, while XRP is looking to break even at $0.62. 

Cardano Heads to Africa After Mithril Mainnet Upgrade 

The Cardano Mithril upgrade eventually went live on July 30th through a systematic integration on the Cardano blockchain. The primary aspect of the upgrade is that it will help to increase the effectiveness, speed, and efficiency of the node syncing times. 

Cardano described the upgrade in their community forum, saying:

"It’s a groundbreaking stake-based signature scheme and protocol designed to supercharge the speed and efficiency of nodes’ syncing times. With Mithril in action, node syncing will be faster and more efficient than ever, bringing a new level of security and decentralized decision-making to the community."

The Cardano network is looking to grow across the globe and wants to do the unthinkable by bringing down the benefits of the Mithril upgrade to Africa. In a new announcement, Cardano’s Input Output Global (IOG) said they would spearhead a comprehensive two-month training program in Nairobi, Kenya. Furthermore, they will launch this new training in collaboration with African Blockchain Center. 

The new training provided by the Cardano network will be mainly to equip participants with many blockchain skills. Haskell programming language, Marlowe financial smart contracts, and Plutus smart contracts are some skills that will be taught. 

Input Output Global (IOG) took to their X (formerly Twitter) account to announce the new development. "Education is vital for driving #blockchain adoption, and this program aims to nurture a skilled workforce in the #blockchain domain," they said on the X platform. 

XRP Keeps the Waves Coming, Records Nearly 200,000 Active Addresses 

The hype around the XRP partial ruling seems to have died down so what’s next? XRP has shown that it has a formidable community behind it after touching new levels in the number of active wallet addresses. 

Despite the slow yet steady decline in its price, XRP has nearly hit the 200,000 mark in active addresses with 189,349 on 8 August 2023. Considering the market situation, this is a massive milestone for XRP. 

From several opinions, the increase in XRP active addresses signifies a lot of things. But the major highlight is that XRP investors finally have more confidence in the token and are ready to buy more. Furthermore, the new record might influence XRP's price, as active addresses signify increased market activity.

Curvced Finance Rescued With $5 Million Funding 

Curved Finance is a DeFi protocol that suffered a massive hack that saw them record more than $70 million in losses. Furthermore, the crypto hack saw many liquidity pools in the protocol get disrupted due to stolen funds. After much moving around, the hacker finally agreed to give back 90% of the money stolen. This was after sending an encrypted message on Etherscan. 

However, this wouldn’t automatically fix the damage of bad PR it has given users towards decentralised finances. Curved Finance especially saw many users leave the platform due to the situation. Even more, the hack on Curved Finance wasn't good for their brand, as they were still a growing crypto project. 

However, Binance has come to its rescue after investing $5 million to support Curve DAO Token (CRV), the native token of the Curve ecosystem. There's even more to this deal, as Binance wants to quickly turn things around for Curved Finance with the new partnership allowing CRV to get deployed in Binance Chain (BNB).

If this move happens, it will ensure that transactions on the CRV ecosystem are more secure and seamless. Furthermore, it’ll be a big brand boost for their ecosystem. 

RocketX and Hedera: Creating Magic 

In other news, RocketX has made a strategic partnership with Hedera in their bid to improve Interoperability in blockchain technology. RocketX is a multichain centralized and decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator aiming to make crypto swapping seamless. 

With their new partnership, users on both networks can access the blockchain without having issues. On their Twitter (now X) page, they said the new partnership with Hedera will lead to "endless possibilities."

Circle Fully Enters Into Web3 With New Wallets 

Circle has announced the introduction of a new web3 wallet. Circle is majorly known for being the parent company of the stablecoin USDC. But they seem to be entering the web3 space after launching a new web3 wallet. 

Named “Programmable Wallets”, it will be the first product to launch in their new web3 line. Circle strongly believes its new wallet will help "... abstracting complexities such as private key security, blockchain node operations, transaction management, interoperability across blockchains…" by making things more accessible and simple.