News on Litecoin, Ripple (XRP), Ethereum

A look at prices and the latest news involving the crypto assets Litecoin (LTC), Ripple (XRP) and Ethereum (ETH), especially in view of the complicated market situation after the Silicon Valley Bank collapse. Below are the details.

Litecoin (LTC) shows signs of recovery

The difficulty and hashrate of Litecoin (LTC) increased, suggesting an increase in the number of miners. In addition, the LTC rose while on-chain performance looked bullish.

On 13 March, the Litecoin Foundation revealed that Litecoin’s mining difficulty had reached a new all-time high. As its difficulty increased, it pointed out that the network’s hashrate had also risen in the past week.

Litecoin mining difficulty is touching a new high!🚀
Difficulty is a variable measure of how difficult it is to find a hash below a given target. An important metric for mining & how the truly decentralized #Litecoin network controls new coin issuance. $LTC pic.twitter.com/n4e6rIodjj

— Litecoin Foundation ⚡️ (@LTCFoundation) March 13, 2023

The increase in hashrate indicated an influx of new miners on the network. One possible reason for the new influx could be the recent price action on LTC, which has favored bullish traders.

As we learn from CoinMarketCap, the price of LTC has risen 4.46% in the past 24 hours and is currently trading at $80.00 with a market capitalization of $5.7 billion.

Beyond the increase in LTC’s value, another reason for the increase in hashrate could be the new Litecoin Ordinals. As we know, Ordinals were initially launched on Bitcoin‘s blockchain.

However, Litecoin started supporting these NFTs during the last weeks of February. Since its launch, Ordinals have come a long way, passing the 200,000 quantity milestone last week.

Ripple (XRP) validates EVM Testnet

Ripple (XRP) has upgraded the development of the EVM sidechain with access to the Testnet.

However, XRP’s network growth has slowed, but developers have remained very active.

Specifically, on 14 March RippleX confirmed that its sidechain was available on its Testnet. Built on the XRP Ledger (XRPL), the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) sidechain would allow 1,000 transactions per second on the ledger.

🧵 #DYK XRPL Thread: EVM Sidechain

The Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible XRPL sidechain is available on testnet, and brings all kinds of #web3 applications to the #blockchain community.

Check out the intro. #BuiltOnXRPL (1/6)https://t.co/dUfpEoqjWn

— RippleX (@RippleXDev) March 13, 2023

Contextually, XRPL is a public blockchain driven by the Ripple developer community. The ledger is part of the ecosystem responsible for helping transfer resources globally.

So now that the sidechain EVM Mainnet is approaching, cross-chain bridging could improve the network. In September 2021, Ripple’s Chief Technology Officer David Schwartz endorsed the proposal of the EVM sidechain to the Ripple community.

Specifically, Schwartz supported the proposal noting that developers could build their own blockchain on the XRPL core network using smart contracts. After the public rollout, blockchain tech company Peersyst released the first phase of the sidechain EVM in October 2022.

While some compatible bridges were developed at that time, the latest update serves as the second phase of the project. The RippleX statement further mentioned the following:

“The second phase of the project, scheduled for early 2023, will feature a permissionless EVM sidechain and uniquely designed bridge that connects to XRPL Devnet to expand participation and test scalability within an environment checked.”

Interestingly, available data on XRPL showed that 2,476,468 blocks had been created on the sidechain at press time. In addition, 16,079 transactions had taken place across 179,045 addresses on the ledger.

Ethereum activates Shapella upgrade that will enable ETH unstaking

Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade, which will enable ETH unstaking, has been successfully activated on the Goerli network. The mainnet upgrade is scheduled for next month.

Shapella is the Shanghai upgrade, one of the most anticipated upgrades in the market. It is a portmanteau of Shanghai and Capella, with the former serving as the execution-side update.

Capella focuses on the consensus layer, where validators execute their actions, while the execution layer is where smart contracts exist. These are the two sides of a coin, and together they will propel Ethereum into the next phase of its existence.

Ethereum is taking further steps in its efforts to upgrade the network, as Ethereum developer Tim Beiko announced that Goerli had forked. The fork is a necessary step before Ethereum’s Shapella upgrade becomes active on the main network, bringing with it several improvements.

Beiko announced that deposits are being processed, although he notes that several validators have not yet been updated. However, he adds that there is a possible challenge in the form of lack of incentives.

The testnet uses ETH that has no actual value, which may not attract enough testnet validators. Beiko previously referred to the fact that this was the first time people could submit changes, which could eventually lead to missed blocks/attestations on low-resource nodes.

In any case, ETH withdrawal in stakes can now be submitted for processing on Goerli’s testnet. This lays the groundwork for the mainnet upgrade, scheduled for next month.