• Cardano’s network will benefit from more efficiency and fast bootstrap after Mithril went live on mainnet.
• ADA price was flat, but could benefit from new bullish momentum across the market.

Cardano has achieved another milestone with the mainnet launch of the highly anticipated Mithril upgrade.

On July 30, an announcement by Cardano stake pool operator (SPO) Banksy revealed that Mithril was now live on the mainnet.

Network efficiency

Mithril is a stake-based network of nodes that enable the creation of snapshots and certificates of the Cardano Node, allowing for a fast bootstrap and restoration.

The development promises to bring several benefits to network users, particularly in boosting the efficiency of Cardano full node clients. The upgrade will also enhance user access to Daedalus and other network applications, with increased decentralisation achieved via the ability for any number of pools attesting to transactions through an aggregator and signer.

“With Mithril, SPOs give you regular certified snapshots of the Cardano state (more precisely the UTXO set i.e. the leaves of the graph formed by its transactions over time), so you can build services without running a node. Fast bootstrap is a first use case,” Romain Pellerin, the CTO of Cardano R&D company Input Output, noted via X (fka Twitter).

ADA price outlook

A reaction to the protocol’s launch saw the price of Cardano’s native token ADA jump to near $0.32. While broader malaise across crypto sees ADA hover within a tight range above $0.30, the potential for a sharp flip higher has been added to with the new network milestone.

Other network activity metrics, as shown by the count of github commits, suggests a breakout for ADA amid a wider market rally could see bulls target year-to-date highs of $0.45.