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The Cardano network has achieved a significant milestone. AnetaBTC says it has successfully minted cBTC, a wrapped form of BTC, on the Cardano network, marking a major step forward for the ecosystem.
We're excited to announce we've successfully minted cBTC on Cardano 😇
— anetaBTC 👼 Wrapped BTC on Cardano and Ergo (@anetaBTC) March 4, 2023
CBTC, a BTC asset on Cardano, is similar to wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC) on ETH but without a centralized custodian. Wrapped assets help bridge liquidity from other ecosystems, and wrapped BTC on Cardano might help unlock liquidity from the $432 billion BTC market.
Securely mint cBTC on Cardano... 👼 pic.twitter.com/AW9T0LL8SJ
— anetaBTC 👼 Wrapped BTC on Cardano and Ergo (@anetaBTC) February 20, 2023
In minting cBTC, users would add their ADA address to the BTC TX metadata and deposit BTC, which is then processed and confirmed by anetaBTC. The cBTC is minted and then sent to the user's Cardano wallet.
Thus, a new world of possibilities is opened for Cardano users, who will soon be able to access Bitcoin functionality within the Cardano network. Aneta is one of the first projects enabling this on Cardano.
The path for bringing Bitcoin to the Cardano and Ergo platforms was published by anetaBTC, a Bitcoin wrapping protocol, in March 2022.
AnetaBTC released a public testnet for wrapped Bitcoin on the Ergo platform in January. AnetaBTC intends to launch Cardano's public testnets this March, as well as make open-source contracts available and finish the audit.
Cardano is seeing an increase in development on its network. According to recent IOG statistics, 1,209 projects are building on Cardano, while 117 projects have launched. The total number of transactions is 62.2 million. Cardano native tokens stand at 7.87 million across 70,258 minting policies. Plutus scripts were at 5,953, of which 792 are Plutus v2 scripts.