• Nova’s CEO has announced that it would unveil a new debit card within the Polkadot ecosystem in September, enabling users to “off-ramp their tokens” globally.
• From late last year, Polkadot has experienced a boom in network activities as parachains active addresses reached 514,000, a 48% increase in QoQ.

CEO of Novasama Technologies and Nova Wallet Anton Khvorov has announced a groundbreaking initiative that would see a product dubbed “Nova & Mercuryo Debit Cards” introduced in the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem in September.

According to Khvorov, the initiative is meant to offset the existing challenges confronting users to enable them to off-ramp their tokens for global utilization. Specifically, users would be able to spend their tokens wherever MasterCard is accepted.

This is another mental barrier for the users. They [are now able to]overcome all the challenges to join and start utilizing the ecosystem. But this almost means nothing if there is a huge mental barrier that prevents them from understanding that this is real. So we decided to solve this issue. We not only want to provide you with a solution that helps you to offramp your tokens and utilize them somewhere in the world. What we really want to do is create a brand-new utility.

Polkadot’s focus on the digital payment industry is evident in its 2023 partnership agreement with Agrotoken, a digital platform that issues stablecoin with collateral in grains and food. For a smooth payment experience, Agrotoken earlier collaborated with VISA to create a custom payment method where Polkadot users could equally use its cards to facilitate payments.

Having created these grounds, the blockchain platform has since attracted millions of users who actively engage in its different products and services globally.

Polkadot Network Activities Boom

The “Nova & Mercuryo Debit Cards” announcement also comes at a point where the Polkadot ecosystem records a significant surge in unique accounts and signed transactions.

In a report reviewed by Crypto News Flash, the ecosystem had 7 million unique accounts in the month ending June 30, out of which Polkadot dominated with 1.34 million, followed by Polkadot Asset Hub, and Nodle which had 1.31 million, and 1.2 million respectively. Similarly, signed transactions increased by 33% to 16 million within the month with Frequency accounting for 5.4 million.

Our review of a Messari report on the performance of Polkadot in the first quarter of 2024 also showed that the ecosystem had several developments to support developers including the expansion of the Polkadot Breakthrough Academy. Polkadot also launched an Alpha Program and unveiled a new SDK.

Within the period, eight parachain auctions were conducted to bring the total to 66. These auctions also led to the bonding of 1 million DOT, marking the highest since Q2 2022. The report further discloses that five of the eight auctions were renewals by Darwinia, Bifrost, Unique Network, Litentry, and NeuroWeb.

In Q1 2024, parachain active addresses reached an all-time high of 514,000, a 48% increase in QoQ. Moonbeam further extended its position as the leading parachain with 217,000 monthly active addresses (+110% QoQ). Nodle followed with 54,000 monthly active addresses, doubling from the previous quarter. Astar saw a moderate increase to 26,000 (+8% QoQ), and Bifrost Finance’s active addresses slightly increased to 10,000 (+2% QoQ). Acala experienced a decline, with monthly active addresses dropping to 13,000 (-16% QoQ).

At press time, DOT was trading at $6.2 after surging by 7% in the last 24 hours.