A small-cap crypto project built on Kusama () has exploded by more than 188% this week amid widespread momentum among Polkadot () ecosystem projects.
Moonriver () is an Ethereum ()-compatible parachain built on Kusama.
The project serves as a canary network to test code for Moonbeam (), a smart contract platform for cross-chain connected applications.
MOVR is trading at $29.16 at time of writing, up from $10.12 one week ago. The 201st-ranked crypto asset by market cap is also up more than 36% in the past 24 hours.
MOVR’s gains materialized amid a wider uptrend for Polkadot projects. Kusama, Polkadot’s canary test network, is also up big this week. KSM, the project’s native token, is trading at $50.01 at time of writing after gaining more than 52% in the past seven days.
Moonbeam’s native asset, GLMR, is trading at $0.47 at time of writing. The 158th-ranked crypto asset by market cap is up more than 24% in the past week.
DOT itself has traded sideways this week but is up more than 60% in the past month.
The Polkadot ecosystem continues to be one of the most active in terms of development activity, according to the crypto analytics firm Santiment
The smart contract platform and Kusama each registered 357.8 notable GitHub commits over 30 days between late November and late December, tied for second among all crypto projects. Only fellow Ethereum rival Cardano () clocked more commits, with 540.
Santiment notes that it doesn’t count routine updates and uses “advanced methodology” to collect data for “true” GitHub commits only.
The firm says that high levels of development activity can indicate developers have confidence in the blockchain’s longevity and that new features may be coming soon to the project’s ecosystem.
