MaidSafeCoin, the currency behind the SAFE network of MaidSafe, is seeing a steady price rise with increasing volume for the last few weeks, and over the last 24 hours, for the first time, its trading volume is higher than Litecoin’s. The price and volume run-ups have taken place after the testnet was released by the company, after several years of work on the network and its mission to decentralize the internet.

Ethereum, which has already overtaken Litecoin and Ripple to become the second most valuable cryptocurrency, is also seeing a steady price rise over the last few weeks, increasing by over 1000% in under a month and rivaling the coveted $1 billion market capitalization, also with impressive trading volume.

As the altcoin market has dried up with new and cloned coins, the ones with promise and potential behind them are getting a renewed lifeline even as Bitcoin has faltered in its quest to find an amenable solution to the scaling and block-size issues. Bitcoin’s price has fallen to around $400, even as Ethereum and MaidSafeCoin continue their upward price journey.

MaidSafeCoin is not as well known as Ethereum, but the SAFE network from MaidSafe is a very interesting concept. David Irvine, the founder, has been working on this project since 2006, long before the Bitcoin whitepaper came along. However, with the idea of cryptocurrencies, it was possible to provide a native currency to the SAFE network, which would be used for transactions for storing data on the network.

MaidSafeCoin has one of the largest IPO/ICO back in the day, which was also quite controversial because of a huge price differential between Bitcoin and Mastercoin (on which MaidSafeCoin was created), thus causing a huge bubble and subsequent bust in the price of Mastercoin. The team learned some valuable lessons during that time. The project has been making steady progress ever since even as its price had fallen. However, after the test-net announcement, it seems like people have rediscovered the potential of the SAFE network.