Bitcoin network fee exceeded $37
The average commission on the Bitcoin network exceeded $37, reaching its annual maximum. Experts are highly divided on the cost of transactions on this network. This strong increase in commission is associated with a new wave of Ordinals activity, which led to an increase in the number of transactions on the network. Currently, there are more than 260,000 transactions awaiting confirmation in the mempool.
The biggest beneficiaries of this situation were miners, whose income rose to levels comparable to Bitcoin's all-time high price of around $69,000. Some users noted that such high network fees could complicate mass adoption of the cryptocurrency.
SOL token hits two-year high
The Solana (SOL) token price soared 15%, from $86 to $99, reaching its highest level in the last two years. At the moment, the asset price has adjusted to $95, with a total capitalization of $40 billion. It’s remarkable that the coin suddenly took fourth place in the CoinGecko ranking, surpassing even BNB.
The last time SOL saw such momentum was in November 2021, when, at the top of a bull market cycle, its capitalization reached an impressive $75 billion. After the collapse of FTX, associated with the project's alleged ties to Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder of the exchange, prices for the coin fell to just $10.
Ledger sums up the recent hack
Due to an incident that occurred on December 14, when the Ledger Connect Kit libraries were compromised, wallet users lost approximately $600,000. The company assured that it will fully reimburse the damage incurred by users. Ledger CEO Pascal Gauthier will personally oversee the compensation process. In addition, the company published a report on this incident, which reveals some details from the preliminary investigation.
Avalanche burned a record $18 million in AVAX in a week
Over the past week, the Avalanche blockchain's C-Chain network has burned an impressive 438,877 AVAX fees, which is approximately $18.1 million at the time of writing. This figure has increased more than 10 times compared to the previous period.
C-Chain is based on a solution similar to the Ethereum improvement proposal - EIP-1559. Avalanche implemented this solution in 2021 during the London hard fork, but unlike Ethereum, on the Avalanche network the entire fee is burned, not just the part that is dynamically determined.
A sharp increase in the rate of withdrawal of tokens from circulation occurred around mid-November, when 85,533 AVAX coins were burned in a week. This surge in on-chain activity to record levels is largely due to the emergence of the Ordinals counterpart.
CAKE token up 20%
The community of the DEX platform PancakeSwap put forward for discussion a proposal to reduce the total supply of the CAKE token from 750 million to 450 million. Currently, the market supply of CAKE is approximately 263.8 million.
Over the past week, the price of CAKE has jumped 19.7%, according to data from CoinGecko. This asset is trading above the $2.6 level, but is still significantly below the historical high reached in April 2021 - $43.96. The supply reduction proposal could also have a positive impact on BNB, whose price reached $270, up 4.6% over the past 24 hours. PancakeSwap is by far the integral leader in the DeFi ecosystem on BNB Chain, with a total TVL of over $1.8 billion in assets frozen.
Phantom now supports Bitcoin, Ordinals and BRC-20
The Phantom wallet team has introduced an update that adds support for Bitcoin, Ordinals and BRC-20 tokens. The new features are still in beta mode, but the developers claim that they are already 100% functional and ready to use.
The team emphasized that without BTC, platforms like Solana, Ethereum or Web3 would not exist, and therefore they express their eternal gratitude to Bitcoin for its contribution to the development of the cryptocurrency world. They also expressed their excitement for the launch of these new features (in beta mode) on the Phantom.
Montenegrin court revokes extradition verdict for Do Kwon
The Montenegro Court of Appeal has ruled to overturn a previous decision to hand over Terraform Labs (TFL) co-founder Do Kwon to the US or South Korean authorities. According to documents submitted, Do Kwon's defense successfully sought a retrial of the case.
In November, Montenegro's High Court approved the possibility of extraditing the former head of TFL, giving Justice Minister Andrej Milovic the right to choose the country to which the former Terra CEO should be transferred. Later, media reports appeared that Minister Milovich was inclined to transfer Kwon to the United States. Kwon was kept in prison until February 15, 2024.
The arrest of Kwon and Terraform Labs' former chief financial officer, Han Chang-jung, occurred on March 23 at Podgorica airport as they attempted to fly to Dubai using false passports. The arrest was made at the request of law enforcement agencies in the United States, South Korea and Singapore.
