Privacy Coin Market Cap Reaches $10B
On May 25, the market capitalization of the privacy cryptocurrency sector exceeded $10 billion, demonstrating growth of more than 3%. Monero (XMR) has increased by 21.8% in a week and reached $416.71, adding 83.2% in a month. Zcash (ZEC) has increased by 33% in seven days and by 51.2% in the last 30 days — the current price is $52.05. The increase in value occurs against the background of a decrease in liquidity caused by delistings on leading exchanges.
Base Demonstrates Maximum 959 TPS
Coinbase-backed Base L2 network has peaked at 959 TPS, with a theoretical cap of 1,429 TPS. For comparison, Solana averages 931.2 TPS (maximum 2,909 TPS), according to Chainspect. At press time, Base is processing 142.1 TPS, with spikes in activity attributed to launchpads and meme coin FOMO. Project lead Jess Pollack noted that the record was driven by launches on the AI platform Virtuals.
According to DeFi Llama, Base brought in $93,450 in fees on May 28, while Solana brought in $3,370. The network's TVL reached $3.74 billion, putting it in first place among Ethereum rollups, ahead of Arbitrum ($2.54 billion). Solana remains second in TVL among all networks at $8.93 billion. Leading L2 developers, including Base, previously agreed to jointly implement "base rollups" to improve security and reduce fragmentation.
Ethereum Validators Support Gas Limit Increase
More than 150,000 Ethereum validators — about 15% of the total — have voted to increase the gas limit to 60 million, up from the current 36 million. This change will increase block throughput, allowing more transactions and data to be processed. The update will take effect automatically when the 50% support threshold is reached, without the need for a hard fork — validators make the changes manually, at the node configuration level.
The previous increase in the limit occurred in February (from 30 million to 36 million), and before that — in 2021, when the parameter increased from 15 million to 30 million. Some developers warn that the increase in the limit could increase the load on equipment and potentially affect the stability of nodes.
Sui Validators Approve Return of Frozen Assets Worth $162M
The Sui-based decentralized exchange Cetus is ready to return the stolen $162 million if the community approves the transfer of frozen funds. The vote will end on June 3, but can be interrupted early — the outcome is already mathematically predetermined. Out of 114 validators, 56 voted, 54 of which supported the initiative. SUI holders can delegate locked coins to validators that reflect their position. The participation of the Sui Foundation is excluded in order to maintain neutrality.
On May 22, an attacker exploited a vulnerability in the smart contracts of Cetus liquidity pools. Some assets were transferred to USDC and Ethereum. Validators blocked suspicious addresses, and the vulnerability was fixed. The frozen $162 million is being held to protect the ecosystem.
The vote is part of a recovery plan that includes the use of the Cetus treasury and an emergency loan from the Sui Foundation. Some participants criticized the validator intervention as a sign of centralization, while others praised the project’s efficiency. Regardless of the outcome of the vote, Cetus confirmed that the process of returning funds to victims will begin immediately. A detailed plan for recovery measures will be presented later.
MetaMask Adds Solana Support
The browser extension of the popular Web3 wallet MetaMask now supports the Solana network. Integration into the mobile app is expected in the coming weeks. In the future, the team plans to expand the functionality by supporting non-EVM networks. MetaMask's audience has already exceeded 100 million users.
In February, the developers announced the upcoming native support for Bitcoin — the launch is expected in the third quarter. To simplify the user experience, the team is implementing the ERC-5792 standard, which allows for sequential transactions in batches, and also implements an account abstraction mechanism.
Crypto Investor Loses $2.6M in Phishing with "Zero Transfers"
A user lost $2.6 million in USDT as a result of two phishing attacks that occurred three hours apart, analysts at Cyvers reported. First, the attackers withdrew 843,000 USDT, then another 1.75 million. In both cases, a "zero transfer" scheme was used — the scammers sent fictitious transactions with a zero amount from an address imitating the victim's wallet. Such transactions do not require a private key signature, but are displayed in the transfer history, misleading the user.
The tactic is based on address substitution: the victim sees a similar wallet — usually the first and last characters match — and mistakenly believes it is trusted, copying it from the history for the next transfer. This is a type of "poisoning" of crypto addresses, in which the goal is to trick the victim into transferring real funds to the scammers' wallet. Most often, those who copy addresses from previous transactions fall for the bait.
