BNB hits new all-time high at $881
On August 21, the BNB price reached a new historical peak of $881. The token's market capitalization exceeded $120 billion, setting an absolute record. Over the past 12 hours, the growth in quotes provoked the liquidation of positions worth $1.23 million. According to analysts, the $800 mark has become a strong support, and the nearest target of the rate is the range of $900-1000.
Solana hits record throughput
Solana has become the first blockchain network to achieve a record 107,540 transactions per second during a stress test, Helius co-founder Mert Mumtaz said. On August 17, one of the blocks processed 43,016 transactions, of which only 50 failed. At the same time, a significant portion of the operations were "no-op" - they did not perform calculations, but only demonstrated the maximum throughput. Even taking into account the specifics of the test, Solana is theoretically capable of supporting 80,000-100,000 TPS for typical scenarios such as transfers or oracle updates.
In practice, the figures are more modest. According to Solscan, the network currently processes about 3,700 TPS, with about two-thirds of this being service operations by validators, which inflates the statistics. The actual throughput is estimated at 1004–1050 transactions per second, which is about 59 times higher than the Ethereum mainnet.
Two mining pools control 51% of Bitcoin hashrate
Mining pools Foundry USA and AntPool have concentrated over 50% of the Bitcoin network hashrate in their hands, which theoretically opens the way to a 51% attack. This was stated by WhaleWire CEO Jacob King. He recalled that a similar situation had already arisen in 2015, when the GHash.io pool reached a similar level of dominance. Then, under pressure from the community, the company voluntarily reduced its share, but this did not save Bitcoin from a price drop of almost 87%.
On August 18, Foundry USA was able to mine eight blocks in a row, while many transactions were carried out with fees below one satoshi per virtual byte. Earlier, CK Pool administrator Con Kolivas also expressed concern about such trends. However, some market participants doubt the reality of the threat, noting that a 51% attack on Bitcoin requires huge costs and is associated with serious technical difficulties.
Trader turns $125K into $43M
Lookonchain analysts have noticed an anonymous investor who managed to earn more than 55 times his initial investment on Ethereum. In May, he deposited $125,000 on the decentralized exchange Hyperliquid and consistently opened long positions for four months, constantly putting the profit into circulation. At one point, the value of his portfolio rose to $303 million.
On August 18, after the price of ether fell, the trader closed 66,749 longs, recording an income of $6.86 million. At the maximum, the total capital in his account exceeded $43 million. According to CoinGecko, over the past 24 hours, Ethereum has fallen by 4.6% and is now trading around $4,328.
Ethereum Foundation unveils UX-focused security plan
The Ethereum Foundation has launched a new phase of the Trillion Dollar Security program, focusing on improving the UX in wallets and dApps. According to the foundation, it is the inconvenient interface that remains the main barrier for private and institutional users. EF believes it is necessary to introduce a single security standard that will become a guideline when choosing reliable wallets. The document will oblige developers to implement mechanisms for transaction transparency, protection from hacking, and confirmation management. To speed up the process, the foundation has allocated a grant to the Walletbeat project.
RIAT Institute denies 51% attack on Monero
RIAT criticized Qubic's claim of a 51% attack on Monero, calling it a media stunt to promote its own project. Analysts at The Block, BitMEX Research, Kaspa developer Shai Vyborski, and the Monero community also rejected this version. According to RIAT, at the time of the "attack", the network hashrate was about 6.25 GH/s, while Qubic claimed only 2.6 GH/s - significantly below the required threshold.
The researchers noted that the real power of Monero could be even higher, since pool statistics do not take into account solo miners and botnets. To prove their words, Qubic could publish a view key, providing on-chain proof of mining.
According to RIAT's observations, Qubic did control 51 out of 100 blocks at one point, which is explained by short-term luck, and not dominance over the network. The six-block reorganization also does not threaten the system: most exchanges and Monero wallets require at least 10 confirmations.
The institute emphasized that Qubic used a "selfish mining" strategy that artificially inflated the apparent hashrate, but it did not bring any tangible results.
