Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of a very powerful tales in cryptocurrency tech growth. I am Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.
On this subject:
- Solana’s Seeker Cellphone Fixes Saga’s Flaws With Usability Improve
- Base Says Sequencer Failure Brought about Block Manufacturing Halt of 33 Minutes
- Solana’s Jito Proposes Routing 100% of Block Engine Charges to DAO Treasury
- Cardano Group Approves $70M Core Dev Price range, Boosting ADA Prospects
Community information
SOLANA SEEKER PHONE BEGINS SHIPPING: The Solana Seeker telephone shouldn’t be your common smartphone, nor does it wish to be. Constructing on the teachings of its predecessor, the Saga, Solana Cellular’s latest system reimagines what a crypto-native telephone may be. Smaller, lighter and boasting a longer-lasting battery than its predecessor, the Seeker goals to enhance on the consumer expertise whereas doubling down on mobile-first crypto usability. Out of the field, it’s clear who this system is for: energetic Solana customers who often transact on-chain, with the design specializing in all the things crypto-first. With 150,000 telephones pre-ordered from over 50 international locations and at a value level of $500 the Seeker desires to carry Solana ecosystem contributors the flexibility to transact on the go in a matter of seconds. If you happen to’re somebody who incessantly makes use of Solana, the Seeker may really feel prefer it was constructed particularly for you. Nevertheless, this telephone shouldn’t be supposed for the informal crypto consumer. “If you happen to’re any person who transacts at the least as soon as per week, frankly, then you definitely may not be a full on energy consumer, however you are at the least an everyday sufficient consumer that Seeker is smart,” Emmett Hollyer, the final supervisor at Solana Cellular, advised CoinDesk in an interview. Learn CoinDesk’s full review of the phone here. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
POST-MORTEM ON BASE’S BLOCK PRODUCTION HALT : Block manufacturing on Coinbase’s (COIN) Base community halted for 33 minutes early Tuesday following a sequencer failover that didn’t get well as anticipated, builders mentioned in a post-mortem report. The outage started at 06:07 UTC on Aug. 5, when the energetic sequencer fell behind as a consequence of congestion from on-chain exercise. Whereas Base’s Conductor module — a core part of the OP Stack designed to keep up uptime — accurately tried to shift management to a standby sequencer, the brand new occasion had not been absolutely provisioned and was unable to provide blocks. Because it couldn’t mechanically swap once more, manufacturing stalled till engineers manually mounted the problem. The community was absolutely recovered by 06:40, in response to the report. To keep away from reorganization dangers — that’s, when a blockchain quickly rewrites historical past by changing confirmed blocks with various ones — the workforce paused Conductor and coordinated a managed management transition. This course of contributed to the size of the outage. The outage highlighted a key operational danger in layer-2 rollup networks that depend on centralized sequencers to order and submit transactions. These methods stay depending on speedy failover mechanisms and full provisioning, and a single-point hole on this chain can result in full community stalls. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
NEW JITO PROPOSAL FOR REROUTING BLOCK ENGINE FEES: Jito Labs put ahead a new governance proposal, known as JIP-24, aimed toward decentralizing the community additional by routing all its Block Engine and Block Meeting Market (BAM) charges on to the Jito DAO treasury. If accredited, the DAO would assume management over protocol income streams, directing them to the community’s JTO tokenholders. This, in flip, would cut back Jito Labs’ affect over the community of the identical identify, with a DAO subgroup taking over a higher position in growth. Jito Labs hopes the change will finally enhance the Jito token’s worth. At present, rewards from Jito’s Block Engine are cut up evenly — 3% to Jito Labs and three% to the DAO. JIP-24 would eradicate the cut up, sending the complete 6% of charges, together with all future BAM-related income, to the DAO treasury completely. “This proposal displays the dedication of the Jito ecosystem to make sure that protocol charges accrue on to the token holders as optimally as doable and cements the DAO as central to the technical and financial governance of the Jito Community,” the Jito Labs workforce wrote of their proposal. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.
CARDANO CORE DEVS GET $70M BUDGET : Cardano’s core growth workforce, Enter Output International (IOG), secured approval for a $71 million treasury allocation to fund 12 months of community upgrades following a drawn-out governance vote that drew considerations round transparency, accountability and value. The proposal passed with 74% in favor and authorizes the disbursement of 96 million ADA, or roughly 13% of the protocol’s treasury, to IOG. Funds can be milestone-based and overseen by Intersect, a member-driven governance physique. Good contracts and an impartial committee will add extra oversight, IOG mentioned. Key deliverables embody Hydra, a layer-2 scaling product for sooner and cheaper transactions, and Challenge Acropolis, which goals to re-architect the Cardano node for higher modularity and ease of developer onboarding. The workforce additionally plans to cut back reminiscence utilization and enhance operational prices for validators. Such implementations can finally result in elevated developer exercise and new use circumstances on the Cardano community, contributing to demand for ADA, the community’s fuel token. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.
In Different Information
- Massive banks are making it more durable and dearer for customers to make use of fintech and crypto apps, which quantities to what could possibly be seen as “Operation Chokepoint 3.0.” That’s in response to Alex Rampell, common accomplice at enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Within the agency’s court fintech newsletter, Rampell pointed to conventional monetary establishments charging excessive charges to entry account information or transfer cash, significantly to providers like Coinbase or Robinhood, as a transfer to strangle the competitors. “Underneath the Biden administration, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 tried to debank and deplatform crypto,” Rampell mentioned. “That period has ended, however now the banks are aiming to implement their very own Chokepoint 3.0 — charging insanely excessive charges to entry information or transfer cash to crypto and fintech apps — and, extra concerningly, blocking crypto and fintech apps they don’t like.” — Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
- When Celestia airdropped its TIA token to 580,000 customers in 2023 it was the plat du jour amongst merchants and traders, with the undertaking saying the discharge aligned with a brand new “modular period.” Nevertheless, regardless of rallying to a dizzying $20 value level in September 2024, it has since slumped to lower than $1.65 in a determined plight spurred by a collection of huge cliffs within the token’s vesting schedule. Knowledge from Tokenomist exhibits that core contributors and early backers, notably a slew of enterprise capitalists, might promote tokens bought comparatively cheaply in early fundraising rounds onto the open market. This coincided with TIA’s precipitous transfer to the draw back, though it is price noting that the token’s market cap, at present at $1.2 billion, really elevated by 50% regardless of the token shedding 90% of its worth as a result of sheer scale of provide improve. — Oliver Knight Read more.
Regulatory and Coverage
- The White Home is making ready an government order that will penalize banks for reducing off prospects over their beliefs. The order, reported by the Wall Street Journal, is anticipated to be signed by President Donald Trump as early as this week. It might direct banking regulators to research whether or not monetary companies violated the Equal Credit score Alternative Act or different client safety legal guidelines when closing accounts. Whereas the order might nonetheless be altered, it will carry additional stability to the crypto sector. Through the Biden administration, a coordinated effort from the federal authorities was launched to de-bank crypto companies, an effort generally known as Operation Chokepoint 2.0. The draft order doesn’t identify particular banks, however reportedly references an incident involving Financial institution of America and a Christian nonprofit in Uganda. The financial institution mentioned it closed the accounts as a result of it doesn’t serve small companies working overseas.— Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
- A gaggle of French lawmakers is making ready a draft regulation that will allow the usage of surplus electrical energy from nuclear energy crops to mine bitcoin, in response to current public statements. The proposal would set up mining {hardware} at amenities owned by state utility, Électricité de France (EDF), in response to Le Monde. The method would make the most of surplus power generated by these nuclear energy crops. France is the largest producer of nuclear power within the European Union, in response to 2023 information from Eurostat. It accounted for 338,202 gigawatt hours, or greater than half the 27-nation bloc’s whole output. The warmth produced by nuclear fission is used to provide electrical energy, however greater than two-thirds of it’s misplaced, the statistics company mentioned. — Francesco Rodrigues Read more.
Calendar
- Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
- Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
- Oct. 13-15: Digital Asset Summit, London
- Oct. 16-17: European Blockchain Convention, Barcelona
- Nov. 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
- Dec. 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
- Feb. 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
- Could 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami