Coindesk

Solana's high staking rewards will live to inflate SOL another day.A contentious effort to reform the blockchain network's generous inflation regime flopped on Thursday after supporters of SIMD-0228 failed to garner the supermajority they needed to implement the major economic change.The surprise result delivered a blow to the Solana power brokers who rallied to replace Solana's static inflation mechanics with a market-based system. Their proposal likely would have cut the network's 4.7% annual staking rewards down to 1% or less.In a contest that pitted Solana's influential leaders and investors – who claim the network's high staking rewards are bad for SOL's price – against small-time operators who feared the effects of a big cut to their revenue, the opposition rallied...

Global asset manager BlackRock's BUIDL token, issued in partnership Securitize and backed by U.S. Treasuries, crossed the $1 billion milestone in assets on Thursday, Securitize said. Pushing the fund's size above the threshold was a $200 million allocation this afternoon by crypto protocol Ethena, a Securitize spokesperson told CoinDesk. Ethereum blockchain data by Arkham Intelligence shows an entity minting $200 million worth of BUIDL tokens at Thursday 18:47 UTC.Crypto tokens backed by U.S. Treasuries are at the forefront of tokenization efforts, as digital asset firms and global financial heavyweights race to put traditional instruments such as bonds, private credit and funds on blockchain rails, aiming to achieve faster settlements and operational efficiencies. BUIDL is a key building block for multiple yield-generating...

Following two problematic tests of Ethereum's upcoming Pectra upgrade, the network's core developers decided on Thursday to create a new testnet to demonstrate the code update a final time before deployment."A new testnet, Hooli, is going live Monday to wrap up Pectra testing," said Tim Beiko, who coordinates the ecosystem's core developers at the Ethereum Foundation, in an X post following a developer call on Thursday. Pectra will be tested on Hooli on Wednesday, March 26 — when the test chain will be upgraded to the new version of Ethereum and evaluated for performance and stability.Pectra includes several code changes designed to make Ethereum faster, more efficient, and more user-friendly for both users and developers. One of the most significant...

As cryptocurrencies have been battered in a broad-market correction over the past weeks, digital asset investors sought refuge in tokenized U.S. Treasury products.Since late January, the combined market capitalization of Treasury-backed tokens grew $800 million to hit a fresh all-time record of $4.2 billion on Wednesday, data source rwa.xyz shows.Real-world asset platform Ondo Finance's (ONDO) products, the short-term bond-backed OUSG and USDY tokens, climbed to just shy of $1 billion combined, a 53% surge in market value over the past month. BUIDL, the token issued jointly by asset manager BlackRock and tokenization firm Securitize, gained 25% during the same period to surpass $800 million. Asset manager Franklin Templeton's BENJI token expanded to $687 million, a 16% increase, while Superstate's USTB...

Bitcoin's (BTC) role in decentralized finance (DeFi) is growing as the world's largest cryptocurrency evolves from more than just a store of value, Binance Research said in a report Thursday.The Bitcoin network is "evolving into a broader decentralized finance ecosystem with the emergence of Bitcoin DeFi," analyst Moulik Nagesh wrote.This is a sector that "unlocks bitcoin's capital efficiency" with the use of financial applications focused on lending, staking, stablecoins and decentralized exchanges (DEX's), the report said.DeFi is an umbrella term used for lending, trading and other financial activities carried out on a blockchain, without the need for traditional intermediaries.Binance noted that only ~0.8% of the bitcoin supply is currently being used in DeFi, and this presents a large "untapped opportunity."...