Coindesk

Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solutions may soon hit their limits in efficiently scaling the mainnet, warns Gautham Santhosh, co-founder of Polynomial.fi.Layer 2 solutions are protocols or networks built on top of a layer-1 networks to improve its scalability and reduce transaction costs by processing transactions off-chain and then periodically settling the results on the main chain. More and more users have embraced these protocols for faster and more affordable transactions late last year.That's evident from the spike in the number of blobs or binary large objects posted by hundreds of L2s to Ethereum. Since November, the daily tally has averaged a record 21,000, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's Dune Analytics dashboard.Here is the concerning part. Just two Layer 2s –...

As the official memecoin of the second Donald Trump presidency flirts with a market cap of $10 billion, and Melania Trump, the next first lady, launches her own, Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase, said in a thread on X that this whole category of tokens could be equated to gambling.“There is no wealth creation. Every buy order is simply matched by a sell order. And after an initial spike, the price eventually crashes and the last buyers lose everything,” he posted, calling memecoins a zero-sum – even negative sum after exchange fees – lottery.Balaji said that memecoins should be approached in the same way as gambling in Las Vegas for entertainment purposes.“Most should buy assets that retain their...

Bitcoin (BTC) nursed losses during Monday's morning Asia trading hours amid frenzied trading in memecoins TRUMP and MELANIA.The leading cryptocurrency by market value briefly dipped below $100,000, representing a 4.5% drop on a 24-hour basis. ETH, XRP, SOL and BNB posted bigger losses, with ADA and DOGE losing over 10%, according to data sources CoinDesk and Coingecko.TRUMP, the memecoin linked to President-elect Donald Trump, which debuted Saturday, tanked 30% to $49, as Trump's wife, Melania launched her own memecoin, MELANIA."The Official Melania Meme is live! You can buy $MELANIA now,” Melania Trump posted on the social platform X on Sunday. The meme coin's website describes the token as a fungible cryptocurrency created and tracked on the Solana blockchain.The MELANIA token rallied a...

The "official" memecoin of incoming U.S. President Donald Trump has boosted interest in Solana (SOL), leading to a surge in both its price and trading volume, which in turn helped the total dollar value locked (TVL) on the network top $10 billion for the first time since the collapse of FTX.Donald Trump’s choice of issuing the memecoin on Solana helped SOL rise more than 23% since its announcement, moving the cryptocurrency’s price to a new all-time high and boosting the dollar value locked on its smart contracts. Data from DeFiLlama shows TVL on Solana is now at $12 billion, a new all-time high.Measured in SOL, the value locked on the network has been steadily growing since the beginning of last...

Donald Trump’s official memecoin has jumpstarted fresh speculative activity in the Solana ecosystem nearly overnight.Multiple large-cap tokens based on Solana surged higher Saturday, and the blockchain’s native SOL token set fresh highs above $275 as the incoming U.S. president backed a new Solana-based TRUMP token Friday night, calling it his “official” memecoin.The choice of Solana as an issuance network bumped demand and sentiment for SOL tokens, as CoinDesk reported Saturday.SOL trading volumes have rocketed from Thursday’s $3 billion to over $26 billion in the past 24 hours, with Saturday’s moves bringing weekly gains to over 46%.That’s a nearly 3,000% surge since three-year lows of $9 in December 2022 following the implosion of crypto exchange FTX and prominent backer Sam Bankman-Fried,...