Coindesk

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.In this issue:Bitcoin gets a DEX, thanks to the Nomic bridgeUnion Labs gets $12M to build more bridgesBase's Jesse Pollak looks back on BALDJustin Drake discusses Ethereum's Beam Chain plan … and SolanaNetwork NewsSTRENGTH FOR ETH: The Ethereum blockchain's transaction revenue has increased substantially since Donald Trump's U.S. election victory, Steno Research said in a Monday report. "This outcome is crucial for all on-chain activity," wrote analyst Mads Eberhardt. The surge has led to higher staking rewards and more ether (ETH) being burned via transaction fees, the report said. "This combination strengthens Ethereum's tokenomics,"...

President-elect Donald Trump named Patomak Global Partners founder and CEO Paul Atkins as his pick to head up the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday.Atkins, who co-chairs the Digital Chamber's Token Alliance and is an adviser to Reserve, previously served as a commissioner at the agency under former President George W. Bush between 2002 and 2008. The former regulator visited Mar-a-Lago, Trump's Florida resort, earlier this week but was initially reluctant to take on the role, CoinDesk reported Tuesday.In his announcement, Trump called Atkins a "proven leader." "He believes in the promise of robust, innovative capital markets that are responsive to the needs of Investors, & that provide capital to make our Economy the best in the World," he...

Mike Collins, a first-term Republican in the U.S. House of Representatives, may not have a high profile on crypto policy, but he has a very active crypto portfolio. And his trading indicates that memecoin enthusiasm has reached the shores of Congress.Collins, whose committee assignments keep him far from the core decisions on U.S. crypto legislation, has kept a busy hand in the buying and selling of digital assets. Earlier this week, Collins made small buys of Ski Mask Dog and Aerodrome (AERO) – each of the purchases categorized in the congressional financial filings as between $1,000 and $15,000.A trucking company operator who arrived in Congress last year, Collins is among a handful of direct crypto traders on Capitol Hill. And...

After the election, as everyone except for muggles know, the price of BTC rallied to all time highs (ATH) just short of $100,000. At the time of this writing, it’s hovering around $98,000. An interesting question then is: what happened to Michael Saylor’s MicroStrategy (MSTR) during this period?The publicly traded stock, synonymous with its unconventional and risk-on co-founder as well as the price of BTC, also rallied to post-election ATH — as one might expect — exceeding $500.Then last week, it took a precipitous ~22% short selling-inspired hit based off of a report expressing concerns about the company’s valuation. The noise around the stock piqued my interest. I was curious to dig in and see what potential market opportunities might...

Botanix Labs, the developer of Bitcoin layer-2 network Spiderchain, which aims to advance the possibilities of decentralized finance (DeFi) on the world's original blockchain, has moved to its final testnet phase ahead of a 2025 mainnet debut.The testnet, known as Aragog, introduces tools that will form the basis for the mainnet's DeFi offering, such as bitcoin (BTC)-backed stablecoin Palladium, decentralized exchange Bitzy and lending and borrowing market Spindle.Botanix Labs, which aims to introduce the mainnet in the first quarter, is building Spiderchain to be compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the software that powers the Ethereum network. The goal is to allow any application or smart contract to be copied and pasted onto Bitcoin, creating provision for the...