The Protocol: Solana’s Seeker Mobile Begins to Ship

4 days ago

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's play wrap-up of the astir important stories successful cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.

In this issue:

Solana’s Seeker Phone Fixes Saga’s Flaws With Usability Upgrade
Base Says Sequencer Failure Caused Block Production Halt of 33 Minutes
Solana's Jito Proposes Routing 100% of Block Engine Fees to DAO Treasury
Cardano Community Approves $70M Core Dev Budget, Boosting ADA Prospects

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Network news

SOLANA SEEKER PHONE BEGINS SHIPPING: The Solana Seeker telephone is not your mean smartphone, nor does it privation to be. Building connected the lessons of its predecessor, the Saga, Solana Mobile’s newest instrumentality reimagines what a crypto-native telephone tin be. Smaller, lighter and boasting a longer-lasting artillery than its predecessor, the Seeker aims to amended connected the idiosyncratic acquisition portion doubling down connected mobile-first crypto usability. Out of the box, it’s wide who this instrumentality is for: progressive Solana users who regularly transact on-chain, with the plan focusing connected everything crypto-first. With 150,000 phones pre-ordered from implicit 50 countries and astatine a terms constituent of $500 the Seeker wants to bring Solana ecosystem participants the quality to transact connected the spell successful a substance of seconds. If you’re idiosyncratic who often uses Solana, the Seeker mightiness consciousness similar it was built specifically for you. However, this telephone is not intended for the casual crypto user. “If you're idiosyncratic who transacts astatine slightest erstwhile a week, frankly, past you mightiness not beryllium a afloat connected powerfulness user, but you're astatine slightest a regular capable idiosyncratic that Seeker makes sense,” Emmett Hollyer, the wide manager astatine Solana Mobile, told CoinDesk successful an interview. Read CoinDesk’s full reappraisal of the telephone here. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

POST-MORTEM ON BASE’S BLOCK PRODUCTION HALT : Block accumulation connected Coinbase’s (COIN) Base web halted for 33 minutes aboriginal Tuesday pursuing a sequencer failover that didn’t retrieve arsenic expected, developers said successful a post-mortem report. The outage began astatine 06:07 UTC connected Aug. 5, erstwhile the progressive sequencer fell down owed to congestion from on-chain activity. While Base’s Conductor module — a halfway constituent of the OP Stack designed to support uptime — correctly attempted to displacement enactment to a standby sequencer, the caller lawsuit had not been afloat provisioned and was incapable to nutrient blocks. Since it couldn’t automatically power again, accumulation stalled until engineers manually fixed the issue. The web was afloat recovered by 06:40, according to the report. To debar reorganization risks — that is, erstwhile a blockchain temporarily rewrites past by replacing confirmed blocks with alternate ones — the squad paused Conductor and coordinated a controlled enactment transition. This process contributed to the magnitude of the outage. The outage highlighted a cardinal operational hazard successful layer-2 rollup networks that trust connected centralized sequencers to bid and taxable transactions. These systems stay babelike connected accelerated failover mechanisms and implicit provisioning, and a single-point spread successful this concatenation tin pb to afloat web stalls. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

NEW JITO PROPOSAL FOR REROUTING BLOCK ENGINE FEES: Jito Labs enactment guardant a caller governance proposal, called JIP-24, aimed astatine decentralizing the web further by routing each its Block Engine and Block Assembly Marketplace (BAM) fees straight to the Jito DAO treasury. If approved, the DAO would presume power implicit protocol gross streams, directing them to the network's JTO tokenholders. This, successful turn, would trim Jito Labs' power implicit the web of the aforesaid name, with a DAO subgroup taking connected a greater relation successful development. Jito Labs hopes the alteration volition yet boost the Jito token's value. Currently, rewards from Jito’s Block Engine are divided evenly — 3% to Jito Labs and 3% to the DAO. JIP-24 would destruct the split, sending the afloat 6% of fees, on with each aboriginal BAM-related revenue, to the DAO treasury permanently. “This connection reflects the committedness of the Jito ecosystem to guarantee that protocol fees accrue straight to the token holders arsenic optimally arsenic imaginable and cements the DAO arsenic cardinal to the method and economical governance of the Jito Network,” the Jito Labs squad wrote successful their proposal. — Margaux Nijkerk Read more.

CARDANO CORE DEVS GET $70M BUDGET : Cardano’s halfway improvement team, Input Output Global (IOG), secured support for a $71 cardinal treasury allocation to money 12 months of web upgrades pursuing a drawn-out governance ballot that drew concerns astir transparency, accountability and cost. The proposal passed with 74% successful favor and authorizes the disbursement of 96 cardinal ADA, oregon astir 13% of the protocol’s treasury, to IOG. Payments volition beryllium milestone-based and overseen by Intersect, a member-driven governance body. Smart contracts and an autarkic committee volition adhd further oversight, IOG said. Key deliverables see Hydra, a layer-2 scaling merchandise for faster and cheaper transactions, and Project Acropolis, which aims to re-architect the Cardano node for greater modularity and easiness of developer onboarding. The squad besides plans to trim representation usage and amended operational costs for validators. Such implementations tin yet pb to accrued developer enactment and caller usage cases connected the Cardano network, contributing to request for ADA, the network’s state token. — Shaurya Malwa Read more.

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In Other News

Big banks are making it harder and much costly for consumers to usage fintech and crypto apps, which amounts to what could beryllium seen arsenic "Operation Chokepoint 3.0." That’s according to Alex Rampell, wide spouse astatine task superior steadfast Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). In the firm's latest fintech newsletter, Rampell pointed to accepted fiscal institutions charging precocious fees to entree relationship information oregon determination money, peculiarly to services similar Coinbase oregon Robinhood, arsenic a determination to strangle the competition. "Under the Biden administration, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 tried to debank and deplatform crypto," Rampell said. "That epoch has ended, but present the banks are aiming to instrumentality their ain Chokepoint 3.0 — charging insanely precocious fees to entree information oregon determination wealth to crypto and fintech apps — and, much concerningly, blocking crypto and fintech apps they don’t like." — Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
When Celestia airdropped its TIA token to 580,000 users successful 2023 it was the plat du jour among traders and investors, with the task saying the merchandise aligned with a caller "modular era." However, contempt rallying to a dizzying $20 terms constituent successful September 2024, it has since slumped to little than $1.65 successful a hopeless plight spurred by a bid of monolithic cliffs successful the token's vesting schedule. Data from Tokenomist shows that halfway contributors and aboriginal backers, notably a slew of task capitalists, could merchantability tokens purchased comparatively cheaply successful aboriginal fundraising rounds onto the unfastened market. This coincided with TIA's precipitous determination to the downside, though it's worthy noting that the token's marketplace cap, presently astatine $1.2 billion, really accrued by 50% contempt the token losing 90% of its worth owed to the sheer standard of proviso increase. — Oliver Knight Read more.

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Regulatory and Policy

The White House is preparing an enforcement bid that would penalize banks for cutting disconnected customers implicit their beliefs. The order, reported by the Wall Street Journal, is expected to beryllium signed by President Donald Trump arsenic aboriginal arsenic this week. It would nonstop banking regulators to analyse whether fiscal firms violated the Equal Credit Opportunity Act oregon different user extortion laws erstwhile closing accounts. While the bid could inactive beryllium altered, it would bring further stableness to the crypto sector. During the Biden administration, a coordinated effort from the national authorities was launched to de-bank crypto firms, an effort known arsenic Operation Chokepoint 2.0. The draught bid does not sanction circumstantial banks, but reportedly references an incidental involving Bank of America and a Christian nonprofit successful Uganda. The slope said it closed the accounts due to the fact that it does not service tiny businesses operating abroad.— Francisco Rodrigues Read more.
A radical of French lawmakers is preparing a draught instrumentality that would alteration the usage of surplus energy from atomic powerfulness plants to excavation bitcoin, according to caller nationalist statements. The connection would instal mining hardware astatine facilities owned by authorities utility, Électricité de France (EDF), according to Le Monde. The process would instrumentality vantage of surplus vigor generated by these atomic powerfulness plants. France is the largest shaper of atomic power successful the European Union, according to 2023 information from Eurostat. It accounted for 338,202 gigawatt hours, oregon much than fractional the 27-nation bloc's full output. The vigor produced by atomic fission is utilized to nutrient electricity, but much than two-thirds of it is lost, the statistic bureau said. — Francesco Rodrigues Read more.

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