Austin Federa, head of strategy at the Solana Foundation, spoke to Cointelegraph at the ETH Denver conference on the network's outages, the impact of regulation, and the launch of its mobile device. Speaking to Cointelegraph on March 1, Federa said the New York Department of Financial Services — NYDFS, one of the state regulators responsible for licensing crypto firms — was essentially setting up roadblocks for many projects looking to issue stablecoins or similar blockchain services. He added that Solana had heard from projects facing “pretty draconian” rules in the European Union related to liability around illicit transactions. “DFS has …

Bitcoin (BTC) is leading the cryptocurrency markets lower and the matter is being exacerbated by Silvergate Banks' ongoing issues. This week the cryptocurrency-focused bank said that it needed additional time to file its annual 10-K report and warned that it may not be able to operate for another 12 months. Reacting to this news, several cryptocurrency companies announced that they were reducing or canceling their partnerships with Silvergate Bank. The uncertainty regarding the future of the bank and its overall impact on the cryptocurrency sector may have caused a knee-jerk reaction. However, if the contagion does not spread, the downside …

Bitcoin (BTC) was marginally positive in February even though the S&P 500 index (SPX) fell by 2.61%. On the first day of March, Bitcoin has started on a positive note while the United States equities markets are struggling. This shows that Bitcoin is trying to decouple from the U.S. equities markets. A positive sign is that retail traders seem to have made the most of the crypto bear market. Instead of panicking and selling their holdings, traders have purchased at lower levels. Glassnode data shows that wallets holding at least one Bitcoin have consistently risen and are nearing the 1 …

The price of Ether (ETH) declined 9.8% between Feb. 19 and Feb. 25 after the price resistance at $1,725 proved stronger than expected. Still, the correction was insufficient to break the 6-week-long ascending channel and did not cause Ether derivatives metrics to turn bearish. Ether's price resilience can be partially explained by the operational failure of some of its smart contract blockchain competitors. For instance, Solana (SOL) faced a 20-hour-long outage on Feb. 25, which was only resolved after a network upgrade coordinated by validators. The network restart also involved purging some of the latest slots, although Solana developers said …

The Solana network experienced a noticeable slowdown in block production after its most recent 1.14 network update on Feb. 25, as it went into reset mode. As an immediate response to transaction disruptions, validators downgraded the software to up performance levels. However, on Feb. 28, Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder and CEO of Solana Labs, released another statement as to how the ecosystem plans to improve its recent network upgrades. The major focus of the plan is on stability as the network continues its transition. 2022 priorities were shipping new features and new tools. 2023 is stability. Tldr 1/3 of core …

Video game development platform Unity has added a slew of crypto platforms to its asset store aimed at assisting developers interested in Web3 technology to streamline decentralization efforts. Unity said on Feb. 28 it had released a new “Decentralization” category page in its asset store with “vetted” crypto platforms to support developers interested in merging decentralization into their projects. Crypto wallet provider MetaMask was one of the 13 platforms featured on the store, with its Software Development Kit (SDK) added to help developers enable users to connect their MetaMask wallet to "any game developed on Unity.” It has come The …

Anatoly Yakovenko, the founder and CEO of Solana Labs has downplayed claims that Solana's network outages were being caused by a high volume of validator messages and its on-chain voting system clogging its consensus layer. While the Solana Foundation confirmed in a Feb. 27 post that the “root cause” of the recent 20-hour network outage is still not clear, the CEO responded to speculation that Solana’s decision to include on-chain votes as transactions is a “massive design flaw” that has led to its many outages. The controversial thread in question was posted by Twitter user DBCryptoX earlier on Feb. 27 …

Bitcoin (BTC) and the United States equities markets are trying to start the week on a positive note but some analysts are skeptical about the short-term prospects of the markets. According to Bloomberg Intelligence senior macro strategist Mike McGlone, Bitcoin will face significant resistance at $25,000. McGlone believes that it “may be a while before buy-and-hold types gain the upper hand.” It also looks like Bitcoin whales, unique entities owning 1,000 Bitcoin or more, are also not convinced of the recovery in the crypto markets. According to Glassnode, Bitcoin whale numbers have fallen to 1,663, which is well below the …

As the Solana network suffered another setback, crypto community members went on social media to express various concerns, even comparing the blockchain to other projects like Ethereum and Bitcoin. On Feb. 25, the Solana network faced performance degradation issues, resulting in transaction disruptions, leading validators to opt for a network restart. Seemingly tired of the same old story, members of the community expressed themselves on Twitter, with some even questioning Solana’s (SOL) rank as a top cryptocurrency. Amid the network issues, nonfungible token (NFT) artist Crypto Tea raised a question on how the Solana blockchain made it to the top …

Solana network faced a slowdown in block production on Fev. 25 following the upgrade in the validator software. The incident resulted in disruptions to transactions and led validators to downgrade the software in an attempt to restore network performance. The technical issue started around 6:00 AM (UTC), leading validators to downgrade to version 1.13 in an effort to restore transactions in the network. The downgrade, however, was not enough to restore Solana to normal operations, forcing the decision to restart the network on v1.13.6. The Solana network is currently restarting after an issue during the upgrade from 1.13 to 1.14 …

Bitcoin (BTC) is struggling to stay above $23,000 as the weekend approaches. The selling pressure increased after the personal consumption expenditures excluding food and energy rose 0.6% in January and 4.7% over the year, above market expectations of an increase of 0.5% and 4.4% respectively. This could trigger fears that the United States Federal Reserve may have to continue its rate hikes to bring inflation under control. Expectations of a rate hike could strengthen the U.S. dollar index further, which is already near a seven-week high, and that may put pressure on the cryptocurrency markets in the near term. A …

Layer-2 scaling solution Polygon (MATIC) has not processed a block in over an hour and a half, leading some to believe that the blockchain network could be suffering from an outage. According to data from Polygonscan, the blockchain's last block and transaction was processed at around 8:35 pm UTC on Feb. 22. The network has previously suffered network outages, with the last occurring on Mar. 21-22, 2022 due to maintenance required on one of the network's three layers. The Polygon team is yet to comment on the outage. This is a developing story, and further information will be added as …