Bitcoin Correction, Solana’s DeFi Ascendancy, and Dencun’s Impact on Ethereum
“Should Have Bought” is a news podcast featuring the ForkLog editorial team and friends, discussing the week’s main events in the industry and the hottest tokens.
This episode covers: the correction of Bitcoin and the broader market, Solana’s strengthening position in the DeFi segment, developers’ dissatisfaction with high Ethereum fees, and the Dencun factor.
Participants: ForkLog authors Lena Jess, Alex K., Vasily Smirnov.
Special guest: Anton Bukov, co-founder of 1inch Network.
Bitcoin at $61,000
Over seven days, the leading cryptocurrency fell by more than 7%.
On March 20, the price of digital gold plummeted to $61,000. The asset’s price drop was accompanied by a surge in trading volumes and mass liquidations of long positions.
“As usual,” Bitcoin dragged the rest of the market down with it. All top-10 assets were in the “red zone.” On March 20-21, digital gold regained lost ground. However, by March 22, the price continued to fall, periodically dipping below $63,000.
Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek described the correction as “healthy” and “eliminating some leverage in the system.” Bernstein analysts stated that the price drop of the leading cryptocurrency is a temporary opportunity for “buying the dip” ahead of the April halving.
The Meme Token Invasion
Decentralized exchanges on Solana managed to capture about half of the market in terms of daily trading volume.
Midweek, the segment leader was the Jupiter platform with $2.66 billion. Raydium ranked second on CoinGecko with $2.4 billion.
The most popular pair for the two current leaders is SLERF/SOL.
Despite the meme token project facing issues like the “accidental” burning of the liquidity pool and airdrop coins, the community supported it.
The meme coin sector showed steady growth. The most notable dynamics were observed in assets based on Solana and Avalanche.
The Impact of Dencun
Glassnode analysts believe that the new architecture for second-layer solutions and changes in the staking pool following the successful activation of Dencun will affect Ethereum’s monetary policy.
Experts noted that there is hope within the community for a shift of some users to L2 from the main network due to reduced fees, which will result in increased Ethereum throughput without compromising the mainnet’s decentralization and security.
After the major protocol update, the issuance of the second-largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization fell to its lowest level since August 2022. Annual deflation reached -0.88%.
Concerns Over High Ethereum Fees
The Dencun update significantly reduced fees in L2 solutions but had little impact on the corresponding metrics at the base level.
Developer Eric Conner and former MakerDAO smart contract head Mariano Conti proposed raising the gas limit in Ethereum from 30 million to 40 million. They launched the website Pump The Gas to promote the initiative.
The potential reduction in mainnet fees is estimated to be 15–33%.
The gas limit represents the maximum computational power that can be expended to process transactions or execute smart contracts in a single block. Currently, its allowable volume is at 30 million.
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