ETH hit a fresh high after remarks by the chair of the Fed, two pools amassed 51% of bitcoin’s hashrate, Solana set a speed record, and other events of the week.
Ethereum’s record
The crypto market spent the past seven days fixated on Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell. Anticipation of his Jackson Hole speech stoked sharp volatility.
On Monday bitcoin fell abruptly from $118,000 to $115,000.
The correction set the tone for the first half of the week. By Thursday, with only brief rebounds, the digital gold had plunged to $112,000.
On the evening of 22 August the asset almost entirely erased the drop on the back of Powell’s upbeat tone. In less than two hours, digital gold jumped above $117,000.
The Fed chair hinted at a possible rate cut in September while pointing to weak labour data and a slowing economy.
At present, 75% of investors expect a cut at the next Fed meeting, though the share was 89% immediately after Powell’s speech.
Ethereum again outperformed bitcoin on the week, +5% versus -3%. Amid the improved mood, the coin notched a new all-time high—only a few dollars above the previous one ($4889 on Binance).
At the time of writing, the second-largest cryptocurrency trades around $4770.
Throughout the past trading week, spot bitcoin ETFs saw outflows totalling $1.17bn.
Ethereum products showed a similar pattern, with $578m withdrawn. However, on 21 August the funds attracted $288m, erasing nearly a third of the losses.
Most altcoins fared better than the bellwether. On 21 August BNB set a new all-time high at $881.
XRP held above $3; SOL quotes rose to $205.
Total crypto market capitalisation is a little over $4trn. Bitcoin’s dominance fell to 56.4%.
The crypto fear and greed index sits at 53, signalling neutral sentiment.
Mining difficulty and bitcoin pool dominance
On 22 August, after the latest adjustment, mining difficulty for the original cryptocurrency added 0.2%, setting a record at 129.7 T.
Hashrate (7 DMA) stands at 945 EH/s. The record 966 EH/s was set on 7 August.
Meanwhile, daily fees (7 DMA) on the bitcoin network dropped to 3.13 BTC, levels last seen in 2011.
According to Hashrate Index, the hashprice is about $55 per PH per day.
Also this week it emerged that the Foundry USA and AntPool mining pools took control of more than half of the network’s hashrate, opening the door to a potential 51% attack.
According to WhaleWire CEO Jacob King, the last such episode came in 2015, when GHash.io reached a similar level of dominance. The pool then voluntarily reduced its share after a wave of criticism.
King voiced concern about centralisation risks that bitcoin advocates ignore. He believes the market currently rests on shaky props:
- stablecoin manipulation;
- FOMO among retail investors;
- false narratives spread by maximalists.
The situation split the community. Many doubted the feasibility of a 51% attack; others noted that Foundry USA and AntPool are based in different jurisdictions—the United States and China—making coordination unlikely.
What to discuss with friends?
- Analysts suggested bitcoin could drop below $90,000.
- In China, engineers will build a robot to carry pregnancies.
- At a16z, researchers outlined a way to preserve privacy without compromising security.
- The Monero community proposed new ways to defend the network from 51% attacks.
Wyoming’s stablecoin
On 19 August the US state of Wyoming announced the launch of the dollar stablecoin Frontier Stable Token (FRNT) on seven blockchains—Ethereum, Arbitrum, Avalanche, Base, Optimism, Polygon and Solana.
The “stablecoin” is the first official digital asset in the United States issued at the state level.
FRNT is backed by short-term US Treasury bills and the national currency, with a 102% reserve requirement.
“[The stablecoin] is designed to provide safe, transparent and efficient digital transactions for individuals, companies and organisations around the world,” the announcement said.
Public access to the token will open in the coming days via Kraken, an exchange registered in the state, and Visa-integrated platform Rain on the Avalanche blockchain.
Wyoming’s stablecoin will be usable anywhere Visa is accepted. The coin supports major mobile payment services and digital wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, as well as physical cards.
Likely cementing stablecoins as the chosen path, the US House of Representatives included a ban on a CBDC in the country’s defence budget for 2026.
Thus the Fed would be barred from testing, developing or deploying its own digital assets. An exception is made for “dollar-denominated currencies that are open, permissionless and provide cash-like privacy protections.”
Solana’s speed record
The Solana blockchain posted record throughput—over 100,000 TPS. During a stress test the network hit 107,540 transactions per second.
On 17 August a single block processed 43,016 transactions, of which only 50 failed. Most, however, were “no-op” actions that performed no real computation and merely probed protocol metrics.
Helios co-founder Mert Mumtaz noted that even accounting for the test’s specifics, Solana is theoretically capable of processing 80,000–100,000 TPS for standard operations such as transfers and oracle updates.
Actual throughput is far lower. Over the past 100 blocks, TPS was about 4400. The real figure excluding validator processes is 1100 TPS.
Even so, Solana is vastly faster than Ethereum, whose throughput is around 20 TPS.
Over the past month, active SOL addresses reached 80.9m and transactions 2.4bn. Most network activity still comes from DeFi and memecoins.
Also on ForkLog:
- MetaMask will launch the mUSD stablecoin.
- Sam Altman announced GPT-6 after a contentious GPT-5 release.
- ZachXBT criticised the myth of North Korean hackers’ “genius.”
- On-chain researchers linked Kanye West’s token to LIBRA.
A focus on UX
The Ethereum Foundation (EF) launched a new phase of the Trillion Dollar Security initiative, shifting attention to user experience (UX) in wallets and applications.
Foundation representatives argue that shortcomings here are the most acute problem for retail and institutional clients alike.
EF called for a new security standard for wallets. The rules would require developers to implement transaction transparency, compromise protection and confirmation management.
The foundation awarded a grant to Walletbeat to speed up adoption.
One of the main UX problems cited is “blind signatures,” where users approve transactions without understanding their content.
The foundation also offered to help developers find vulnerabilities in code before deploying smart contracts. To that end, it will create a single open database that projects can use for automatic checks.
Undeads’ wheel
Undeads Games launched the Wheel of Fortune game with a top prize of 1 BTC in the web version and 25,000 TON in the Telegram mini-app.
New users with a verified email receive three free spins. Extra spins can be purchased with UDS tokens in the web version or with TON in the Telegram mini-app.
The web version runs on Ethereum and uses UDS, the native token of the Undeads ecosystem. The mini-app is integrated with the TON blockchain to meet Telegram’s requirements.
“‘Wheel of Fortune’ is built on a transparent model: 50% of funds go to liquidity on DEXs, 25% to CEX, and the remaining 25% constitute the company’s revenue. This approach ensures the long-term sustainability of UDS,” Undeads Games noted.
Users can boost earnings through a referral programme by inviting friends to the game on both platforms.
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