“Sooner or later, ETH will outpace Bitcoin and become the global standard,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal in an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph. Nailwal believes that Ethereum will eventually become "the ultimate settlement layer" for the decentralized finance, or DeFi, space. Polygon will play a major role in ensuring the long-term success of Ethereum through its scalability solution. Despite increasing competition from other layer-one protocols, such as Solana, Nailwal believes it is still too early to talk about an “Ethereum killer.” “The Ethereum chain, because of its fundamentals, security, the level of decentralization, and the community and the trust that …

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace Metaplex has hired a new CEO and appointed an advisory board comprising some of crypto’s most influential voices, setting the stage for the continued growth of the Solana-based project. Adam Jeffries, a developer with career stops at Google, Amazon, Citadel and Kaggle, has been appointed CEO of Metaplex Studios, the company announced Wednesday. Joining him is a new board of advisers that includes blockchain streaming platform Audius; CoinShares chief strategy officer Meltem Demirors; Cultur3 Capital co-founders Alex Yamashita, Mark Streeter and Rolf Hoefer; and Phantom chief product officer Chris Kalani. Rounding out the advisory group are …

Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) recovered a large part of the losses that happened due to the knee-jerk reaction to China's regulatory crackdown on Sept. 24. This suggests that crypto markets have absorbed the news-based selling, with long-term investors likely using the dip to accumulate. However, a rally may have to wait as market participants watch the outcome of the infrastructure bill this week, which could see the debate start on Sept. 27 and the final vote on Sept. 30. The broad definition of a “broker” may cause some volatility in crypto markets but HODLers are unlikely to be shaken. …

The competition among layer-one smart contract platforms has been on the rise in the past couple of months as traders and developers continue to embrace Ethereum network alternatives that offer faster transaction times and lower fees. According to a recent report from Delphi Digital, the price of Ether (ETH) has remained relatively flat over the past month, while competitors suc as Solana (SOL) and Fantom (FTM) have seen their prices rally more than 200% during the same time. One of the drivers of the rallies seen in Fantom (FTM), Avalanche (AVAX) and Terra (LUNA) is the fact that each has …

Solana (SOL) reached a $216 all-time high on Sept. 9 after rallying 508% since August. The bull run caused some analysts to project a $500 target tha would translate to a $150 billion market capitalization. It is worth noting that during SOL's rally, the Ethereum network's average transaction fee surpassed $40. Surging interest in the nonfungible token (NFT) market accelerated investors' transition to Solana, which was boosted by the launch of FTX's NFT marketplace on Sept. 6. The above chart shows SOL's two-month performance compared to Avalanche (AVAX) and Cosmos (ATOM). Both are fighting for the same decentralized application user-base …

The crypto market’s recovery was rocked on Sept. 24 after news that China's government is adopting a new set of measures that includes stronger inter-departmental coordination to “cut off payment channels, dispose of relevant websites and mobile applications” to crack down on illegal cryptocurrency transactions efficiently. Although the news has caused a selloff, long-term investors are unlikely to be perturbed because, apart from announcing additional measures to enforce the existing ban effectively, there is nothing else that has changed. China first announced a ban on cryptocurrencies back in September 2017 and that news had also resulted in a sharp correction …

The crypto markets and United States equity markets are attempting recovery on Sept. 22 as fears of a widespread contagion due to Chinese developer Evergrande defaulting on its debt recede. Bridgewater Associates co-chairman and co-chief investment office Ray Dalio said on Sept. 22 that Evergrande’s debt was “manageable.” Ming Tan, a director at the credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s, said that the Chinese government may step in and restructure Evergrande. The Crypto Fear & Greed Index had plunged to 21 levels, indicating extreme fear among investors. However, while speaking on CNBC, Galaxy Digital CEO Mike Novogratz said that the …

Solana ecosystem project Orca has concluded an $18 million Series A investment round led by some of the biggest venture funds in crypto, offering further evidence that high-profile investors are keen to back SOL-based startups. Orca, which operates as a decentralized exchange, will use the funds to continue developing its automated market maker solutions for Solana, the company announced Wednesday. The raise comes less than eight months after the project was launched by a two-member team consisting of Yutaro Mori and Grace Kwan. In addition to Three Arrows Capital, Polychain, Placeholder and Coinbase Ventures, Series A participants included Jump Capital, …

German stock market operator Deutsche Boerse continues diving into the cryptocurrency derivatives by listing three new crypto exchange-traded notes (ETN) by VanEck. Deutsche Boerse officially announced on Tuesday that VanEck’s new ETNs on Polkadot’s DOT, Solana (SOL) and Tron (TRX) are now tradable on its digital stock exchange, Xetra, and the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. The new listings expand Deutsche Boerse’s crypto ETN offerings as the company previously started offering similar products on cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC), the firm noted. “All crypto ETNs tradable on Xetra are physically collateralized and listed on …

Solana has attributed the 17-hour outage it suffered last week to a denial-of-service attack aimed at Grape Protocol’s Sept. 14 initial DEX offering (IDO). In a Tuesday blog post, the Solana Foundation stated that bots spammed the network as Grape launched its IDO on the Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Raydium at 12:00 UTC last Tuesday. The botting activity overwhelmed the network with a transaction load of 400,000 per second, with Solana noting that “unbounded growth of the forwarder queues and resource-heavy blocks” resulted in a number of forks being automatically proposed to the network. The attack caused Solana’s network validators …

The crypto markets and the U.S. equity markets sold off on Sept. 20 on fears that the collapse of Chinese property giant Evergrande could not only hurt China but also have wider implications in other markets. When the sentiment is bearish, traders dump positions that they perceive as risky in favor of safe-haven trades. This could be one of the reasons for the sharp fall in Bitcoin (BTC) and most major altcoins on Sept. 20. Data from Bybt shows that Bitcoin held in Binance wallets has surged by 29,717 Bitcoin in the past 30 days. History suggests that an increase …

The term “Ethereum killer” is beginning to pick up the pace once again in the cryptocurrency markets as the native tokens of several competing blockchain networks are posting significant gains during September. For any alternative network to be considered as a part of this category, it needs to have one essential feature that serves as the backbone of the Ethereum network: smart contracts. Keeping this in mind, the most prominent blockchain networks by market capitalization that usually come under this purview are Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), Binance Smart Chain (BSC), Polkadot (DOT), and Terra(LUNA). The native tokens of these networks …