Early version of Firedancer goes live on Solana mainnet
An early version of the Firedancer independent validator client, Frankendancer, has made it to the Solana mainnet, according to Jump Crypto’s chief Science Officer Kevin Bowers.
Approximately 1% of the Solana network’s “proof-of-life” stake comes from Frankendancer, a presentation from Bowers
showed.
Jump Crypto is the blockchain infrastructure firm behind the Solana validator clients.
Validator clients like Firedancer will play a crucial role in processing transactions and building blocks on
Solana’s near $70 billion network.
It has been
touted as a superior solution
to “QUIC” — a Google-developed data transfer protocol with a history of failing to process transactions when Solana experiences surges in network activity.
Bowers said that Firedancer is currently live on Solana testnet.
However, another Solana contributor at the same conference claimed that Firedancer is already live on Solana mainnet — but is in “non-voting mode.”
Source:
SolanaFloor
Non-voting mode essentially means it can’t build blocks or partake in consensus — one of the primary roles of a blockchain validator, Cardano fan and X user “ItsDave_ADA”
noted.
“[This] is strange as it’s supposed to be a superior client,” he added.
Pendle token soars 25% after Arthur Hayes sells $1.5M of it
The Pendle token rallied more than 25% shortly after Arthur Hayes confirmed that his crypto-focused family office fund Maelstrom sold more than 392,000 Pendle tokens — worth $1.56 million.
It stirred controversy as Hayes was seen boasting about the project’s potential on stage at the Token2049 conference late last week.
“Just 9 days ago, he tweeted that he bet
$PENDLE
to $10, blockchain analytics firm Lookonchain
noted.
But the sale was purely made to take some profits, Hayes
revealed
in a Sept. 21 X post.
Hayes, who serves as Maelstrom’s chief investment officer, said the fund will use those
proceeds
to fund a “special situation” — which observers may get a glimpse of by monitoring the fund’s wallets.
Source: Arthur Hayes
PENDLE soared 25.2% to $4.36 roughly 24 hours after Hayes confirmed Maelstrom’s sell — though it has since cooled off to $4.06, CoinGecko
data
shows.
Hayes noted at Token2049 that Pendle is a decentralized interest rate market that allows users to hedge their staking yield, which can be as high as 9% with Bitcoin.
However, Hayes isn’t sure
whether that is attractive enough
to convince US Treasurys holders to “rush out of earning 5.5%” due to various smart contract risks that often plague decentralized finance protocols.
Picture of Arthur Hayes speaking on stage at Token2049. Source:
Pendle Intern
Bill Maher shares supposed misinformation about crypto on national television
Bill Maher — the host of American TV talk-show “Real Time with Bill Maher” — has made several purportedly incorrect comments about who uses cryptocurrencies and how much energy is used to mine them.
“All the progress that we’re making with green energy is being sucked away by crypto,” he
said
in revealing the “big secret about crypto” that “bugs him” so much in a Sept. 21 episode.
Maher claimed that 8% of electricity is consumed by crypto mining, which he claims is comparable to putting 15 million gas-powered cars back on the road.
“So as we take them off to go to electric, crypto eats it all and goes the other way,” said Maher, who routinely refers to Bitcoin and other cryptos as a “ponzi scheme.”
However, the United States Energy Information Administration
estimates
that crypto mining represents between 0.6% to 2.3% of US electricity consumption.
Source:
Real Time With Bill Maher / YouTube
The TV talk show host also said that crypto is “used completely by criminals” who are trying to evade US regulators.
However, blockchain forensics firm TRM Labs
found
the share of illicit crypto funds was 0.63% in 2023.
Maher’s comments also ignore crypto’s acceptance in the institutional space — namely through the spot Bitcoin (
BTC
) and Ether (
ETH
) exchange-traded funds, which were launched after dozens of back-and-forth discussions between the and the US securities regulator and the ETF issuers.
Source:
Jon Myers
However, Maher acknowledged why many people are “afraid of big governments these days,” citing Canada’s response to the truck protesters in January 2022.
“Canada froze a lot of those people’s assets, that’s a scary thing, is it not,” Maher asked.
Infinex has now raised $58M with Patron NFTs for new consumer app
Infinex has now raised nearly $58 million selling Patron non-fungible tokens to several venture capital firms, industry leaders and community members.
The NFT sales aim to spark community interest in Infinex’s vision to offer a non-custodial, unified UX layer across all blockchains and decentralized finance apps.
Participants in the Patron NFT sale included Wintermute Ventures, Framework Ventures, Near Foundation, Synthetix, Solana Labs CEO Anatoly Yakovenko and Ethereum Foundation researcher Tim Beiko, Infinex
revealed
in a Sept. 22 post.
87.5% of the total “Early Access” NFT supply has been exhausted across Wave 1 and 2.
Source:
Infinex
Infinex confirmed Wave 3 is now open until Sept. 23 at 11:59 pm UTC. Immediately after that, Wave 4 — the final phase of the NFT sale — will commence for 24 hours.
A total of 37,124 Patron NFTs have already been sold, Infinex
data
shows.
The
Patron NFTs come in three tiers,
costing either $5,000, $3,000, or $1,250, with the latter NFT being locked for 12 months from the distribution date, meaning that they won’t be transferable until they gradually unlock.
Following “launch season,” Infinex
plans
to roll out several features that bring it to “parity” with centralized cryptocurrency exchanges.
Among those features are custody, spot trading, margin, lending, perps, options, staking, NFTs, launchpads, and
yield farming.
Related:
Samourai Wallet forked into ‘Ashigaru’ Open Source Project
Infinex was launched by Kain Warwick
— the founder of synthetic asset issuance platform Synthetix — in mid-2023.
Source:
Kain Warwick
Warwick’s Infinex hopes to replace centralized
cryptocurrency exchanges
as the first and main point of contact for new users.
“For the last decade and a half, each new wave of users has been onboarded via a CEX. This cycle, we intend for them to land onchain first. If we are successful, Infinex will prove that onchain is far better, cheaper and safer than CeFi,” Infinex said on its website.
Other news
A US judge has
fined a New York resident $36 million
for allegedly swindling crypto investors by promising high returns and using the funds to support his lavish lifestyle. William Koo Ichioka must pay $31 million in restitution to victims and $5 million in civil monetary penalties.
The Supreme Court of India regained control of its official YouTube account shortly after it was
hijacked by crypto scammers
selling fake XRP investments. The hackers rebranded the channel to resemble Ripple and deleted all previously uploaded content.
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Weekend Recap Solanas Early Dismissal of Firedancer Bill Mahers Crypto Misconceptions and Beyond