Solana’s Seeker Mobile Begins to Ship

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of an important tales in cryptocurrency tech improvement. I am Margaux Nijkerk, CoinDesk’s Tech & Protocols reporter.

On this challenge:

• Solana’s Seeker Telephone Fixes Saga’s Flaws With Usability Improve
• Base Says Sequencer Failure Brought on Block Manufacturing Halt of 33 Minutes
• Solana’s Jito Proposes Routing 100% of Block Engine Charges to DAO Treasury
• Cardano Group Approves $70M Core Dev Funds, Boosting ADA Prospects

Community information

SOLANA SEEKER PHONE BEGINS SHIPPING: The Solana Seeker telephone isn’t your common smartphone, nor does it need to be. Constructing on the teachings of its predecessor, the Saga, Solana Cell’s latest machine reimagines what a crypto-native telephone might be. Smaller, lighter and boasting a longer-lasting battery than its predecessor, the Seeker goals to enhance on the person expertise whereas doubling down on mobile-first crypto usability. Out of the field, it’s clear who this machine is for: lively Solana customers who frequently transact on-chain, with the design specializing in every little thing crypto-first. With 150,000 telephones pre-ordered from over 50 nations and at a value level of $500 the Seeker needs to convey Solana ecosystem individuals the flexibility to transact on the go in a matter of seconds. When you’re somebody who often makes use of Solana, the Seeker would possibly really feel prefer it was constructed particularly for you. Nonetheless, this telephone isn’t meant for the informal crypto person. “When you’re any person who transacts at the least as soon as every week, frankly, then you definitely may not be a full on energy person, however you are at the least a daily sufficient person that Seeker is smart,” Emmett Hollyer, the overall supervisor at Solana Cell, instructed CoinDesk in an interview. Learn CoinDesk’s full evaluate of the telephone right here. — Margaux Nijkerk Learn extra.

POST-MORTEM ON BASE’S BLOCK PRODUCTION HALT : Block manufacturing on Coinbase’s (COIN) Base community halted for 33 minutes early Tuesday following a sequencer failover that didn’t get well as anticipated, builders mentioned in a autopsy report. The outage started at 06:07 UTC on Aug. 5, when the lively sequencer fell behind as a result of congestion from on-chain exercise. Whereas Base’s Conductor module — a core element of the OP Stack designed to keep up uptime — appropriately tried to shift management to a standby sequencer, the brand new occasion had not been totally provisioned and was unable to provide blocks. Because it couldn’t robotically change once more, manufacturing stalled till engineers manually fastened the problem. The community was totally recovered by 06:40, in response to the report. To keep away from reorganization dangers — that’s, when a blockchain quickly rewrites historical past by changing confirmed blocks with different ones — the workforce paused Conductor and coordinated a managed management transition. This course of contributed to the size of the outage. The outage highlighted a key operational threat in layer-2 rollup networks that depend on centralized sequencers to order and submit transactions. These techniques stay depending on fast failover mechanisms and full provisioning, and a single-point hole on this chain can result in full community stalls. — Shaurya Malwa Learn extra.

NEW JITO PROPOSAL FOR REROUTING BLOCK ENGINE FEES: Jito Labs put ahead a brand new governance proposal, known as JIP-24, geared toward decentralizing the community additional by routing all its Block Engine and Block Meeting Market (BAM) charges on to the Jito DAO treasury. If authorised, the DAO would assume management over protocol income streams, directing them to the community’s JTO tokenholders. This, in flip, would cut back Jito Labs’ affect over the community of the identical title, with a DAO subgroup taking over a better function in improvement. Jito Labs hopes the change will finally increase the Jito token’s worth. Presently, rewards from Jito’s Block Engine are cut up evenly — 3% to Jito Labs and three% to the DAO. JIP-24 would eradicate the cut up, sending the total 6% of charges, together with all future BAM-related income, to the DAO treasury completely. “This proposal displays the dedication of the Jito ecosystem to make sure that protocol charges accrue on to the token holders as optimally as doable and cements the DAO as central to the technical and financial governance of the Jito Community,” the Jito Labs workforce wrote of their proposal. — Margaux Nijkerk Learn extra.

CARDANO CORE DEVS GET $70M BUDGET : Cardano’s core improvement workforce, Enter Output World (IOG), secured approval for a $71 million treasury allocation to fund 12 months of community upgrades following a drawn-out governance vote that drew issues round transparency, accountability and value. The proposal handed with 74% in favor and authorizes the disbursement of 96 million ADA, or roughly 13% of the protocol’s treasury, to IOG. Funds shall be milestone-based and overseen by Intersect, a member-driven governance physique. Good contracts and an impartial committee will add extra oversight, IOG mentioned. Key deliverables embody Hydra, a layer-2 scaling product for quicker and cheaper transactions, and Undertaking Acropolis, which goals to re-architect the Cardano node for better modularity and ease of developer onboarding. The workforce additionally plans to cut back reminiscence utilization and enhance operational prices for validators. Such implementations can finally result in elevated developer exercise and new use instances on the Cardano community, contributing to demand for ADA, the community’s gasoline token. — Shaurya Malwa Learn extra.

In Different Information

• Large banks are making it more durable and dearer for shoppers to make use of fintech and crypto apps, which quantities to what might be seen as “Operation Chokepoint 3.0.” That’s in response to Alex Rampell, normal associate at enterprise capital agency Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Within the agency’s newest fintech publication, Rampell pointed to conventional monetary establishments charging excessive charges to entry account knowledge or transfer cash, significantly to companies like Coinbase or Robinhood, as a transfer to strangle the competitors. “Below the Biden administration, Operation Chokepoint 2.0 tried to debank and deplatform crypto,” Rampell mentioned. “That period has ended, however now the banks are aiming to implement their very own Chokepoint 3.0 — charging insanely excessive charges to entry knowledge or transfer cash to crypto and fintech apps — and, extra concerningly, blocking crypto and fintech apps they don’t like.” — Francisco Rodrigues Learn extra.
• When Celestia airdropped its TIA token to 580,000 customers in 2023 it was the plat du jour amongst merchants and traders, with the undertaking saying the discharge aligned with a brand new “modular period.” Nonetheless, regardless of rallying to a dizzying $20 value level in September 2024, it has since slumped to lower than $1.65 in a determined plight spurred by a sequence of large cliffs within the token’s vesting schedule. Knowledge from Tokenomist exhibits that core contributors and early backers, notably a slew of enterprise capitalists, may promote tokens bought comparatively cheaply in early fundraising rounds onto the open market. This coincided with TIA’s precipitous transfer to the draw back, though it is value noting that the token’s market cap, presently at $1.2 billion, really elevated by 50% regardless of the token dropping 90% of its worth as a result of sheer scale of provide improve. — Oliver Knight Learn extra.

Regulatory and Coverage

• The White Home is making ready an government order that might penalize banks for chopping off prospects over their beliefs. The order, reported by the Wall Avenue Journal, is anticipated to be signed by President Donald Trump as early as this week. It might direct banking regulators to research whether or not monetary companies violated the Equal Credit score Alternative Act or different shopper safety legal guidelines when closing accounts. Whereas the order may nonetheless be altered, it might convey additional stability to the crypto sector. Throughout the Biden administration, a coordinated effort from the federal authorities was launched to de-bank crypto companies, an effort generally known as Operation Chokepoint 2.0. The draft order doesn’t title particular banks, however reportedly references an incident involving Financial institution of America and a Christian nonprofit in Uganda. The financial institution mentioned it closed the accounts as a result of it doesn’t serve small companies working overseas.— Francisco Rodrigues Learn extra.
• A gaggle of French lawmakers is making ready a draft regulation that might allow using surplus electrical energy from nuclear energy vegetation to mine bitcoin, in response to current public statements. The proposal would set up mining {hardware} at amenities owned by state utility, Électricité de France (EDF), in response to Le Monde. The method would benefit from surplus power generated by these nuclear energy vegetation. France is the biggest producer of nuclear energy within the European Union, in response to 2023 knowledge from Eurostat. It accounted for 338,202 gigawatt hours, or greater than half the 27-nation bloc’s whole output. The warmth produced by nuclear fission is used to provide electrical energy, however greater than two-thirds of it’s misplaced, the statistics company mentioned. — Francesco Rodrigues Learn extra.

Calendar

• Sept. 22-28: Korea Blockchain Week, Seoul
• Oct. 1-2: Token2049, Singapore
• Oct. 13-15: Digital Asset Summit, London
• Oct. 16-17: European Blockchain Conference, Barcelona
• Nov. 17-22: Devconnect, Buenos Aires
• Dec. 11-13: Solana Breakpoint, Abu Dhabi
• Feb. 10-12, 2026: Consensus, Hong Kong
• Could 5-7, 2026: Consensus, Miami