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Solana tends to get touchy about scaling. Since day one, the network’s pitch has been a layer-1 blockchain using novel technology to run faster and cheaper than other layer-1s on offer. 



So it’s no surprise that when Base announced a new feature called FlashBlocks would bring its “effective block times” down to 200 ms — or half the length it takes Solana to create new blocks — Solana followers were quick to point out the somewhat-faulty logic. FlashBlocks are sub-blocks that allow for early confirmation times, but Base’s full block times will still be two seconds. Solana has a feature called shreds which operates similarly to FlashBlocks, but its full block times are 400 ms. 



The whole ordeal is a bit melodramatic, but it highlights something that often doesn’t get across in blockchain scaling conversations, which is that most of this stuff is basically made up anyways.



When Base’s creator Jesse Pollak gets on X to say that Base is about to be “2x faster than” Solana, he reveals nothing about how he’s measuring speed, or why that would matter for Base’s developers and users. Likewise when Firedancer developers say the Solana client can process one million transactions per second in a test environment — it’s a nice sounding number that would almost certainly hit snags in the real world. 



Even if Firedancer could run that fast, it would be of little import: Solana is currently processing roughly 1,000 user TPS. 



On the Lightspeed podcast this week, my co-host Mert Mumtaz got talking with NEAR Protocol co-founder Illia Polosukhin about scaling. Polosukhin and fellow NEAR developer Bowen Wang said the blockchain will soon bring its block times down to 400 ms, and its blockchain shards — part of a scaling technique known as “sharding” — can handle 10,000-20,000 TPS each. 



So if NEAR is so scalable, Mumtaz asked, then why is no

Base, Solana spar over scaling numbers

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Solana futures are coming March 17, pending regulatory review. 



For real this time.  



When CME Group’s announcement came through, I made sure to triple-check its validity. 



If you recall last month, a beta page from CME Group’s website surfaced; a header on top read, “Introducing SOL and XRP futures.” That was released “in error,” a spokesperson clarified at the time; no decision had been made on such products.



Now, though, the derivatives marketplace is officially moving ahead with cash-settled SOL futures — to be available via a micro-sized contract (25 SOL), and a larger one (500 SOL).



Why does this matter, exactly?



The thought is this type of product gives sophisticated investors (i.e. institutions and active traders) a better way to manage volatility within a growing market. Those unable to hold SOL directly would be able to gain access via a regulated product.



But beyond that, it extends a tool already available for bitcoin and ether to another asset — possibly setting the stage for US solana ETFs. 




We're delighted to play a part in the upcoming launch of @CMEGroup SOL Futures, the first CFTC-regulated Solana derivatives. They will settle to our CME CF Solana-Dollar Reference Rate (SOLUSD_RR), paving the way for US-listed SOL ETFs! 🎉Read more 👇https://t.co/ViITWFguWM pic.twitter.com/50j5bRtq9D— CF Benchmarks (@CFBenchmarks) February 28, 2025




CME Group launched bitcoin futures and ether futures in 2017 and 2021, respectively. These helped institutionalize crypto as an asset class prior to the US spot bitcoin and ether ETF launches last year.



Industry watchers have questioned the timeline around further spot crypto ETF approvals by the SEC, pointing out the agency has previously wanted to first see a regulated futures market. 



The ETF Store president Nate Geraci wrote this morning on X that the planned solana

Planned CME solana futures could boost ETF approval odds

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The Fed’s favorite inflation gauge inched down just slightly in January, but we remain a ways off from its 2% target. 



Decreased consumer spending and sharp income growth complicate the central bank’s mandate, and throw a wrench in the works for those hoping it would be a quarter of economic expansion. 



Here’s a rundown of the latest personal consumer expenditures print and what it means for interest rates, markets and economic growth. 



The PCE index rose 2.5% annually in January, down from 2.6% in December. Core PCE, which excludes volatile food and energy costs, saw more of a decline, coming in at 2.6% in January vs. 2.9% in December. 



Personal income increased 0.9% month over month, led by private wages and salaries, the Bureau of Economic Analysis said. Personal current transfer receipts, which reflect payments made without the exchange of services, also increased sharply, although this can be attributed to beginning-of-year Social Security payment adjustments. 



Consumer spending was down in January, coming in 0.2% lower than the month prior. The biggest sectors that saw a drop in spending were motor vehicles, household furnishings and recreational goods. 



This latest data significantly lowered expectations for Q1 GDP outlook. The Atlanta Fed’s GDPNow model was revised today to project the US economy will contract by 1.5% during the first three months of 2025. This would be the first contraction recorded since Q1 2022. 



On Feb. 19, the model had called for expansion at a rate of 2.3% during the first quarter of this year. 



In terms of market impact, stocks initially rose slightly on the mild decline in headline PCE, although quickly erased any gains as geopolitical tensions took center stage. President Trump’s Friday meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky did little to assure the world that Russian-Ukrainian negotiations

The Fed’s job did not just get easier 

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MetaMask has tweaked its fox logo and is making major changes to its crypto wallet, the team announced on Thursday.



I chatted with MetaMask co-founder Dan Finlay to get all the deets on how the classic crypto wallet is changing. 



“It almost feels like closing Chapter Two on wallets,” Finlay said.



Ethereum’s Pectra hard fork will let MetaMask change its wallet so that it’s asking you way less often to sign something. That could be a plus for safety, and it’s definitely a plus for more seamless usability. 



The current way wallets work can be bad for security too — Finlay said a “blind sign” incident was what enabled the recent Bybit hack. 



“They were asked to sign a hash just blindly. And they did it. That’s just so deeply, fundamentally broken,” he tells me.



With this update, you’ll be able to revoke permissions right in your wallet. They’re also going to abstract away networks and gas to make using MetaMask feel easier — no more typing in strange codes to add blockchains to your wallet.



“Users are still signing stuff they don't understand. And if we want to make this like the rails of an actual functional economy, people need to actually get what they're doing, and it has to be like at the deepest level,” Finlay added.



Source: MetaMask


They’re also enabling gas-included swaps within the wallet itself, so you don’t have to go through the hassle of getting other gas tokens into that wallet to complete the swap. And next month, they’re going to also let MetaMask users pay gas fees in whatever tokens you hold to make transactions even smoother.



Multiple secret recovery phrases will soon be possible, as will be the ability to sync up your MetaMask profile regardless of what web browser or device you’re using.



The wallet’s page that shows all your tokens will now show all of them in one place, like the Coinbase

MetaMask gets an overhaul with better UX, simpler swaps

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Yesterday was day one of ETHDenver. 



The price of ETH was ~$2,300. People here must be depressed, right? 



Eh, not really. I must’ve had 20 conversations yesterday and maybe one person mentioned market prices. 



With about 18,000 attendees coming into the city, ETHDenver is still the largest free-of-charge Ethereum-centric event next to Devcon. 



The event kicked off with the folkiest of folk songs brought to you by Jonathan “A Song A Day” Mann. Think “feminized wef soyboy mentality” vibes that Solana DeFi bronze age spartans would probably cringe at.




Welcome to the ETH Denver Opening Ceremony featuring some awesome music! pic.twitter.com/k71hYkAoA8— ETHDenver 🏔🦬🦄 (@EthereumDenver) February 27, 2025




Oh, and apparently people are complaining that ETHDenver is not so “Ethereum-aligned” anymore because there are non-Ethereum sponsors?



Source: ETHDenver


So salient is the criticism that ETHDenver founder John Paller felt the need to address it at the festival’s opening.



“95%+ of our sponsors and 90% of our content is ETH, EVM or ETH aligned 😘😘😘,” his slide deck read.



Step into the main conference hall and you’re greeted with large booths representing Uniswap, Arbitrum and Coinbase.



Picture taken on day one event closure


There’s a markedly more professional vibe to ETHDenver this year, founder of Yap Global and ETHDenver’s official PR partner Samantha Yap told me.



“ETHDenver in its earlier years was more scrappy. This year, booths are spending a lot more money and there’s a greater professionalization of the event. The industry is evolving,” Yap said.




DOGE pulled up to ETHDenver 👀Much wow @DogeOS @MyDoge @dogecoin @elonmusk 👀 pic.twitter.com/WJb0vBx7x6— ETHWomen (@Ethereum_Women) February 27, 2025




There also doesn’t seem to be just one dominant overarching narrative this year.

Inside day 1 at ETHDenver 2025

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Need some reassurance after watching bitcoin fall under $80,000 last night? 



We managed to climb back above that level this morning, but only slightly — at least at the time I was writing this. I hope I didn’t jinx it. ETH, on the other hand, is holding on to $2,100. 



On the Empire roundup this week, co-host Jason Yanowitz explained his thoughts on the current market. For him, there are only three options: The start of the bear, the end of the four-year cycle or a simple pullback. 



If you voted for pullback, then you’re right on the money. 



“ I feel very convicted that this is not a bear market. So let me just [go] on the record, this is not a bear market,” he said, giving it a 20-30% chance that this marks the end of the four-year cycle and roughly an 80% chance that this is merely a bull market pullback.



Yanowitz gave 2021 as an example, citing the 56% pullback that bitcoin experienced a few years ago. 



“ ETH drew down 61%, SOL drew down 67%. And a lot of other things, in the middle of the year — in the middle of what we look back and think [of as the] 2021 peak bull market — drew down like 70 to 80%. I just think people are very quick to forget that,” he said.



If Yanowitz is right — and my reporting this week is in favor of what he’s said — then the harsh truth is that pullbacks are tough and anxiety inducing, but they’re not forever. 



I know it’s an utter cliche at this point, but the Brits really nailed this one: Keep calm and carry on.



And now you know.




New Staff Statement from the SEC on memecoins just landed (link in thread). Two observations: 1. It's refreshing to see the SEC adopt a constrained view of its own power. 2. Fraud is, always has been, and always must be illegal. pic.twitter.com/Rw7agzjcxa— Katie Biber (@katiebiber) February 27, 2025




A dose of clarity was handed over to the market last night

It's not a bear market, just a bull market pullback: Yanowitz

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Yesterday, Bybit CEO Ben Zhou posted on X that the platform’s $1.4 billion hack had been caused by “malicious code originating from Safe{Wallet}’s infrastructure.” Solana CEOs had many words, including “nightmare season,” “holy hell,” and “holy shit.”



Preliminary reports indicate Safe’s frontend was exploited to trick Bybit into signing a malicious transaction, and Safe’s actual smart contracts appeared to perform as intended. Still, the foul language likely stemmed from the fact that wallets being exploitable gives hackers access to a whole lot of assets — Safe’s smart accounts secure over $100 billion in digital assets. 



In other words, hackers could go further than Bybit.



Squads, a multisig wallet used by a number of prominent Solana teams including Helium, Kamino, Pyth, Helius, Drift, Jupiter and Ellipsis, is “conducting a comprehensive review of our infrastructure to mitigate the possibility of such an attack,” CEO Stepan Simkin told me. 



Simkin emphasized that “high value accounts” need purpose-built wallet solutions because sophisticated hackers can “potentially compromise any frontend.”



The Bybit hackers — whom the FBI has now accused of being linked to North Korea — injected malicious code into Safe’s JavaScript files to alter Bybit’s multisig transactions and send the funds to the attacker’s address, according to a report from blockchain security firm Slowmist. While the crypto industry puts a lot of effort into auditing smart contracts, it focuses less than it should on “conventional infrastructure” — like leaked Amazon Web Services credentials, which was the culprit in this case, Simkin said. 



“JavaScript side hacks are the easiest to execute due to lack of audits,” Cube Exchange CEO Bartosz Lipinski said. “Solana is not immune to that.”



Lipinski said Cube chose multi-party

Solana multisig provider conducting ‘comprehensive review’ after Safe exploit

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Humanity clings to mysteries that border on compulsions at this point. 



The moon landing — did we actually go, and if we did, is the footage real? And what about the pyramids — built by laborers and farmers, or were those 80-ton granite blocks actually set in place by ancient alien technology?



Satoshi Nakamoto’s true identity has fast become another cultural oddity that just won’t quit. 



Craig Wright was the ringleader of that particular media circus for years, until courts took action against him. Now that Wright is finally proven to be totally wrong, it’s the rest of us that are doomed to be repeatedly punished for the closure. 



In the past six months alone, we’ve had multiple fresh attempts at reviving the Nakamoto narrative. First was HBO’s Money Electric: The Bitcoin Mystery, from documentarian Cullen Hoback, and a new documentary from the UK’s Channel 4 lacked compelling evidence, let alone a tangible theory.



You can read my thoughts about HBO's take, but ultimately it came to the laughable conclusion that long-time Bitcoin contributor Peter Todd was in fact Satoshi, hiding in plain sight. 



In between those releases, we were also subjected to threads on X, including one from Matthew Sigel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, which suggested that tech billionaire Jack Dorsey is the man behind the Nakamoto moniker.



Veteran Bitcoiner Jameson Lopp shared his method of debunking the Dorsey theory during a premiere episode of Supply Shock on Thursday — a brand-new Bitcoin brand and podcast hosted by Bitcoin Historian Pete Rizzo. 



Check out the full episode of Supply Shock on YouTube



Lopp had previously busted an earlier suggestion that Hal Finney was Nakamoto by showing Finney had competed in a 10-mile race in Santa Barbara at the same time Nakamoto was emailing early developer Mike Hearn. 



Eventually, Lopp found enough

It's time to stop theorizing about Satoshi Nakamoto

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The Senate Banking Committee’s Digital Asset Subcommittee held its first hearing yesterday and, unsurprisingly, stablecoins took center stage. 



Cynthia Lummis, who chairs the newly minted subcommittee, said that stablecoin legislation is its top priority. A market structure bill, which we started to see movement on last session, will follow. 



“We’re on the precipice of finally creating a bipartisan legislative framework for both stablecoins and market structure,” she said. 



Former CFTC Chair Timothy Massad, a witness during the hearing, advised lawmakers to zero in on stablecoins. Market structure legislation should be punted until fundamental questions are answered. 



“Market structure regulation requires resolving some complex regulatory boundaries, including when is a digital asset a security, a commodity, both or neither?” he said. “There is a risk that we will significantly undermine the securities law framework that has served this country so well and has made our securities markets the envy of the world.” 



The comments come as the industry continues to speculate on what a stablecoin bill might look like. Lummis’ GENIUS Act, introduced alongside Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand, stipulates that “payment stablecoins” must come from registered issuers and have 1:1 backing from fiat currency “or other secure reserves.” 



Generally speaking, the industry and both parties agree on these general terms, but the details are a bit trickier to iron out. Democrat Mark Warner yesterday said he’s seen “a whole bunch of bad stuff” and is advocating for more robust KYC requirements. 



Should the GENIUS bill progress, we are likely to see another hearing with the full Senate Banking Committee. 



But the timeline on if and when this may happen remains unknown.







Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks

Stablecoin legislation is subcommittee’s first priority, says Lummis

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You may have seen one of the biggest crypto asset managers just raise $70 million as part of a push to broaden its offerings.



That would be Bitwise, which seeks expansion as more institutions enter the space and the SEC signals increased open-mindedness.



I caught up with CEO Hunter Horsley, who said the company expects to boost headcount from about 100 to roughly 130 this year. On the product front, it looks to not only bring more ETFs, but a slate of custom solutions.



Bitwise essentially has three investment buckets that it hopes to grow, Horsley explained. Its “beta” offerings are those most people know about (i.e. its crypto index fund, as well as the bitcoin and ether ETFs).



As part of its onchain solutions bucket, the firm offers non-custodial institutional staking via its acquisition of Attestant in November. And finally, there are Bitwise’s so-called alpha strategies.      



The latter category involves custom SMAs for large institutional clients, for example. “There’s a growing interest amongst owners of bitcoin to explore if there are ways to make their holdings productive and generate income or yield with that bitcoin,” Horsley explained. 



Bitwise and other fund groups have proposals in front of the SEC to launch ETFs that hold assets beyond BTC and ETH. Feel free to refresh yourself here and here.



Horsley said Bitwise successfully uplisting its Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund (if cleared to do so) would mark one of the biggest developments of the year. That ~$1.2 billion trust became the world’s first crypto index fund in 2017. 



“A lot of investors are not going to build a portfolio of seven different single-coin ETFs,” he told me. “I think many, as they continue to explore beyond bitcoin, are interested in an index solution.”



Conversations Bitwise has had with the SEC after Trump’s inauguration are “more

Fundraise, ‘open-minded’ SEC to fuel Bitwise growth

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This week I had the pleasure of speaking with Andy Constan, CEO of Damped Spring. 



Andy has had a storied career at the likes of Bridgewater and Brevan Howard. He possesses a deep understanding of monetary plumbing and how it translates into a tangible impact on the economy and markets. 



As mentioned in my piece last week, the FOMC meeting minutes shed light on the future of the Fed’s balance sheet composition and what it wants to see happen next. There’s a ton of complex nuance involved, so I pulled Andy in to break it all down. 



Here are a few takeaways from our discussion:



1. QT 2.0



The Fed is trying to plan out what its balance sheet looks like once QT is done. It appears to be rallying around the idea of trying to match the weighted average maturity (WAM) of the Fed’s balance sheet to the WAM of the Treasury’s debt outstanding. 



As it stands, the Fed’s balance sheet sits at approximately eight years in duration, whereas the Treasury is at five. Setting aside the complex math that Andy provided, the key takeaway is that QT, in its spirit, is not as done as it may seem on the surface and the market needs to absorb further duration. 



I asked Andy why this was important to do, and he mentioned the following:



“Well, let's just say there was a crisis. In a crisis, bonds rally a lot on the front. Then, say [the Fed] decides to begin QE and let's assume interest rates are zero as it has said pretty clearly they're not going to do more QE until interest rates are zero. We're back in a position where the Fed is buying one and a half percent coupons which — unless the crisis never resolves, it’s going to be underwater on those things and so it would be better, if you're going to be underwater in those things, you'd rather not have a lot of them going into it.”



2. Debt ceiling dynamics



As the debt ceiling continues on, this has a

Lessons in monetary plumbing with Andy Constan

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The Avalanche Foundation has unveiled a payment card called the Avalanche Card, which lets you spend your crypto at fiat-only merchants. 



Crypto: It’s not just magic internet money anymore!



I chatted with Eric Kang, Ava Labs’ head of DeFi and business development, to get a clear understanding of how exactly this card works. You aren’t paying merchants directly with crypto, so the card can be used anywhere that accepts Visa. But the crypto is ultimately sold using Avalanche’s C-Chain to pay for transactions that have already occurred with fiat.



“It took us a while to get this out,” Kang tells me. He sees it as an easy way for people to sell or use their crypto without having to go through a crypto exchange or DeFi platform.



Source: Avalanche Foundation


It’s a bit like a mix between a prepaid card and a traditional credit card. You load it up with crypto — USDC, USDT, and AVAX are accepted, with plans to accept bridged bitcoin and potentially other tokens in the future. 



Half the US dollar value of those cryptocurrencies is then considered to be your limit, to ensure padding for crypto price fluctuations. You can then use the card at any Visa-friendly merchant, and those charges are logged like a credit card.



Your crypto isn’t immediately sold when you make a purchase, though. Instead, the crypto is actually sold once a day at the same time (around 9 am ET) based on the past day’s charges before becoming transactions onchain. 



Because it’s a credit card, you’ll need to hand over some personal information including your real name, address and social security number or other government ID number to get the card.



Source: Avalanche Foundation


You can also freeze the card, change your card’s PIN, dispute suspicious transactions and set up spending alerts. But because it’s crypto, your credit balance will fluctuate depending on crypto