Friday, June 16th. As the week comes to an end we can focus on the highlights of the crypto industry over the past few days.
Polygon Labs unveils the concept of Polygon 2.0
The team of the renowned blockchain introduced the set of network updates to transform Polygon into a so-called “Value Layer of the Internet”.
“Just like the Internet allows anyone to create and exchange information, the Value Layer is the fundamental protocol that allows anyone to create, exchange and program value,” the dev team says.
According to them, the expected changes will popularize access to the global economy. The Value Layer will provide decentralized finance, digital ownership, new mechanisms for coordination and much more, the team stressed.
“Polygon 2.0 is a set of proposed upgrades that radically reimagine almost every aspect of Polygon, from protocol architecture to tokenomics to governance,” the company poins out.
In the upcoming weeks, the creators plan to review each component of Polygon 2.0 via a series of blog posts, AMA sessions, and through other resources. Some of the subjects announced include:
- the future of the Polygon PoS;
- utility and the evolution of the native token;
- the shift to broader community governance of protocol and treasury.
As you may remember, amid the SEC’s announcement that the Polygon native token (MATIC) was determined to be a security, online broker Robinhood halted support for the coin. eToro investment company has suspended operations with the MATIC for US customers.
Binance market share drops to a record low
The market share of bitcoin exchange Binance.US slumped to 2.7 percent in the United States, its lowest level since December 2020, according to analytics service Kaiko.
On June 5, the SEC sued Binance and its CEO Changpeng Zhao. The regulator brought 13 charges, including the sale of unregistered securities. The agency later asked the court for an emergency freeze on the assets of Binance.US.
As per The Block, the trading volume of the American division of the exchange has been declining over the past three months from $17.6 million in March to $3.5 million in May.
Practically all of the crypto exchanges backed by the U.S. dollar have surpassed Binance.US in terms of trading volume. The platform accounted for 16.1% of spot trading volume in April, but the figure slipped to 8.5% in May. As of this writing, it stands at 5.4%.
By a way of comparison, Coinbase, which is also being sued by the SEC, has remained almost unchanged, hovering between 36% and 39% for the past three months.
Based on data from Kaiko, the market depth for the top 25 crypto assets on Binance.US has shrunk by 78% since the lawsuit was filed. Analysts say that many major market makers, including Wintermute and Keyrock, have quit the platform.
Prior to that, Binance.US announced the suspension of dollar deposits starting June 13.
Recall that on June 8, the U.S. subsidiary of Binance removed 10 trading pairs backed by Bitcoin and its native stablecoin BUSD, as well as suspended over-the-counter trading.
Bitcoin mining difficulty rises to a new all-time high
As a result of another recalculation on June 14, the mining difficulty of the alpha cryptocurrency jumped by 2.18%. The indicator reached a new high of 52.35 trillion (T).
The average hash rate for the period since the previous change in value amounted to 374.4 EH/s.
According to Glassnode, the smoothed 7-day moving average peaked at 393.9 EH/s on June 12. It then recovered to 388 EH/s. That suggests a potential further increase in difficulty, roughly 1.2 percent, according to the forecast.
As reported by Hashrate Index, the hashprice is $0.063 per TH/s overnight. During the past month, the index has dipped about 18% from the ~$0.077 level.
As a reminder, in May, the total income of miners hit $ 916 million, a figure that has been growing steadily since November 2022.
Solana and Polygon slam SEC’s token classification
The Solana Foundation disputed the SEC’s approach, which defines a native SOL token as a security.
“We welcome the continued engagement of policymakers as constructive partners on regulation to achieve legal clarity on these issues for the thousands of entrepreneurs across the U.S,” the foundation says.
The Polygon team likewise dissed the SEC’s decision to classify MATIC coins as securities.
Project representatives noted that the “global community-oriented” network is designed and deployed outside the United States. As they say, MATIC has been an essential part of Polygon technology, which guaranteed the safety of the protocol.
The regulator named MATIC and SOL, as well as a number of other tokens, as securities in lawsuits against the crypto exchanges Binance and Coinbase.
According to CoinGecko, the two assets share the same market cap. The SEC’s move exerted strong pressure on token prices – SOL and MATIC crashed 29.5% and 28.5%, respectively, over the past week.