Solana validators complete restart; Laos ends crypto ban

Transcript

Welcome to The Daily Forkast September 15th, 2021. I’m Justin Solomon of Forkast.News, covering all things blockchain, filling in for Editor-in-Chief Angie Lau.

Just last week, we saw Solana hitting an all-time high. But things aren’t looking so good now. The network has suffered intermittent stability issues, which led to calls for a restart of the entire network. That story and a lot more coming up.

Let’s get you up to speed from Asia to the world.

First up, crypto industry darling Solana has had a dramatic change of fortune. The price of its native token has plunged more than 25% from last week’s all-time high as technical troubles have plagued the network.

Forkast.News Lachlan Keller has the details.

Solana announced it was experiencing intermittent instability on the network’s Mainnet Beta overnight Tuesday Asia time.

The company later confirmed the problem was due to a massive increase in the transaction load that peaked at over 400,000 transactions per second. That’s well over the 65,000 transactions per second the network is capable of.

However, that speed has seen it dubbed as an “Ethereum killer”, as Solana is roughly 2,000 times faster than Ethereum.

The overload caused the network to start forking, resulting in some nodes going offline. Shortly after that happened, the validator community opted to restart the network, providing instructions on how to do so via Twitter and Discord.

Solana tweeted that the Mainnet Beta restart was successfully completed after an upgrade to 1.6.25 by Wednesday afternoon, Asia time, saying DApps, block explorers, and supporting systems would recover, restoring full functionality within a few hours.

One expert told Forkast.News, glitches are to be expected across all blockchains early on in their development, saying bitcoin experienced similar issues, so it’s nothing new or strange:

“What we should be looking at is kind of how does problem solving take place? To what extent do we see a dependency on centralization? Because that would be a kind of bad prospect for a long-term protocol that is really built around kind of open network ethics and decentralization.”

Caselin said he’s confident Solana will fix the problems, and the takeaway should be that instead of getting worried, it makes more sense to monitor how blockchain protocols handle such technical issues while maintaining trust in their communities.

While Solana’s price fell to a seven-day low of US$143.55 overnight Tuesday, it had started to recover slightly by Wednesday afternoon Asia time.

For Forkast.News, I’m Lachlan Keller.

Meanwhile, one of Asia’s most impoverished nations has ended a three-year ban on crypto trading and mining.

The government of Laos has selected six firms to take part in a pilot program that will also work in developing crypto laws for the country.

Forkast.News Monika Ghosh has the details.

Just last month, the country’s central bank reiterated the government’s 2018 ban, reminding people that trading crypto was prohibited by law.

But now, according to a government notice, the ban has ended with six firms allowed to begin a trial of both mining and trading cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

Alongside that, a host of government ministries have been working with the central bank and other organizations on researching rules and regulations for the use of cryptocurrency, with their findings to be presented at the Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Ministers meeting this week.

According to data from the World Bank, while the country’s per capita GDP sits above those of its neighbors, Cambodia and Myanmar, it is still only a little over US$2,500.

However, the government says it is trying to become the battery of Southeast Asia by building dams on the Mekong River to boost its hydropower generation to 24,000 megawatts, with the aim of exporting 80% of their power by 2030.

That could enable the country to tap into the cryptocurrency mining industry following the exodus forced by China’s ongoing crackdown.

For Forkast.News, I’m Monika Ghosh.

Finally today, the past couple of days have seen criticism over NFTs appearing in Chinese state-owned media, but things look to be back on track with the release of an official 2022 Asian Games NFT collection.

Forkast.News Timmy Shen reports from Taipei, Taiwan.

The organizers say this is the first time in the history of the Asian Games that an NFT collection has been released and it will give everyone the opportunity to become a torchbearer.

How? Well, that’s because the artwork features a 3D digital version of the torch for the games.

The limited edition of 20,000 NFTs priced at 39 renminbi, or around US$6, goes on sale on Thursday via Alipay in-app NFT sales feature.

Located in the eastern province of Ziejiang, Hangzhou, which has a population of over 10 million people, is the third Chinese city to act as host. The city is also home to the Chinese tech giant Alibaba, which founded Alipay.

The 19th edition of the games, an event which is held every four years, is set to begin in just under one year’s time, with athletes from all around the region competing in more than 20 sports.

For Forkast.News I’m Timmy Shen, Taipei, Taiwan.

Goes to show everything still in play for the NFT world.

And that’s The Daily Forkast from our vantage point right here in Asia. For more visit Forkast.News. I’m Justin Solomon. Until next time.