The Weekly Wrap-up - Monday 20th Sep

Solana Service Outage

- Mainnet Down for 17 Hours 

• On Tuesday(14th) the Solana platform suffered a full mainnet outage after the network’s transaction rate reached 400,000 TPS (transactions per second). The price of SOL only felt a minor initial drop of 15.5% and has since recovered to a net drop of 7%. The network was re-established after a restart of the main-net, but the 17 hour outage raised concerns surrounding the stability of the network in the months to come.  

South Korea Tightens Leash

- $2.7b Set to be Lost

• The Sep 24th deadline for South Korean crypto trading-platforms to register their legality looms, after revisions to legal requirements were made by the nation’s Financial Services Commision. Platforms are struggling to modify their practises and face ceasing operation entirely if they fail to do so. Speculation places some 40 crypto operators and 42 South Korean ‘kimchi coins’ set to disappear after the deadline. If this comes to be, some $2.7b of value will be wiped from the nation’s crypto sector.      

Project Dawn Announcement

- LUNA Price Skyrockets  

• The Terra ecosystem’s native LUNA token saw gains reaching 720% on Friday(10th Sep) bringing the token to a peak of $44. The token’s gains came as a result of Terraform Labs (the platform’s creators) announcing ‘Project Dawn’ - a new $150m funding initiative to foster innovation on the Terra ecosystem and improve the quality of its infrastructure. The platform had been experiencing slow transaction speeds during periods of high market-activity, with Terraform Labs themselves stating that it had resulted in a “degraded user-experience” with “much work to be done”. The Terra whitepaper can be read here:(https://www.terra.money/Terra_White_paper.pdf). 

Laos Authorises Crypto

- A Change of Course 

On Monday(13th Sep) the Laotian government authorised both mining and trading of cryptocurrencies in a surprise change of course. Until recently, it was believed that Laos would align itself with China’s stance on crypto mining. but financial pressures have been mounting for the communist nation with Covid-19 restrictions significantly disrupting its regular tourism revenue streams. Speculation suggests that the nation intends to utilise its hydroelectric energy output to mine crypto. The authorisation does not offer blanket coverage however - as it stands, only a group six banks and construction groups are permitted to mine or trade in cryptocurrency.