Features Crypto News by Thebittimes.Com

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Onyx (XCN) has seen its token price surge over 80% in the past 24 hours following the launch of its new Goliath Mainnet. The upgrade marks a shift from Onyx’s existing Layer 3 rollup to a standalone Layer 1 blockchain, with promises of improved scalability, security, and performance.  One of the more notable claims associated with Goliath is its potential to match, or even exceed the transaction speeds of traditional payment networks like Visa, which processes around 24,000 transactions per second (TPS).  While the mainnet utilizes a Proof-of-Stake consensus mechanism that could, in theory, support significantly higher throughput, achieving that performance in a decentralized environment remains a considerable technical hurdle. At press time, XCN is trading at $0.022, with a 136% gain over the past seven days. The recent rally follows a volatile start to 2025, during which XCN surged more than 1,500% in just two weeks to a ...

The Environmental Impact of DeFi: Energy Consumption and Sustainability! Decentralized Finance (DeFi) has revolutionized the global financial landscape, providing open and permissionless access to financial services. However, as DeFi continues to grow, so do concerns about its environmental impact, particularly the energy consumption associated with blockchain technology. The Energy Cost of DeFi: Proof-of-Work Concerns Many DeFi applications rely on blockchain networks to operate securely and transparently. Some of these networks, particularly those using Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus mechanisms, consume vast amounts of energy. Bitcoin, for example, has often been criticized for its high electricity consumption, comparable to that of entire nations. Similarly, Ethereum, before it transitioned to Proof-of-Stake (PoS), was another major energy consumer due to its PoW-based mining. The primary issue with PoW is its reliance on computational power to validate transactions and secure the ne...

The Ethereum network switched to the Proof-of-Stake model, ending the proof-of-work mining model. The much-awaited transition happened on September 15, 2022. The blockchain now uses 99.95% less energy than it did previously, ushering in a more environmentally friendly era in the blockchain space. For quite some time, the long-awaited advancement has been in the works. The network was often chastised for its environmental impact. As a result of the merge , this is expected to change. However, the network has been receiving concerns that it has become more centralized . Anthony Di Iorio, a co-founder of Ethereum, recently expressed concern during an interview about the potential for a small number of holders to have control over the ETH network. He stated that he did not currently believe proof-of stake to be a perfect system. Is Ethereum more decentralized post-merge? Post-merge speculation started surfacing about the network becoming more centralized than it was pre-trans...