Основные события недели: Ударные DDoS-атаки на Solana и волатильность биткоина из-за экономических факторов English Translation: Key Events of the Week: Striking DDoS Attacks on Solana and Bitcoins Volatility Due to Economic Factors

Bitcoin displayed volatility in response to the decline in U.S. inflation and the interest rate hike in Japan, while Solana faced a significant DDoS attack, and the Ethereum team unveiled details of an upcoming upgrade, among other events of the past week.

Over the last seven days, Bitcoin lost the momentum it gained following the Federal Reserve’s interest rate cut on December 10. The cryptocurrency exhibited increased volatility as new macroeconomic data emerged.

Monday began with a downturn for the leading cryptocurrency, retreating from $89,000 to $85,000.

In the following days, the asset attempted to recover, even challenging the resistance level around $90,000 on Wednesday. However, it ultimately failed and dropped back to $85,000.

On Thursday, December 18, optimism was sparked by the release of the U.S. Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, which fell by 0.3% and reached an annual rate of 2.7% (down from 3% in October), adjusted for seasonality.

This figure came in below analysts’ expectations, who had forecasted a CPI of 3.1%.

The decline in inflation briefly pushed Bitcoin back to $90,000, but the euphoria was short-lived as the asset sank below $85,000 that evening.

On December 19, Bitcoin resumed its upward movement following news from the Bank of Japan, which announced an increase in the key interest rate to a 30-year high.

The market’s reaction was surprising to many participants; most analysts had anticipated a proportional downturn for crypto assets in response to the negative news from Japan, yet prices surged instead.

Nonetheless, digital gold finished the week in the «red zone,» dropping approximately 1.5%.

Most coins in the top 10 by market capitalization followed Bitcoin’s lead, with XRP being the exception, gaining 2.7%.

SOL (-4.9%) and DOGE (-4.4%) experienced more significant declines than others.

The Crypto Fear and Greed Index remains in the «extreme fear» territory at a reading of 20.

The total market capitalization of the cryptocurrency space stands at $3.08 trillion, with Bitcoin’s dominance index at 57.3% and Ethereum’s at 11.7%.

Solana’s blockchain suffered the fourth-largest DDoS attack in history, with attackers attempting to overload the network for about seven days. However, developers managed to fend off the intrusion successfully.

The intensity of the malicious traffic peaked at 6 Tbps. This incident ranks alongside attacks on the infrastructure of Google Cloud, Cloudflare, and AWS. Despite these challenges, the blockchain continued to process transactions smoothly.

The average transaction confirmation time in Solana’s network remained around 450 ms, with the p90 metric being under 700 ms.

Solana’s founder, Anatoly Yakovenko, referred to the blockchain’s resilience and response as a «bullish» factor.

Additionally, on December 14, the L1 network of Sui also faced a DDoS attack, which led to delays in block production.

During the week, the Solana Foundation announced a partnership with Project Eleven to prepare the network against potential threats from quantum computers. Experts assessed the blockchain’s risks and developed a testnet prototype utilizing post-quantum digital signatures.

“Our responsibility is to ensure the blockchain’s security not just today, but for decades ahead. The culture of rapid innovation within the Solana ecosystem will continue with the launch of a second client and an advanced consensus mechanism this year,” stated Matt Sorg, VP of Technology at Solana Foundation.

From December 14 to 15, Bitcoin’s network hash rate fell by 8% — approximately 100 EH/s. The week prior, the metric had already dropped by 17%.

Although the hash rate has since rebounded to 1080 EH/s, it hit a local low of 890 EH/s.

According to Jack Kong, founder of Nano Labs, the sharp decline may have been due to the shutdown of mining farms in Xinjiang, China. Journalist Kui Dong expressed a similar viewpoint.

Local miners reported that the Chinese authorities confiscated or shut down between 200,000 and 400,000 Bitcoin mining machines.

Several experts identified the cause of the raids as stemming from a Reuters article released in late November, which asserted that the mining sector in China was experiencing a «quiet revival» — as the country’s share of global hash rate had risen to 14%.

However, journalists from MinerMag noted that the hash rate decline did not correlate with the situation in China and was temporary.

Indeed, the hash rates of major pools originating from China — such as Antpool, F2Pool, ViaBTC, SpiderPool, and Binance Pool — fell by 100 EH/s. Since many of these are located outside of China, some may have been affected by problems occurring abroad.

By December 17, most participants’ hash power was nearly fully restored.

“It is also quite possible that some miners in Xinjiang voluntarily shut down over the weekend to avoid attracting attention during inspections, only to quietly return to the network once the pressure eased,” added MinerMag.

Ethereum developers revealed the name of the second planned upgrade for 2026, titled Hegota — named after the city of Bogota (host of Devcon) and the star Heze.

The primary improvement proposal for the update will not be chosen until at least February, with the implementation of Merkle trees — a data structuring algorithm similar to Merkle trees — being the leading candidate.

Attention will also focus on mechanisms to manage the expiration of history and state, as well as further optimization of execution levels. The issue of «network bloat» is becoming increasingly relevant for node operators.

After sharing new details, the network team confirmed a stable schedule for releasing two upgrades per year. Before Hegota, the Glamsterdam upgrade will be implemented, which may include the integration of several elements.

Payment giant Visa has launched USDC settlements in the United States for issuing banks and acquirers, allowing financial institutions to conduct direct transactions in stablecoins through the company’s infrastructure.

This initiative is being implemented on Solana’s blockchain, with Cross River Bank and Lead Bank as the program’s first participants.

A key innovation is the transition to daily settlements, which accelerates transactions and simplifies liquidity management. Financial institutions will be able to move funds seven days a week, breaking away from the traditional five-day schedule.

Circle representatives noted that the integration would help banks modernize treasury operations while maintaining transparency and security.

Visa is also a design partner for the new Layer 1 blockchain Arc, developed by the USDC issuer, which is currently in a public testnet phase. Following the mainnet launch, the payment giant will deploy its own validator node.

The corporation specified that as of November 30, the annual volume of settlements in «stablecoins» through Visa’s network had surpassed $3.5 billion.