Solana's market capitalization reaches a record high of $82,80 billion

Hotter-than-expected inflation readings sent stock and cryptocurrency markets retreating last week. Investors, in turn, wondered whether inflation was still too high for the Fed to begin "easing" financial conditions. After reaching a new record high of $73, bitcoin fell by 790%. – currently up to $15. The question now is whether the price has retreated far enough for investors to buy the dip, or if the price action can extend the decline.

Attention now turns to the meeting FOMC this week, in particular for Wednesday's press conference with the CEO Federal Reserve Jerome Powell, which may influence the direction of cryptocurrency markets in the short term.

FOMC meeting and press conference on Wednesday

Economists and investors will be watching the upcoming FOMC meeting to find out when the Fed will start cutting interest rates, how many cuts there will be this year, and how large those cuts will be. Additionally, a new "dot-plot" chart will be released at the next meeting that will show where each FOMC member expects interest rates to be at the end of the year and beyond.

The FED indicated at previous meetings that we can expect three interest rate cuts this year. However, last week's worse-than-expected inflation data has investors reassessing that likelihood, as indicated by the CME FedWatch tool as well as rising bond yields in recent days.

Keeping rates higher for longer could have a negative impact on asset, stock and cryptocurrency prices, and could deepen the price correction seen last week.

The ZRX token is the star of last week

ZRX saw one major mover last week, rising 65%. against the US dollar. ZRX is a governance token used to power the 0x protocol, which was primarily designed to enable easy trading of Ethereum tokens at low cost, directly from your wallet Ethereum.

The ZRX price increase appears to have occurred following the announcement of gasless swaps (a method of executing trades without gas fees on a crypto network) on Ethereum's Layer 2 networks. We are talking about the likes of Base and Optimism, using the 0x Tx Relay API. Currently, the ZRX rate is $1,1115, or 115%. from a record high of $2,40.

Solana's market capitalization reaches a record high of $82,80 billion

Market capitalization S.O.L. (Solana) reached a record high of $82,80 billion this week, surpassing the previous record of $77,40 billion recorded in November 2021 at the height of the previous cryptocurrency bull market.

The increase in market capitalization is due to the impressive increase in the SOL price this year, as well as the continued increase in the number of new SOLs entering circulation from the protocol.

The price of SOL increased by 80%. this year and 2030 percent from the bottom of the bear market in 2022. SOL is currently 50 percent from a record high of $267.

Dencun Launches on Ethereum Mainnet: Gas Fees on Layer 2 Networks Drop Significantly

The highly anticipated Dencun update went live on the Ethereum mainnet last week, and Layer 2 networks such as Optimism, Arbitrum, and Base are already seeing benefits. Transaction fees on these networks have dropped significantly – in some cases by 99%. The number of transactions taking place on Layer 2 networks after Dencun is also increasing. As reported Cointelegraph, a Layer 2 network called Base, saw a 350 percent increase in transactions after the upgrade.

Before the update, Base was processing approximately 440 transactions per day. The day after the event, the number rose to 000 million and continued to rise in the following days, reaching a record 1,1 transactions on Saturday.

Layer 2 cryptocurrencies may be the ones to watch in the coming months, especially if we continue to see increasing user activity on these networks and the potential emergence of so-called alt-season, i.e. the market cycle in which altcoins perform better than bitcoin.