One bad route nearly froze Solana

August 12, 2026

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Solana nearly lost finality. One route exposed why

Key points:

  • A Teraswitch routing failure pushed 28.83% of staked SOL offline, leaving Solana just 4.51 percentage points from losing finality.

  • The incident exposed stake concentration and weak failover, with AS20326 holding 27.34% of staked SOL and most measured validators remaining offline.

News - Solana did not halt Wednesday, but the margin was uncomfortably thin. A routing failure at hosting provider Teraswitch knocked 28.83% of staked SOL offline, taking the network roughly 86% of the way to the 33.34% threshold where transactions stop finalizing.

Engineers traced the fault to a bad route originating from Teraswitch’s Miami site and spreading through Amsterdam into Europe and Asia-Pacific. Twelve sites were affected, while North America remained online. The issue was identified within about 10 minutes, and service recovered after roughly 33 minutes.

One network, too much stake - Marinade Finance found that AS20326 carried 27.34% of all staked SOL, already above the Solana Foundation Delegation Program’s 25% ceiling for a single autonomous system. During the incident, 94% of that stake went offline at once.

Another 14.1 million SOL also dropped across unrelated providers during the same window, an overlap Marinade said it could not explain from available data.

Backups barely moved - Of 74 validators Marinade could measure, only three successfully switched to backup infrastructure. Helius, Solana’s second-largest validator, remained offline for the full 33 minutes.

Around 90 validators lost a combined 333 SOL in rewards, which validator bonds will cover. Crossing the one-third threshold would have been different: finality would have stopped network-wide, with no bond protecting against that outcome.

Bitcoin gets softer CPI. The breakout never came

Key points:

  • July CPI matched forecasts at 0.1% monthly and 3.4% annually, but Bitcoin stayed near $64,000 instead of breaking higher.

  • Rate-hike expectations eased only modestly, while options pricing and weakening $63,000 support kept traders defensive.

News - Bitcoin got the inflation print risk assets usually welcome, but little of the price reaction bulls might have expected. July CPI rose 0.1% month over month and 3.4% annually, both in line with forecasts, while core inflation eased to 2.5% year over year.

BTC briefly slipped after the release and remained broadly around $64,000, reflecting a report that removed the threat of an upside inflation surprise without materially changing the Federal Reserve outlook.

Relief without repricing - FedWatch probabilities continued to favor a September hold, while the chance of a quarter-point hike eased after the CPI release. The shift had already begun after July payrolls unexpectedly fell by 23,000, leaving Wednesday’s expected inflation reading with little new information for markets to absorb.

Attention now turns to Thursday’s Producer Price Index for another read on inflation pressure.

Protection still costs more - DWF Labs’ Andrei Grachev noted that end-August Bitcoin options near $60,000 were commanding a higher protection premium than comparable upside strikes near $70,000. That defensive skew persisted despite the calm CPI print.

The chart adds its own warning - Rekt Capital flagged progressively weaker rebounds from roughly $63,000, while Bitfinex Alpha noted Bitcoin repeatedly tested $65,000-$65,500 without securing a daily close above $65,000 since July 26.

For now, softer inflation has not been enough to overpower Bitcoin’s nearby technical resistance.

XRP lands at BMO as bridge trouble hits

Key points:

  • Bank of Montreal disclosed small positions in two XRP-linked ETFs as of June 30, adding another regulated institutional route into XRP exposure.

  • Separately, an XRPL-connected bridge lost nearly 200,000 XRP, while futures open interest climbed to its highest level since October.

News - XRP is carrying three very different signals at once: newly disclosed institutional exposure, an ecosystem security failure, and increasingly crowded futures positioning around $1.

Bank of Montreal’s (BMO) latest 13F filing showed 323 shares of the Rex Osprey XRP ETF and 20 shares of the ProShares Ultra XRP ETF inside a reportable portfolio worth more than $303 billion. The bank did not disclose direct XRP holdings, and the filing reflects positions as of June 30 rather than current exposure.

A bank enters through funds - BMO is not alone among Canadian institutions. National Bank of Canada separately disclosed 3,848 shares of the Bitwise XRP ETF, worth roughly $330,000, during the same reporting period.

Then the bridge broke - On August 9, a flaw in Tx’s XRPL bridge caused transactions that delivered no XRP to be recognized as deposits. The attacker used the resulting unbacked balances to withdraw roughly 199,916 real XRP from reserves.

Tx halted the bridge, patched the vulnerable code, hired forensics specialists, and filed an FBI complaint. Compensation options remain under review.

Leverage crowds $1 - Meanwhile, XRP futures open interest rose from 2.25 billion XRP at the start of August to 2.67 billion XRP, the highest since October.

XRP briefly slipped to $0.99 on some exchanges Tuesday before recovering near $1.02, leaving institutional access, infrastructure risk, and elevated leverage converging around the same asset.

Harmony’s exploit leaves the chain with a harder choice

Key points:

  • An apparent exploit may have created roughly 4 billion unauthorized ONE, about 26% of the pre-incident supply, with an estimated 2.8 billion reaching exchanges.

  • Harmony has patched further minting, paused its bridge, and is weighing a rollback that could also erase legitimate post-incident transactions.

News - Harmony’s immediate problem is no longer just stopping unauthorized ONE from being created. It is deciding what to do with tokens that may already have escaped the chain.

On-chain analyst Juiceberg reported that nearly 4 billion ONE were minted through empty blocks, with about 2.8 billion funneled to exchanges. Harmony has not independently confirmed the issuance total, root cause, or amount that reached trading platforms.

The exit came first - Harmony asked exchanges to freeze funds linked to four addresses and later paused its bridge. It also released an emergency patch that validators were told would prevent further minting. According to Juiceberg, only about 115 million ONE remained onchain, while the overwhelming majority had either been sold or sat in exchange deposit wallets.

ONE plunged sharply during the incident, with sources recording declines of roughly 29% to 40% across different snapshots of Wednesday trading.

Rollback solves one problem, creates another - Harmony said it is evaluating rollback options alongside its software response. Returning the network to a pre-exploit state could remove unauthorized activity still reflected onchain, but it would also reverse legitimate transactions accepted afterward.

History makes the decision heavier - Harmony previously suffered the $100 million Horizon Bridge hack in 2022, later attributed by the FBI to North Korea’s Lazarus Group. It also faced an improper ONE-minting bug in 2023.

This time, the unresolved question is not only how the tokens appeared, but whether recovering from them requires rewriting accepted chain history.

Apple’s Starlink Update Sparks Huge Earning Opportunity

Apple just secretly added Starlink satellite support to iPhones through iOS 18.3.

One of the biggest potential winners? Mode Mobile.

Mode’s EarnPhone already reaches 490M+ users that have earned over $1B, and that’s before global satellite coverage. With SpaceX eliminating "dead zones," Mode's earning technology can now reach billions more in unbanked and rural populations worldwide.

Their global expansion is perfectly timed, and investors like you still have a chance to invest in their pre-IPO offering at $0.52/share.

With their recent 32,481% revenue growth and newly reserved Nasdaq ticker, Mode is one step closer to a potential IPO.

Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation A+ Offering.

Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.

The Deloitte rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period.

Did you know?

  • A Bitcoin heist suspect escaped on the same flight as Iceland’s prime minister: In April 2018, a man being held over the theft of about 600 Bitcoin-mining computers escaped an open prison and flew to Sweden on an Icelandair flight that was also carrying Prime Minister Katrín Jakobsdóttir.

  • INTERPOL built its own crypto underground for police: In 2015, INTERPOL and Dutch research organization TNO created a private Darknet network, private cryptocurrency, and simulated marketplace so law enforcement officers could train inside a controlled recreation of the virtual underground used by criminals.

  • The physical Bitcoin mint came back without the Bitcoin: After FinCEN told Casascius creator Mike Caldwell that his pre-funded physical Bitcoin operation required money-transmitter registration, he stopped taking orders in 2013. He reopened in 2014 with a workaround: coins shipped by mail would arrive unfunded, leaving buyers to load the bitcoin themselves.

Glean insights from across the podcast landscape.

Search by company, by theme, or by entity, and get alerted the moment something airs. Each result is cited back to the exact quote, speaker, and episode.

Top 3 coins of the day

Audiera (BEAT)

Key points:

  • BEAT’s rebound reached the 9 MA near $1.07, but the bearish 9/21 MA alignment showed that trend repair remained limited.

  • Awesome Oscillator stayed below zero at -0.9767, although contracting negative bars showed that downside momentum had begun easing.

What you should know:

BEAT’s rebound was still fighting the damage from its August 11 collapse. Price recovered to $1.06 and pressed against the $1.067 9 MA, but the 9 MA remained below the $1.86 21 MA, leaving the short-term trend firmly bearish.

Momentum did improve at the margin. Awesome Oscillator stayed negative at -0.9767, but its bars contracted from deeper lows as selling pressure eased. Audiera also reported burning 800,200 BEAT using roughly 2.81 million USDT in platform revenue for August 3-10.

$1.06-$1.10 is the first resistance zone, followed by $1.25-$1.35. $0.95-$1 is the immediate support area, while $0.80-$0.88 remains the deeper downside zone if stabilization fails.

Solana (SOL)

Key points:

  • SOL slipped below its 9 and 21 MAs after the rebound stalled, while RSI reset to 49.28 from overbought territory.

  • Selling volume expanded on the latest rejection, but the broader $74.80-$75 support area remained intact.

What you should know:

SOL’s rebound lost its momentum edge before the range itself broke. After reaching $77.40-$77.50, price slipped to $75.75 and fell below the 9 MA at $76.02 and 21 MA at $76.29, while RSI cooled from above 70 to 49.28.

The pullback also came after a hosting-provider routing failure temporarily knocked nearly 29% of staked SOL offline, although the network continued finalizing transactions. Anza has scheduled Agave v4.2 for August 17, with the update set to halve slot times and cut storage costs by 90%.

$75.50-$75.70 is immediate support, with $74.80-$75 below. Reclaiming $76-$76.30 would repair the short-term setup, while $76.80-$77 remains the next resistance zone.

Uniswap (UNI)

Key points:

  • UNI broke its prior higher-low structure and printed a fresh Low near $3.40 as selling volume surged.

  • RSI fell to 28.26, putting momentum in oversold territory, but price had not yet rebuilt a bullish swing structure.

What you should know:

UNI’s selloff did more than extend the decline. It broke the prior higher-low sequence after repeated lower highs, pushing price into the $3.40-$3.46 support zone on heavy volume.

RSI dropped to 28.26, signaling oversold momentum, but that alone does not confirm a reversal. The weakness also came amid renewed scrutiny of Uniswap’s fee-switch and UNIfication model. Separately, Uniswap launched its Morpho-powered Earn feature on August 10, letting users deploy USDC, USDT, and ETH into lending yields through its Web App and Wallet.

$3.55-$3.60 is the first resistance zone, followed by $3.70-$3.80. A break below $3.40-$3.46 puts $3.30-$3.34 in focus.

Markets move. Headlines catastrophize. Inside the noise is the story that matters — the opportunity, not the fear. The Daily Upside: global business and finance, reported without the alarm.

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