Compass Investments

– In January, activity in key altcoin ecosystems, namely Solana and Ethereum, showed a noticeable rise. In the second half of the month, the number of daily active participants in Solana steadily passed the 5 million mark.

After significant network improvements, Ethereum surpassed the leading second-tier networks in terms of daily active users in December. In January, the network saw a 25 percent increase in the number of daily active users, amid efforts by its creators to “secure the future” of Ethereum.

Seven U.S. bitcoin (BTC) miners are at risk from a major storm and may temporarily suspend mining operations as the winter storm caused power outages, leaving thousands of residents without power.

Geopolitical factors, particularly US President Donald Trump’s alleged desire to acquire Greenland, are causing concern among global investors. Bitcoin is down nearly 10% from its monthly peak of $97,000. January in numbers:

As of January 28, the number of active daily addresses on the Solana network jumped 115% during the month. The total number of such participants regularly exceeded 5 million, according to Nansen.

The data collection was completed on Jan. 28.

This growth was the result of the resurgence of memcoin issuance following the launch of Anthropic’s Claude Cowork, an AI assistant capable of controlling a user’s desktop. This gave developers using the Solana-based Bags token launcher an opportunity to boost token issuance.

commissions on this platform soared to $4.5 million on January 16. In comparison, from September to December last year, daily fees rarely reached five-digit amounts, and sometimes amounted to hundreds of bucks.

During the same period, the volume of tokens launched through Bags surpassed that of Pump.fun, another popular tool for launching tokens on Solana.

Increased activity was also recorded in the Ethereum network. At the end of December, it surpassed the well-known L2 solutions Base and Arbitrum by the number of active daily addresses. In January, the growth continued by 25% .

The increase in activity was triggered by a number of important network optimizations, which increased the block size and, as a result, reduced transaction costs. On January 29, the average transaction cost in Ethereum was less than $0.01.

These improvements were part of an effort to finish building Ethereum. On January 12, one of the creators of Ethereum, Vitalik Buterin, expressed the opinion that eventually Ethereum must pass its test of strength. According to him, the true test for Ethereum is its ability to continue to function and meet the needs of users without the constant interference of developers making changes and managing the network.

Seven U.S. bitcoin mining sites may cease operations as winter storms put tremendous strain on the U.S. power grid in the southeastern and south-central regions.

According to Matthew Siegel, head of digital asset research at VanEck, the Riot, Core Scientific, CleanSpark and Bitdeer mining complexes are technically ready to operate as regulated load through utility demand response schemes.

There is no direct evidence of actual curtailment during this storm, but the model has already proven to be effective in an escalating situation.

The storm, which also affected the Midwest and Northeast, caused flight cancellations, dangerous road conditions and power outages, killing at least 20 people as of Jan. 27.

Southern states, where snowfall is not normally expected and infrastructure is not adapted to high winds, were hardest hit. As of January 28, about 400,000 people were without power in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.