Stablecoins may anchor Ethereum’s real-world adoption, but an analyst warns that the network must solve cross-layer fragmentation to stay ahead in the next phase of DeFi. The Ethereum network is staging a comeback in 2025 as bot-driven activity and stablecoin growth push the mainnet back into the center of decentralized finance (DeFi). On June 4, crypto trading platform CEX.io reported that automated bots facilitated 4.84 million stablecoin transfers on Ethereum’s layer-1 blockchain in May. The volume reached $480 billion, its highest to date. Illia Otychenko, the lead analyst at crypto exchange Cex.io, linked the activity surge to lower transaction fees in the first quarter of 2025, which helped reverse a multi-year trend of liquidity and user migration to rival blockchains and Ethereum layer-2 networks. Read more
A Bitcoin miner secured a $330,000 block reward despite network difficulty surging to a record 126.98 trillion. A solo Bitcoin miner successfully mined block 899,826, earning a reward worth $330,386, a rare feat amid record-high network difficulty. According to mempool.space data, the block was confirmed at 3:48 am UTC on June 5 and included 3,680 transactions. The miner, operating under the Solo CK pool, collected a subsidy of 3.125 Bitcoin (BTC) plus an additional 0.026 BTC in fees. The average fee per transaction in block 899,826 was around $0.29, with a median fee rate of around 2 satoshis per virtual byte (sat/vB), suggesting relatively light network congestion at the time. Read more