Shiba Inu has displayed conflicting market indicators in recent trading sessions. The token initially demonstrated bullish momentum with significant volume support, but this quickly gave way to intense selling pressure.

Technical analysis reveals SHIB is consolidating below key resistance levels, with traders closely monitoring the $0.00001450-$0.00001600 zone for potential breakout signals. On-chain metrics paint a concerning picture, with declining whale netflows (-311%) and a substantial 68% decrease in active addresses since December.

The current market structure suggests continued ranging behavior may precede a decisive directional move, with confirmation requiring a break above the descending trendline resistance at approximately $0.00002044.

With only 17% of holders currently in profit while over 80% remain underwater, any significant price increase could face substantial selling pressure as investors seek to break even.

Analysts remain divided on SHIB’s near-term prospects, with some identifying potential bullish patterns while others point to weakening fundamentals as cause for caution.

Technical Analysis Highlights

• SHIB established significant high-volume support at $0.00001417 during the 19:00 hour, followed by consistent buying pressure.
• Notable volume spikes occurred during the 04:00-06:00 timeframe, exceeding 700 million USD, confirming initial bullish momentum.
• The final trading hour saw a sharp 1.77% retracement from the high, suggesting profit-taking after the rally.
• A bearish EMA stack has formed, with price struggling to reclaim the 50-day moving average.
• A descending channel pattern emerged in the hourly chart, with lower highs and lower lows indicating short-term bearish sentiment.
• A volume spike of over 110 billion in trading coincided with a sharp breakdown below key support levels.

External References

• «SHIB Price May Jump to $0.000033 in Upcoming Rally, Analyst Says«, The Crypto Basic, published May 20, 2025.
• «Shiba Inu Coin Reaches Bearish EMA Stack After Early May Rejection: Will It Hold $0.00001450?«, CoinPedia, published May 20, 2025.

Solana developers are planning what could be the blockchain’s most ambitious core upgrade to date — one that replaces its current technology stack with a redesigned consensus protocol built for near-instant finality and responsiveness.

The new system, called Alpenglow, was unveiled on Monday by infrastructure firm Anza, a Solana Labs spinout.

It proposes replacing Proof of History — Solana’s famously unique “pre-recorded clock” system — and Tower BFT, its existing voting mechanism for reaching consensus.

BFT, or Byzantine Fault Tolerance, is a way for a group of network nodes to agree on a piece of information even if some were lying or broken.

Proof of History is one of Solana’s core features, a type of cryptographic “clock” so validators don’t have to argue over timing when recording data to the network — a shortcut that immensely speeds the network but adds complexity.

Why shift?

So why the proposed shift? Because both systems are relatively slow and complex under the hood. TowerBFT needs multiple rounds of voting, and Proof of History relies on a cryptographic clock that can cause coordination delays. Alpenglow simplifies this with faster, more direct communication and quicker consensus.

In their place comes a two-part solution:

1) Votor, which handles block finalization and can confirm transactions in as little as 100–150 milliseconds (based on current simulations).

2) Rotor, a data relay protocol that aims to transmit transaction data faster and more efficiently than Turbine, Solana’s current broadcast mechanism.

This isn’t just a tech flex, it directly impacts developer experience, user responsiveness, and the types of apps that can run natively on Solana, including real-time finance, gaming, and social tools.

These implementations could, in turn, increase on-chain activity, and by extension, SOL token demand.

Finality in under a second would mark a step-change for Layer 1 blockchains, most of which still operate on multi-second confirmation windows. Solana has already experimented with “optimistic confirmations” to reduce latency, but Alpenglow formalizes this into a provably fast protocol.

Finality means a transaction is fully confirmed and can’t be changed or reversed, making it a permanent part of the blockchain.

Per its whitepaper, Alpenglow’s Votor system could finalize blocks in a single voting round if 80% of the stake is online, or two rounds if only 60% is responsive, with both modes running concurrently to finalize on the faster path.

On the other hand, using Rotor would allow fewer “hops,” smarter relay node selection, and better bandwidth distribution to push data around the network quickly — critical for keeping block times fast without relying on a central bottleneck.

A hop is one step a piece of data takes as it moves from one computer (or node) to another across a network.

As of Tuesday, no launch date has been confirmed. But for Solana, this is more than just an upgrade — it’s a bet on speed as the chain’s identity. If it works, it could re-assert Solana’s position not just as the fastest L1, but as one of the only ones fast enough for real-time use cases.

XRP futures contracts on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME) recorded over $19 million in notional trading volume on their first day and at least $10 million on Tuesday, data shows.

The inaugural trade, a block transaction, was cleared by Hidden Road on May 18. CME’s XRP futures are available in two sizes: standard contracts representing 50,000 XRP and micro contracts representing 2,500 XRP. Both are cash-settled and benchmarked to the CME CF XRP-Dollar Reference Rate, calculated daily at 15:00 UTC.

Standard contracts bagged a volume of 7.5 million XRP on Monday and 2.95 million XRP on Tuesday, while micro contracts did 517,000 XRP on Monday and at least 1.2 million XRP on Tuesday.

Market participants see the launch of these regulated futures contracts as a step toward the potential approval of a spot XRP exchange-traded fund (ETF) in the United States.

“Spot XRP ETFs only a matter of time,” Nate Geraci, President of the ETF Store, said in an X post Monday.

Despite the strong debut of the futures contracts, XRP’s spot price remained relatively stable, trading around $2.38, with a slight increase of 0.42% over the past 24 hours.