April 5, 2025, marks what would be the 50th birthday of Satoshi Nakamoto—the pseudonymous creator of Bitcoin. This alleged birthday is based on the date listed in his P2P Foundation profile.
While Nakamoto’s true identity remains unconfirmed, his legacy continues to shape the digital financial landscape. Here are five facts about the elusive Bitcoin architect:
April 5 Wasn’t Random
Nakamoto listed April 5, 1975, as his birthday—exactly 42 years after the US government banned private gold ownership under Executive Order 6102 on April 5, 1933, to stabilize the dollar.
Satoshi’s wallet, believed to hold 1.096 million BTC, has remained untouched since early 2010. Over the past decade, its value has risen more than 333-fold, now exceeding $91 billion.
Despite the wallet’s inactivity, CoinJoin transactions are regularly sent to its address. Some view this as an act of homage or a method of obfuscation.
Embedded in Bitcoin’s first block is the headline: “The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks.” The line is from a UK newspaper.
It is seen as a critique of centralized monetary policy and remains one of Nakamoto’s only public statements beyond technical documentation.
Fifteen years after its launch, Bitcoin remains secure and deflationary by design. Nakamoto’s codebase, while modified and improved by the open-source community, still forms the foundation of the network, securing over $1.6 trillion in value.
The metrics used to measure outcomes can be misleading when evaluating blockchain performance. As more blockchain networks emerge, the public needs clear, efficiency-focused metrics, rather than exaggerated claims, to differentiate between them.
In a conversation with BeInCrypto, Taraxa Co-Founder Steven Pu explained that it’s becoming increasingly difficult to compare blockchain performance accurately because many reported metrics rely on overly optimistic assumptions rather than evidence-based results. To combat this wave of misrepresentation, Pu proposes a new metric, which he calls TPS/$.
Why Does the Industry Lack Reliable Benchmarks?
The need for clear differentiation is growing with the increasing number of Layer-1 blockchain networks. As various developers promote the speed and efficiency of their blockchains, relying on metrics that distinguish their performance becomes indispensable.
However, the industry still lacks reliable benchmarks for real-world efficiency, instead relying on sporadic sentimental waves of hype-driven popularity. According to Pu, misleading performance figures currently saturate the market, obscuring true capabilities.
“It’s easy for opportunists to take advantage by driving up over-simplified and exaggerated narratives to profit themselves. Every single conceivable technical concept and metric has at one time or another been used to hype up many projects that don’t really deserve them: TPS, finality latency, modularity, network node count, execution speed, parallelization, bandwidth utilization, EVM-compatibility, EVM-incompatibility, etc.,” Pu told BeInCrypto.
Pu focused on how some projects exploit TPS metrics, using them as marketing tactics to make blockchain performance sound more appealing than it might be under real-world conditions.
Examining the Misleading Nature of TPS
Transactions per second, more commonly known as TPS, is a metric that refers to the average or sustained number of transactions that a blockchain network can process and finalize per second under normal operating conditions.
However, it often misleadingly hypes projects, offering a skewed view of overall performance.
“Decentralized networks are complex systems that need to be considered as a whole, and in the context of their use cases. But the market has this horrible habit of over-simplifying and over-selling one specific metric or aspect of a project, while ignoring the whole. Perhaps a highly centralized, high-TPS network does have its uses in the right scenarios with specific trust models, but the market really has no appetite for such nuanced descriptions,” Pu explained.
Pu indicates that blockchain projects with extreme claims on single metrics like TPS may have compromised decentralization, security, and accuracy.
“Take TPS, for example. This one metric masks numerous other aspects of the network, for example, how was the TPS achieved? What was sacrificed in the process? If I have 1 node, running a WASM JIT VM, call that a network, that gets you a few hundred thousand TPS right off the bat. I then make 1000 copies of that machine and call it sharding, now you start to get into the hundreds of millions of ‘TPS’. Add in unrealistic assumptions such as non-conflict, and you assume you can parallelize all transactions, then you can get “TPS” into the billions. It’s not that TPS is a bad metric, you just can’t look at any metric in isolation because there’s so much hidden information behind the numbers,” he added.
The Taraxa Co-founder revealed the extent of these inflated metrics in a recent report.
The Significant Discrepancy Between Theoretical and Real-World TPS
Pu sought to prove his point by determining the difference between the maximum historical TPS realized on a blockchain’s mainnet and the maximum theoretical TPS.
Of the 22 permissionless and single-shard networks observed, Pu found that, on average, there was a 20-fold gap between theory and reality. In other words, the theoretical metric was 20 times higher than the maximum observed mainnet TPS.
Taraxa Co-founder finds 20x difference between the Theoretical TPS and the Max Observed Mainnet TPS. Source: Taraxa.
“Metric overestimations (such as in the case of TPS) are a response to the highly speculative and narrative-driven crypto market. Everyone wants to position their project and technologies in the best possible light, so they come up with theoretical estimates, or conduct tests with wildly unrealistic assumptions, to arrive at inflated metrics. It’s dishonest advertising. Nothing more, nothing less,” Pu told BeInCrypto.
Looking to counter these exaggerated metrics, Pu developed his own performance measure.
Introducing TPS/$: A More Balanced Metric?
Pu and his team developed the following: TPS realized on mainnet / monthly $ cost of a single validator node, or TPS/$ for short, to fulfill the need for better performance metrics.
This metric assesses performance based on verifiable TPS achieved on a network’s live mainnet while also considering hardware efficiency.
The significant 20-fold gap between theoretical and actual throughput convinced Pu to exclude metrics based solely on assumptions or lab conditions. He also aimed to illustrate how some blockchain projects inflate performance metrics by relying on costly infrastructure.
“Published network performance claims are often inflated by extremely expensive hardware. This is especially true for networks with highly centralized consensus mechanisms, where the throughput bottleneck shifts away from networking latency and into single-machine hardware performance. Requiring extremely expensive hardware for validators not only betrays a centralized consensus algorithm and inefficient engineering, it also prevents the vast majority of the world from potentially participating in consensus by pricing them out,” Pu explained.
Pu’s team located each network’s minimum validator hardware requirements to determine the cost per validator node. They later estimated their monthly cost, paying particular attention to their relative sizing when used to compute the TPS per dollar ratios.
“So the TPS/$ metric tries to correct two of the perhaps most egregious categories of misinformation, by forcing the TPS performance to be on mainnet, and revealing the inherent tradeoffs of extremely expensive hardware,” Pu added.
Pu stressed considering two simple, identifiable characteristics: whether a network is permissionless and single-sharded.
Permissioned vs. Permissionless Networks: Which Fosters Decentralization?
A blockchain’s degree of security can be unveiled by whether it operates under a permissioned or permissionless network.
Permissioned blockchains refer to closed networks where access and participation are restricted to a predefined group of users, requiring permission from a central authority or trusted group to join. In permissionless blockchains, anyone is allowed to participate.
According to Pu, the former model is at odds with the philosophy of decentralization.
“A permissioned network, where network validation membership is controlled by a single entity, or if there is just a single entity (every Layer-2s), is another excellent metric. This tells you whether or not the network is indeed decentralized. A hallmark of decentralization is its ability to bridge trust gaps. Take decentralization away, then the network is nothing more than a cloud service,” Pu told BeInCrypto.
Attention to these metrics will prove vital over time, as networks with centralized authorities tend to be more vulnerable to certain weaknesses.
“In the long term, what we really need is a battery of standardized attack vectors for L1 infrastructure that can help to reveal weaknesses and tradeoffs for any given architectural design. Much of the problems in today’s mainstream L1 are that they make unreasonable sacrifices in security and decentralization. These characteristics are invisible and extremely hard to observe, until a disaster strikes. My hope is that as the industry matures, such a battery of tests will begin to organically emerge into an industry-wide standard,” Pu added.
Meanwhile, understanding whether a network employs state-sharding versus maintaining a single, sharded state reveals how unified its data management is.
State-Sharding vs. Single-State: Understanding Data Unity
In blockchain performance, latency refers to the time delay between submitting a transaction to the network, confirming it, and including it in a block on the blockchain. It measures how long it takes for a transaction to be processed and become a permanent part of the distributed ledger.
Identifying whether a network employs state-sharding or a single-sharded state can reveal much about its latency efficiency.
State-sharded networks divide the blockchain’s data into multiple independent parts called shards. Each shard operates somewhat independently and doesn’t have direct, real-time access to the complete state of the entire network.
By contrast, a non-state-sharded network has a single, shared state across the entire network. All nodes can access and process the same complete data set in this case.
Pu noted that state-sharded networks aim to increase storage and transaction capacity. However, they often face longer finality latencies due to a need to process transactions across multiple independent shards.
He added that many projects adopting a sharding approach inflate throughput by simply replicating their network rather than building a truly integrated and scalable architecture.
“A state-sharded network that doesn’t share state, is simply making unconnected copies of a network. If I take a L1 network and just make 1000 copies of it running independently, it’s clearly dishonest to claim that I can add up all the throughput across the copies together and represent it as a single network. There are architectures that actually synchronize the states as well as shuffle the validators across shards, but more often than not, projects making outlandish claims on throughput are just making independent copies,” Pu said.
Based on his research into the efficiency of blockchain metrics, Pu highlighted the need for fundamental shifts in how projects are evaluated, funded, and ultimately succeed.
What Fundamental Shifts Does Blockchain Evaluation Need?
Pu’s insights present a notable alternative in a Layer-1 blockchain space where misleading performance metrics increasingly compete for attention. Reliable and effective benchmarks are essential to counter these false representations.
“You only know what you can measure, and right now in crypto, the numbers look more like hype-narratives than objective measurements. Having standardized, transparent measurements allows simple comparisons across product options so developers and users understand what it is they’re using, and what tradeoffs they’re making. This is a hallmark of any mature industry, and we still have a long way to go in crypto,” Pu concluded.
Adopting standardized and transparent benchmarks will foster informed decision-making and drive genuine progress beyond merely promotional claims as the industry matures.
The creators of the TRUMP meme coin have moved over $52 million worth of tokens to centralized exchanges, sparking debate about the project’s motives and transparency.
The token, themed after US President Donald Trump, has gained massive attention since its launch, but now faces scrutiny over insider activity and market impact.
TRUMP Team Describes $52 Million Token Transfer as ‘Liquidity Operations’
On May 10, on-chain analytics platform Lookonchain revealed that the team behind TRUMP deposited 3.5 million tokens, valued at more than $52 million, across three major exchanges—Binance, OKX, and Bybit.
According to the firm, Binance received the largest share at 1.5 million tokens, estimated at $22 million. OKX followed with 1 million tokens worth $15 million, while Bybit received just over 500,000 tokens valued at $7.5 million.
However, the TRUMP token team claimed the transfer aimed to strengthen liquidity and maintain stable market access.
They explained that the tokens came from a pre-designated liquidity wallet created during the project’s launch. The team also assured users that all recently unlocked tokens had been relocked and would remain so for 90 days.
“Demand for $TRUMP has been tremendous. On May 10, 2025 at approximately 1:30 am UTC, 3.5 million $TRUMP will be moved onto exchanges to further support liquidity operations to help ensure continued availability of $TRUMP for both buyers and sellers. All of this liquidity is being provided from a liquidity wallet from the initial launch,” the team stated.
While the team maintains that the token transfers are part of routine liquidity management, recent findings suggest a different story.
A CNBC report, citing Chainalysis, revealed that the team behind TRUMP has earned over $320 million in trading fees.
Furthermore, there is a wide gap between investor outcomes. Of more than two million wallets holding TRUMP, roughly 760,000 are currently at a loss.
In sharp contrast, only 58 wallets have each made over $10 million, together netting about $1.1 billion in profits.
This stark imbalance suggests that a small group of insiders may have captured most of the value generated by the token.
According to BeInCrypto data, the token surged to $77 on its first trading day. However, it has since plummeted by 86%, trading near $14 at the time of writing.
Changpeng Zhao (CZ) has proposed a significant change involving gas fees for transactions on the Binance Smart Chain (BSC), sparking community interest.
Users who transact on the Binance Smart Chain pay a BSC gas fee, with CZ now calling for a significant reduction to the standing rate.
Will Binance Smart Chain Reduce BSC Gas Fees?
Any user who has ever transacted on the Binance Smart Chain has undoubtedly paid a BSC gas fee. It refers to the transaction fees required to process transactions on the BSC network.
The gas fees are paid in BNB, the powering token for the Binance ecosystem, and the native crypto of Binance Smart Chain.
Meanwhile, data on Bitbond shows gas fees of 1.3 Gwei or $0.017 for a 15-second fast transaction speed.
Users looking for normal speeds of up to one minute pay 1.1 Gwei or $0.014 in gas fees. Slow transactions of up to three minutes require a gas fee of 1.0 Gwei or $0.013.
Still, there have been times when BSC gas fees jumped, adding up quickly for arbitrage traders.
Notably, the amount of gas fees required for a transaction depends on the complexity, size, and network congestion at the time of the transaction.
Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng Zhao wants the rate revised, sharing the proposal in a post on X (Twitter).
“Let’s reduce BSC gas fees? by 3x, 10x?,” CZ posed.
Binance Users React: Will Lower Gas Fees Drive More Activity on BSC?
Notably, BSC gas fees are generally lower than on the Ethereum network. This makes BSC popular for decentralized applications (dApps) and transactions.
“Hey CZ, much appreciated, but as I use BSC chain most of the time, I have rarely felt that I’m paying any fee, like it’s too minor sometimes free,” one user remarked.
While CZ considers reducing BSC gas fees, he remains cognizant of the challenges of low gas fees. Against this backdrop, he refuted suggestions for zero gas fees.
CZ cites the role of validators and builders, who maintain network integrity and security by processing transactions, preventing double-spending, and ensuring trustless operations.
“Lots of spam, and also need to consider validators and builders,” CZ challenged.
The absence of gas fees would overwhelm the network due to a lack of cost deterrence, a common issue in blockchain systems.
To some, however, the adjustment would be a game-changer, benefiting decentralized finance (DeFi) and gaming, among other sectors. Others advocate for continued BNB burns for ecosystem growth.
“BNB burning from fees is good for BNB growth. No need to reduce,” another user wrote.
Meanwhile, it is worth mentioning that lower BSC gas fees could draw significant volume and activity. Recently, Tron founder Justin Sun advocated forlowering the costs, hoping to attract more traffic to the Tron blockchain.
“IMO, lowering fees and raising the energy cap won’t hurt TRON’s profitability. The fee cut should drive transactions to 20 M+ daily in three months, expanding market share and boosting profits. More energy will also encourage TRX staking for free transfers,” Sun stated.
He also spearheaded energy cap adjustments and reduced SunPump gas fees by 50%, lowering transaction costs to encourage greater user adoption.
Amidst these efforts, TRON’s revenue surged to record highs, placing it first among all blockchains at the time.
