hodler

23 Jan 2026, 14:39

Bitcoin Difficulty Slides to September 2025 Levels as Miner Margins Stay Squeezed

Bitcoin’s mining difficulty eased on Thursday, sliding 3.28% from 146.47 trillion to 141.67 trillion—a level not seen since September 2025, and a welcome breather after months of grind. The adjustment should favor bitcoin miners, especially as revenue per petahash (PH/s) has slipped 5.45% over the past week, making this recalibration feel less like charity and

23 Jan 2026, 12:25

Brevis Incentra STAK Rewards: A Strategic Masterstroke for Ethereum DeFi Holders

BitcoinWorld Brevis Incentra STAK Rewards: A Strategic Masterstroke for Ethereum DeFi Holders In a significant move for the Ethereum decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, the zero-knowledge proof innovator Brevis has strategically launched a targeted rewards campaign through its native Incentra platform. This initiative, announced on January 22, 2025, directly engages holders of YieldNest’s yield-bearing STAK token with a substantial 2,500 STAK reward pool. Consequently, this campaign highlights the evolving intersection of verified computing and decentralized finance incentives. Brevis Incentra STAK Rewards Campaign: Core Mechanics and Timeline The Brevis Incentra platform initiated its rewards campaign precisely at 1:00 p.m. UTC on January 22, 2025. The campaign specifically targets existing STAK token holders on the Ethereum mainnet. Furthermore, the program will distribute its total reward allocation of 2,500 STAK tokens over a concise, three-week operational period. This structured approach ensures a clear and time-bound incentive for participation. To understand this campaign’s significance, one must examine its foundational components: Brevis: A verified computing platform leveraging zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs. It allows smart contracts to trustlessly compute over data from any blockchain. Incentra: Brevis’s native platform designed to create and manage incentive structures, reward distributions, and governance mechanisms. STAK: The yield-bearing token from YieldNest, a liquid restaking protocol. STAK represents a user’s stake across various restaking strategies. This campaign represents a direct application of Brevis’s technology, using Incentra to verifiably identify and reward a specific on-chain cohort—STAK holders. The Strategic Rationale Behind the Token Distribution Analysts view this campaign as a multi-faceted strategic play. Primarily, it serves as a user acquisition and retention tool for the Brevis ecosystem. By targeting YieldNest’s user base, Brevis accesses a community already deeply engaged with advanced DeFi primitives like liquid restaking. Moreover, the campaign demonstrates a practical use case for Brevis’s ZK-proof technology in managing transparent and fraud-proof reward distributions. The decision to use STAK tokens, rather than a native Brevis token, is particularly insightful. This approach: Avoids immediate sell pressure on a new token. Adds tangible value to the existing STAK token economy. Fosters collaboration between complementary DeFi projects. Industry observers note that such cross-protocol incentives are becoming a hallmark of mature DeFi ecosystems, moving beyond simple liquidity mining. Expert Analysis: The Verification and Trust Angle The deployment of zero-knowledge proof technology is central to this campaign’s credibility. ZK proofs enable the Incentra platform to verify a user’s eligibility—their STAK holdings—without exposing their entire wallet history or balance. This preserves privacy while ensuring absolute proof of compliance with campaign rules. Experts in blockchain verification posit that this method reduces administrative overhead and eliminates disputes over eligibility, creating a trust-minimized reward system. As one protocol architect stated, “Campaigns like this showcase how ZK tech moves beyond scaling into core utility: provable, private, and programmable incentives.” Contextualizing the Move Within 2025 DeFi Trends This launch occurs within a specific market context in early 2025. The DeFi sector has increasingly prioritized sustainable yield sources and verifiable on-chain activity over hyper-inflationary rewards. The Brevis campaign aligns with this trend by rewarding users of a yield-bearing asset, not just passive holders. Additionally, the integration of ZK technology addresses growing regulatory and community demands for transparency and data-verifiable processes without sacrificing user privacy. A comparison with earlier reward models highlights the evolution: Model Typical Reward Key Innovation Sustainability Traditional Liquidity Mining (2020-2022) High-APY native tokens Bootstrapping liquidity Low (often led to sell-offs) Points & Airdrop Farming (2023-2024) Prospective airdrop allocations Engagement tracking Medium (dependent on future token value) Verified Cohort Rewards (2025) Existing valuable tokens (e.g., STAK) ZK-proof verification of specific user actions/holdings High (rewards tangible existing assets) This campaign fits squarely into the third, more mature category, indicating a shift towards quality over quantity in user incentives. Potential Impacts on the Broader Ethereum Ecosystem The immediate impact of the Brevis Incentra STAK rewards campaign is the direct distribution of value to a targeted user group. However, the secondary effects could be more profound. Success may encourage other ZK and infrastructure projects to design similar verified reward programs, potentially increasing demand for assets like STAK. Furthermore, it validates YieldNest’s position as a key restaking primitive, as its token is chosen as a reward vehicle by a separate, sophisticated platform. From a technical standpoint, the campaign stress-tests Brevis’s Incentra platform under real economic conditions. Data on participation rates, distribution efficiency, and network cost will provide valuable insights for future development. Ultimately, this move strengthens the connective tissue between different layers of the Ethereum stack—from restaking (YieldNest) to verified computation (Brevis). Conclusion The launch of the Brevis Incentra STAK rewards campaign marks a sophisticated development in DeFi incentive design. By leveraging zero-knowledge proof technology to verifiably reward holders of a yield-bearing token, Brevis has executed a strategic masterstroke. This initiative not only directly benefits STAK holders with a 2,500 token pool but also demonstrates a practical, transparent, and collaborative model for ecosystem growth. As the three-week campaign progresses, it will undoubtedly serve as a benchmark for how verified computing can drive meaningful participation in the evolving 2025 decentralized finance landscape. FAQs Q1: What is the Brevis Incentra STAK rewards campaign? The campaign is a three-week incentive program run by Brevis through its Incentra platform. It distributes 2,500 STAK tokens to users who hold YieldNest’s STAK token on the Ethereum network as of the campaign start date. Q2: Who is eligible for the STAK rewards? Eligibility is automatically verified by the Brevis platform using zero-knowledge proofs. Any Ethereum address holding the STAK token at the defined snapshot time (campaign start) is eligible to claim a portion of the rewards. Q3: Do I need to take any action to participate? Typically, eligible holders must visit the official Incentra platform to claim their rewards. Always verify the official Brevis channels for precise claiming instructions and beware of phishing sites. Q4: Why is Brevis using STAK tokens instead of its own token? Using STAK, an established yield-bearing token, adds immediate value for recipients, supports a partner ecosystem (YieldNest), and demonstrates a sustainable incentive model that doesn’t rely on inflating a new token’s supply. Q5: How does zero-knowledge (ZK) proof technology relate to this rewards campaign? Brevis uses ZK proofs to privately and verifiably confirm that a user’s wallet holds STAK tokens, meeting the campaign rules without compromising the user’s broader financial privacy. This ensures the reward distribution is trustless and accurate. This post Brevis Incentra STAK Rewards: A Strategic Masterstroke for Ethereum DeFi Holders first appeared on BitcoinWorld .

23 Jan 2026, 10:30

Miner Weekly: AI Inherits Bitcoin Mining’s Hard Lesson – Locals Matter

For much of the past decade, bitcoin miners expanding across the United States learned that access to cheap power and industrial land did not guarantee social license. After China’s 2021 mining ban pushed activity stateside, projects in New York, Texas, Arkansas and Kentucky were met with complaints over noise, power prices and environmental impact—often after

23 Jan 2026, 10:30

Qubic Says Dogecoin Mining Build Is Underway, Revives 51% Attack Fears

Qubic says it is now building a Dogecoin mining integration, a step that moves the project’s post-Monero “attention” narrative into an implementation phase and reopens a familiar set of security questions around majority-hashrate risk. In an X post shared Thursday, Qubic wrote: “The community didn’t hesitate. The vote was decisive: DOGE won with 301 votes. This isn’t a plug-and-play upgrade. Integrating ASIC hardware into uPoW requires real engineering, deep protocol work, and time to do it right. But the upside is significant. DOGE represents one of the largest and most established mining economies in crypto. Bringing it into Qubic’s useful Proof-of-Work model extends uPoW beyond theory, into scale. Development is underway. This is just the beginning of what is to come.” Dogecoin mining integration is actively in development. The community didn’t hesitate.The vote was decisive: #DOGE won with 301 votes. This isn’t a plug-and-play upgrade. Integrating ASIC hardware into uPoW requires real engineering, deep protocol work, and time to do it… pic.twitter.com/7aBgxfLdDR — Qubic (@_Qubic_) January 22, 2026 Could Dogecoin Suffer A 51% Attack? The announcement lands with baggage. In August 2025, Qubic ran what it publicly described as a Monero “takeover demonstration,” claiming it had achieved “over 51% hashrate dominance” during parts of the experiment and reporting a brief chain disruption that included a six-block reorganization and orphaned blocks.That episode became a lightning rod for the broader PoW security debate: how quickly external incentives can concentrate hashpower, and how markets react when “51%” enters the conversation. Subsequent research challenged the strongest interpretation of those claims. A December 2025 paper reconstructing Qubic-attributed activity on Monero describes the operation as an advertised “selfish mining campaign,” finding Qubic’s hashrate share rising into the 23–34% range in detected intervals, while “sustained 51% control is never observed.” Dogecoin’s mining economy is structurally unlike Monero’s CPU-oriented RandomX landscape. Dogecoin uses Scrypt and has, since 2014, supported merged mining alongside Litecoin, an architecture that has historically helped bolster its security budget by tapping into a broader Scrypt ASIC miner base. That hardware reality is central to Qubic’s own messaging. The project said “integrating ASIC hardware into uPoW requires real engineering, deep protocol work, and time to do it right,” explicitly acknowledging that this is not a simple pool launch. It is also where most of the immediate 51% attack fears run into friction. In an August 2025 research note, published when Qubic first began floating Dogecoin as the “next” network after Monero, 21Shares argued that a brute-force Dogecoin majority would be economically prohibitive, estimating that Qubic would need to match and then exceed roughly 2.78 PH/s, implying about $2.85 billion in hardware plus roughly $2.5 million per day in electricity (before logistics). The more plausible risk vector, if any, is not Qubic buying its way to majority hashrate, but whether it can engineer incentives and integrations that convince existing Scrypt ASIC operators to route meaningful hashpower through a Qubic-mediated setup, an approach 21Shares characterized as “vampire mining.” At press time, DOGE traded at $0.12521.

23 Jan 2026, 09:45

Railgun develops private DeFi on Ethereum

Railgun, one of the main mixers in the Ethereum ecosystem, is preparing for confidential DeFi. The mixer checks for flagged addresses, but allows all other users to transact with confidentiality. Railgun is setting the stage for confidential DeFi, obscuring whale moves, lending, or other operations. DeFi remains highly transparent and is used for signals and data, while also exposing high-profile wallets. The project is preparing for Railgun_connect, the universal DeFi connector for private addresses. Railgun will use 0zk private addresses, which do not appear on the blockchain, but instead use zero-knowledge proofs to ensure validity. Private addresses are the opposite of readable vanity addresses, completing transactions away from the public ledger and only using Ethereum for security. Railgun announced it was already testing its confidential infrastructure for CowSwap, one of the most widely used aggregators for DEX. The goal is to make private addresses as functional as public ones. As of January 2026, the Railgun Private System already holds around $100M in funds, mostly in WETH, USDT, and USDC. Railgun has spread beyond Ethereum, taking up BSC, Polygon, and Solana, with the potential to cover the most liquid DeFi chains. The native RAIL token is at $2.30, getting a boost from relatively strong usage, as well as the privacy narrative. Railgun to cover all DeFi activities Railgun expects to include all types of apps in the Railgun_connect system. Those will include borrowing, lending, swaps, stablecoin staking or liquid staking, as well as general transactions. Currently, an app still needs multiple steps to use a private 0zk address, but Railgun aims to build the feature into protocol frontends. As a result, users will be able to use the balance in their private wallets , which will be untraceable on the Ethereum L1 chain. If completed successfully, Railgun can add privacy to all existing apps, liquidity pools, and protocols. Users seeking privacy will not need to bridge funds or use a mixer as an extra step. In theory, all Ethereum-based capital can become private and continue to move privately. Privacy may make exploit tracking harder Railgun aims to strike a balance between privacy and protection. The mixer pre-screens some Ethereum addresses, though new exploits can deposit funds before the wallets are flagged. Railgun is also solving the problem of complex DeFi , especially in terms of collateral and liquidations. To track balances, each confidential address will issue a special NFT that tracks balances and activities. For all DeFi activity, the special NFT, called Mechs, will interact with the app front ends to execute transactions and liquidations. The process will never expose the actual balance in the confidential address, only taking ZK Proofs from the wallet owner. For now, the Railgun feature is tested in Terminal Wallet, through the CowSwap frontend. The feature is still far from mass usage, but it may increase DeFi security in the future. Want your project in front of crypto’s top minds? Feature it in our next industry report, where data meets impact.

23 Jan 2026, 07:30

Investor Sentiment Updates: Institutions Reposition in Bitcoin Mining

Institutions increased positions in Bitcoin miners during the first 9 months of 2025, with $IREN, $APLD, $CIFR, and $RIOT leading gains in holder numbers and capital flows. The following guest post comes from BitcoinMiningStock.io, a public markets intelligence platform delivering data on companies exposed to Bitcoin mining and crypto treasury strategies. Originally published on Jan.