June 2026 Update

📈📉 Market Update: The “apathy” phase of the bear market

Disclaimer: Not financial advice.

May’s Monthly Closes:

BTC: -3.6%, ETH: -11.0%, SOL: -1.1%, SUI: 1.4%, MON: -12.5%

This month’s market has been… quiet. I think we are now officially in the apathy phase of the bear market, where people simply lose interest. Especially while AI makes headlines and the stock market rips to new highs, it’s hard for crypto to maintain interest and mindshare among techies and investors. But, I always tell people, that this bear market is nowhere as brutal as the constant implosions that rocked the 2022 bear. We’ll be back, eventually.

🌐 Solana Alpenglow Testing, SIMD-525

We continue to contribute our hardware and time to participation in the community Alpenglow testing cluster. The hope is that Alpenglow be implemented as quickly as possible, bringing with it vote cost reductions that may be slated to double soon, once SIMD-525 bring’s Solana’s block times down from 400ms to 200ms.

I gave a statement to journalists at Solana Floor and was quoted in the subsequent article which does a good job covering the issue. Twice as many blocks means twice as many votes, and double the voting costs for validators. (From $2,500/month to $5,000/month at current prices) Small validators like us, already struggling to stay afloat, will find it hard to suffer indefinitely until Alpenglow will be implemented in Q3 or later.

🟣 RevTec Submitted to Colosseum Hackathon

After an enjoyable two weeks in the Berlin Build Station at my local Web3 Hub, I submitted RevTec to the Frontier hackathon. Having won “honorable mention” in the previous two hackathons, the intensified focus on product for this hackaton coincides well with the deployment of RevTec onto mainnet soon.

🇦🇹 Vienna Blockchain Week

Although I’ve been to Vienna many times, it was my first time joining the Vienna Blockchain Week, organized by Ed Prinz. Aside from the usual suspects it was good to also meet a few new faces. The conference was surprisingly formal, with attendees in suit jackets, perhaps spilling over from the adjacent Vi3nna Conference, focused on regulation. Aside from a 15 minute talk on the stage, I was also invited to a 20-minute podcast, which will be released soon.

🦭 Seal MPC

Next week we’ll be joining an MPC committee for the Seal protocol on Sui, which we’ve supported in a lesser role since launch, with a simple key server. Alongside a few other operators, the MPC DKG ceremony is scheduled for next week. It’s always a pleasure to support Mysten Labs with their latest infrastructure products, and this launch is no different!

💧 Sui Outage

Last week all Sui validators were told to shut down their validators, which had all entered a restart loop bug. After upgrading, it seems the issue came back, resulting in a 2nd outage. It seems to be fixed now, but multi-day issues don’t lend much confidence to the chain.

It’s funny, I remember all the shit that Solana took for its downtime. Sui seems to have escaped the wrath of the haters. But then again, I guess there are just less eyes on Sui in general, especially now during the bear market.

⚡️ Energy Spinoff

As I explained in a LinkedIn post, I’ve started to explore energy markets, both wholesale and balancing, with the intention of starting additional software / IT business activities in that industry. Both myself and my co-founder Daniel have Masters degrees in electrical engineering, and since graduating university I’ve been interested in electricity trading. So far, I’ve been attending conferences, doing research, and having conversations, under the brand name FlexCorps.

I don’t intend to “pivot” away from crypto, but rather am seeking a new avenue for growth, making use of the quiet time during the bear market. If you are also interested in energy and want to chat, I’m always available.

😢 Max’s Telegram Hacked

While embarrassing, it’s important to spread the word: my telegram account @maxsherwood was hacked and is no longer under my control. So far it has not been actively used to impersonate me or otherwise do anything nefarious, but be wary. My new handle is @sherwoodmax, please send me a DM so we can keep in touch, as I’ve also lost all my contacts. 2FA your telegram account, folks!

Use the bear market to build up your foundation for the next bull - and don’t forget to touch grass!

-Max Sherwood, H2O Nodes Co-founder