Hex market cap loses $4 billion in a week

Blockchain network Hex (HEX) has seen around $4 billion wiped from its market cap over the past week, according to CryptoSlate data.

Hex’s market cap dropped to as low as $2.41 billion on May 25 from a peak of $6.62 billion recorded on May 20, according to CryptoSlate’s data.

During this period, the Richard Heart-led network token declined more than 47% to a low of $0.01474 as it experienced a heavy sell-off that saw it lead CryptoSlate’s top 5 losers list for two consecutive days on May 24 and 25.

However, it appears the token enjoyed some respite during the last 24 hours, rising 3.08% to $0.01690 while its market cap has increased to $2.93 billion.

Hex Pulsechain is a top 10 blockchain network by TVL.

While HEX experienced a heavy sell-off, its sister layer-1 network Pulsechain saw the total value of assets locked on its network soar 155% to $425 million in less than a week, according to DeFillama data.

This makes the newly launched network the ninth-largest blockchain in TVL, ahead of more seasoned rivals like Cardano (ADA), Solana (SOL), and Fantom (FTM).

Pulsechain went live on May 14 as a hard fork of the Ethereum network. Its website stated that its “main differences are speed, cost, deflation, and network efficiency. Capable of hundreds of transactions per second, vastly outpaces Ethereum’s 13.”

Users lament Pulsechain’s high gas fees. 

However, Pulsechain’s users have lamented the network speed and raised issues with its high gas fees on social media platforms.

On May 14, Taproot Wizard Eric Wall shared several screenshots of Pulsechain users complaining about the gas fees. According to one of the screenshots, a user paid almost 1 million PLS tokens in gas fees for a transaction.

The community has pointed out that “if PLS value rises, the network gas fees will beat that of Ether and other networks.”

Meanwhile, Heart does not see anything wrong with these high fees, saying, “If someone else wants to pay more than you to get into a block, they get in, and you do not.”

After the early complaints, Pulsechain users have increasingly highlighted the network’s cheap transactions.

Despite these issues, Pulsechain has maintained its momentum in terms of transaction volume and social media hype. The network’s dominant protocol is the decentralized exchange PulseX which has a larger TVL than SushiSwap, according to DeFillama data.

Furthermore, the network’s PLS token was also recently listed by the crypto exchange OKX on May 23. PLS rose 6% in the last 24 hours to $0.0001985, according to CoinMarketCap data.