Synology has faced a lot of hate over the past year for various reasons—some of which are very founded. However, a longstanding gripe of the brand’s customers is how expensive its hardware is. Here’s why I think that it’s still worth paying the Synology tax in 2026.
While I have a 60TB server sitting next to my desk, I actually keep my backups in the cloud. I know that might sound counterintuitive, but let me explain why I choose cloud-based backups instead of local-first approaches.
A loud NAS is uniquely annoying, much more so than a regular PC or laptop, and that's simply because it's always on. When you have a sound machine that runs 24/7, you either learn to ignore it or grow to hate it, and a noisy NAS is essentially exactly that.
Ever missed a 10x meme coin pump because your wallet lagged? Or paid insane fees just to move assets around? Yeah, we’ve all been there. In 2026, Solana is still the king of speed and low-cost chaos — but only if your wallet keeps up. That’s where HOT Wallet changes everything.
Solana is built for speed: sub-second finality, dirt-cheap fees, and a massive ecosystem of DeFi and meme coins. After the insane 2024–2025 memecoin boom, it became the go-to chain for traders and builders. New to Solana? Check out our quick intro video — it explains exactly why everyone’s obsessed with this chain.
HOT Wallet (developed by HOT Labs) is a non-custodial, chain-abstraction MPC wallet powered by HOT Protocol. No seed phrases to manage. Full control over your assets across chains. Available on mobile, browser extension, and Telegram Mini App — swap, bridge, stake SOL, claim airdrops, run missions, and trade wild meme coins like TRUMP, BONK, WIF, Fartcoin — all in one smooth interface.
Want the best prices every time? Here’s the 4-step flow:
- Open the Swaps section in HOT Wallet
- Select Solana network
- Pick your token pair
- On the Review screen — tweak and confirm
Quick settings breakdown:
Provider — Powered by Jupiter, Solana’s top DEX aggregator.
Always routes you the best rate across multiple DEXs.
Slippage — Crank it up for volatile new meme coins so your trade doesn’t fail.
Priority Fee — Add a small boost to jump the queue during crazy pumps. We show in our short tutorial video how HOT Wallet consistently beats other Solana wallets on price.
Moving assets in? Follow these steps:
- Go to the Bridge section
- Pick your source network and token
- Choose Solana as destination
- Select provider on Review screen:
HOT Bridge — our fast native cross-chain solution
Li.Fi — one of the strongest cross-chain aggregators in crypto
Here’s what sets us apart:
- MPC security — military-grade with 2FA and rotatable seed phrases
- Best-rate swaps — top liquidity, minimal slippage
- Built-in bridges — widest cross-chain routes of any wallet
- Storage cleanup — easily remove dust tokens and free space
- Multi-platform — Android, iOS, browser, Telegram Mini App
- SOL staking — earn rewards in-app, no lock-up
- Web3 browser — jump into dApps without leaving the wallet
- Multi-chain hub — EVM + non-EVM in one place
- Custom gas — optimize for speed or savings
- 24/7 human support — real people, not bots
HOT Wallet isn’t just another wallet — it’s your edge in the 2026 memecoin wars, airdrop seasons, and DeFi grind.
Download HOT Wallet in 30 seconds and feel the difference today.
Join the community: X | Telegram | Instagram
#Solana #Crypto #Web3 #Blockchain #Airdrop #HOTWallet #DeFi
HOT Wallet — The Best Solana Wallet in 2026 was originally published in Coinmonks on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
I do a lot of photography and videography, and those files can take up a lot of storage. I used to just store the footage and photos on my laptop’s internal storage, moving it to the NAS only when needed. Now, I just back up the footage to my NAS first and work from there, and that workflow is so much better. Here’s how I automatically back up my SD card to my NAS, and how you can too.
Self-hosting a few services on one’s own hardware is a great way to wrest some control over your online presence while learning a lot about computers, software, and networking. A common entry point is using an old computer or Raspberry Pi to get something like a small NAS, DNS-level adblocker, or home automation service online, but the hobby can quickly snowball to server-grade hardware in huge racks. [Dennis] is well beyond this point, with a rack-mounted NAS already up and running. This build expands his existing NAS to one which can host a petabyte of storage out of consumer-grade components.
The main reason for building this without relying too much on server-grade gear is that servers are generally designed to run in their own purpose-built rooms away from humans, and as a result don’t generally take much consideration for how loud that environment becomes. [Dennis] is building a lot of the components from scratch for this build including the case, the backplanes for the drives, and a backplane tester. With backplanes installed it’s time to hook up all of the data connections thanks to a few SAS expanders which provide all of the SATA connections for the 45 drives.
There are two power supplies here as well, although unlike a server solution these aren’t redundant and each only serves half the drives. This does keep it running quieter, along with a series of Noctua fans that cool the rest of the rack. The build finishes off with an LED strip which provides a quick visual status check for each of the drives in the bay. With that it’s ready for drives and to be connected to the network. It’s a ton of wiring and soldering, and great if you don’t want to use noisy server hardware. And, if you don’t need this much space or power, we’ve seen some NAS builds that are a bit on the smaller side as well.
Are you looking at buying a NAS, but have no idea what a NAS even is? A NAS can be many things, but here, I’ll break down what a NAS is, what it isn’t, and whether you actually even need one.
Crypto analyst TARA has predicted that the Bitcoin price will still rally despite bearish signals that have surfaced. She highlighted why the flagship crypto could reach this level and what could happen once it touches the price target.
In an X post, TARA opined that the Bitcoin price will reach $99,300, even though the flagship crypto is printing a bearish candlestick. She stated that BTC wants to touch this price target before it retraces deeper so that the correction does not break the critical support at $90,000. The analyst added that retracement levels for BTC will continue to be adjusted, with the new 2026 high above $97,000, while revealing subwaves on the way to the full target at $103,000.
Notably, crypto traders are currently betting on the Bitcoin price rallying past the $99,000 level and reaching the psychological $100,000 level. Polymarket data shows a 48% chance that BTC will rally to $100,000 this month. This follows the flagship crypto’s recent rally from around $92,000 to above $97,000 following the release of the soft CPI inflation data earlier this week.
The spot Bitcoin ETFs have also contributed to the Bitcoin price surge to start the year. In an X post, Bloomberg analyst Eric Balchunas highlighted that ETFs recorded net inflows of $843 million on January 14 and now boast 1-week net inflows of $1 billion and $1.5 billion year-to-date (YTD). With BTC rallying to $97,000 after trading sideways towards the end of last year, Balchunas opined that the buyers may have exhausted the sellers.
In his latest blog post, BitMEX co-founder Arthur Hayes predicted that the Bitcoin price could sustain this rally as dollar liquidity rapidly increases. Hayes expects dollar liquidity to increase as U.S. President Donald Trump finds more ways to inject liquidity into the economy. The BitMEX co-founder highlighted how Trump plans to lower mortgage rates, which could cause Americans to borrow more.
Hayes also mentioned that the liquidity in 2025 didn’t support crypto portfolios, which is why the Bitcoin price underperformed. He urged market participants not to draw wrong conclusions from the 2025 underperformance, as it was always a liquidity story rather than a cyclical bear market, as some analysts suggested.
More liquidity could also flow into the market as Trump nominates a rate-cut advocate to replace Fed Chair Jerome Powell. This could lead to larger rate cuts, which would be bullish for the Bitcoin price and the broader crypto market.
At the time of writing, the Bitcoin price is trading at around $95,300, down in the last 24 hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.
Ethereum’s outlook has been improving its case. After a prolonged period of underperformance and skepticism, the network is starting to exhibit signs of renewed structural and fundamental strength. While BTC continues to anchor the market as the primary store of value and digital gold, conditions are emerging that could allow ETH to outperform BTC over the coming period.
Ethereum has been seen outperforming Bitcoin. In a recent post on X, Walter Bloomberg revealed that Standard Chartered says that the ETH outlook has improved, and now ETH might outperform BTC, citing rising institutional demand and stronger fundamental positioning across key on-chain sectors.
While weakness in BTC has weighed on the broader crypto market, ETH has continued to benefit from institutional-driven demand, and its dominance in stablecoins, decentralized finance (DeFi), and real-world assets (RWA) tokenization.
Standard Chartered also points to the increased throughput and potential US regulatory clarity that it could provide additional upside. In terms of valuation, the bank forecasts ETH at $7,500 this year and $30,000 by 2029, reflecting the expectations of sustained network growth.
The Co-founder of PinkBrains_io, a DeFi Creator Studio, DefiIgnas, has highlighted that Ethereum could outperform Bitcoin this year, and the reason is roadmap execution. While BTC will likely keep facing recurring waves of quantum FUD into 2026, ETH has a clear roadmap to prepare for future cryptographic risks.
Furthermore, ETH is actually scaling. Gas limits on layer 1 keep rising, and zkEVMs will get full production readiness, making ETH cheap and fast enough for high-value transactions, while layer 2s will handle most of the trading and high-frequency activity.
Related Reading: Bitcoin And Ethereum Market Structure Points To Crypto Winter – Details
These upgrades are incremental, which means there’s no breaking news moment for ETH, but progress is happening fast. Early in the cycle, a lot of Degens loaded up on ETH before the bull run, but many got disillusioned and sold their ETH for BTC. “It would be fun to see the playbook reverse higher,” DefiIgnas noted.
Crypto liquidity quality witnessed a change in 2025. A technical analyst and show host of Crypto Banter, Kyledoops, reported that Wintermute noted that capital in 2025 stopped rotating broadly across the market. Instead, liquidity is concentrated into Bitcoin, Ethereum, and a small group of large-cap tokens. As a result, the long-anticipated wave of altcoin-wide liquidity never really arrived.
Meanwhile, the rise of spot ETFs and crypto treasury vehicles created a new, highly structured inflow channel that funneled flow into the top of the market. These vehicles break the crypto’s oldest playbooks. Price action is no longer driven by broad market expansion. It’s driven by where new liquidity can actually enter.
You may or may not remember my article Mount Synology NAS in Linux. Being the lucky owner of a Synology DS720+, I sometimes do some interesting things on it besides the standard stuff. And since this site is also my online notebook, I have collected all the things I have configured on my NAS in this article.
love at first bite. It's such fun when a handful of ingredients come together so deliciously. We love a good banoffee at home, and this Biscoff twist to the banoffee was everything good.
The post Biscoff Banoffee Box … truly love at first bite! appeared first on Passionate About Baking.
Few months ago I bought Synology DiskStation DS720+. I was using Synology DS218j for about 5 years and wanted to buy something more efficient. This article is a small review and a reminder for you to backup your data. If you think about NAS, you care about your data, and you want
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