Day: October 1, 2022

Solana Restores Network Outage After Successful Cluster Restart, But SOL Price Still Struggling

by Blockchain News

Solana, a decentralized blockchain built to enable scalable, user-friendly apps, announced on Saturday that its network is back online following an outage on Friday night caused by a misconfigured node that stopped the blockchain from processing transactions.

A single misconfigured node took down the entire network – the glitch caused the outage for several hours. Solana informed its users about the blackout but raised confidence that its developers were on site working to diagnose and fix the problem.

A validator appeared running a duplicate validator instance, which caused the blockchain to fork because validators couldn’t agree on which one was correct.

The fork caused an obscure code path that left validators unable to switch back to the main fork. The software and blockchain company Stakewiz, which operates a validator node on Solana, explained the matter online via Twitter social media. Stakewiz suggested the Solana network’s failure to rectify the situation was due to a failed node failover setup.

After working to fix the blackout, the Solana developers made a decision to restart the network. The team said they performed the necessary restart of Mainnet Beta at 8 a.m. London time. The restart rebooted the network, and Solana then said “validators are operating successfully now. Network operators and dapps will continue to restore client services for the next several hours.”

Although Solana has been describing itself as a high-performance blockchain, the network has recently suffered a series of multiple outages. In September last year, the network went offline for nearly 18 hours.

In January this year, Solana witnessed a major blackout that lasted as long as 18 hours, the incident prompted anger from frustrated traders who watched their portfolio values plunge while unable to offload tokens. In early May, the network froze for about seven hours until validators restarted. In June, the network support structure suffered an outage of more than four hours.

Due to the latest network outage, the Solana token prices are down by 6.25% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap. At the time of writing, Solana’s (SOL) price is trading at $32.93 per coin. SOL dropped by 2.12% in the past 7 days and is down 87.33% below its all-time high.

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Germany’s Deutsche Telekom Rolls Out Ethereum Validator Node, Staking Support

by Blockchain News

Telecom giant Deutsche Telekom, the parent company of T-Mobile, announced on Thursday the launch of its Ethereum staking services.

The German company stated that its T-Systems Multimedia Solutions (MMS) division is working with a liquid Ethereum 2.0 staking service and DAO StakeWise to operate a staking pool that allows customers to participate in validating transactions without having to run a validator themselves. Deutsche Telekom is also participating in the governance of the StakeWise decentral autonomous organization (DAO).

In a statement, the Head of Blockchain Solutions Center at T-Systems MMS, Dirk Röder, said, “As a node operator, our entry into liquid staking and the close collaboration with a DAO is a novelty for Deutsche Telekom.”

Deutsche Telekom believes liquid staking through its new service will attract customers because, like other such services such as Lido, the offering helps customers save time and the hassle of having to set up a validator node for themselves. Furthermore, liquid staking is cheaper than ordinary Ethereum staking which requires users to set up their own node and they need to stake at least 32 ETHs, which at today’s price is around $43,338 in order to participate in staking activity.

Deutsche Telekom has been actively participating in the crypto landscape for some time. Last year, the company entered into the crypto space by investing in Celo, a San Francisco-based blockchain startup that offers cryptocurrency on mobile services.

Last month, T-Mobile, a subsidiary of Deutsche Telekom, partnered with Nova Labs to launch a new 5G wireless service called Helium Mobile that aims to allow users to earn rewards in crypto tokens for sharing data.

Why Users Are Preferring Liquid Staking

Ethereum staking is the process in which users lock up their funds to help validate blocks and secure the Ethereum network. In return, they receive staking rewards in the form of more ETH. However, many limitations still hinder users from participating in the staking process. For example, investors are required to deposit a minimum of 32 ETH collateral (worth approximately $43,338) to become a validator. This is quite expensive for ordinary investors.

Liquid staking resolves such limitations as it allows users to stake any amount of Ethereum and to effectively unstake their ETH without the unnecessary requirements of transactions. As a result, Ethereum staking has been gaining more popularity as it is an alternative way in which users are locking up their stakes and earning rewards.

Late last month, Coinbase launched its liquid staking token, called Coinbase Wrapped Staked ETH (cbETH), ahead of the Ethereum blockchain’s Merge – a liquid staking service that allows users to generate extra yield on top of standard rewards for staking or locking crypto tokens in a network. Binance, Lido Finance, and Kraken are also other institutions that run major Ethereum staking pools.

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BendDAO Considering Expanding into ApeCoin NFT Staking Programme

by Blockchain News

BendDAO, an NFT finance protocol, is considering a proposal to enable ApeCoin (APE) staking on its platform through a new yield aggregator product called BendEarn.

On September 29, a BendDAO community member called vis.eth made the proposal that highlighted how it would work.

Besides that, the BendDAO team also made a development plan for the implementation of the ApeCoin (APE) staking platform, estimating it would take two to three weeks to build. If the community backs the idea, then it will go for a vote to see the new platform implemented.

ApeCoin (APE) Staking is a new platform scheduled to go live on October 31. In May, ApeCoin DAO — a decentralized organization that uses the cryptocurrency ApeCoin as its governance token – voted to pick Zero-knowledge and blockchain infrastructure firm Horizen Labs to build its ApeCoin staking platform, which will offer token rewards to users who stake (or hold) APE, Bored Ape, Mutant Ape, and Bored Ape Kennel Club NFTs in their four respective pools.

Earlier this month, Horizen Labs shared the staking platform’s user interface consisting of a dashboard, four staking pools, and market tools.

BendDAO also plans to have the same four staking pools on its BendEarn platform. According to BendDAO, the first staking pool will be a tool where users can stake their APE tokens alone. The other three pools will involve pairing one of three major Yuga NFTs — Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Bored Ape Kernel Club — with APE tokens.

BendDAO developers are intending to develop the BendEarn platform in two phases. The first stage will cover the development of the smart contract for APE staking. On the other hand, the second stage will focus on building out the BendEarn contracts and distributing NFTs and APE tokens to the different staking pools.

BendDAO developers are planning to develop earning strategies on top of the BendEarn NFT lending platform. Therefore, BendEarn will act as a yield optimizer for APE staking. And all the above-mentioned Yuga NFTs (Bored Ape Yacht Club, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Bored Ape Kernel Club) used as collateral for obtaining loans on BendDAO can be staked on BendEarn.

BendDAO community also plans to charge a 3% staking fee on the revenue generated by the BendEarn platform but members will have to agree on what to do with the funds. This decision is part of the motions awaiting voting exercise by the BendDAO community members to approve the deployment of the BendEarn staking platform.

The last two years have been successful moments for NFT enthusiasts, with unprecedented demand for digital ownership creating a new and exciting asset class right. It marked a crazy period for buying, selling, and trading NFTs as investors sought new ways to leverage their assets.

The developments subsequently gave birth to NFT lending, a new landscape that now enables users to lend their NFTs for instant payouts in crypto and cash.

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Amber Group Successfully Replicates Wintermute’s $160M Hack

by Blockchain News

Many may consider hackers to be geniuses, however, their talent can always be reciprocated and Amber Group has just proven that.

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The crypto firm announced on Twitter that it was able to replicate the $160 million hack of Wintermute by reproducing the private key that was used to carry out the attack.

“We have reproduced the recent Wintermute hack. Figured out the algorithm to build the exploit. We were able to reproduce the private key on a MacBook M1 with 16G memory in <48h,” the firm tweeted following its self-initiated investigation into the exploit event.

Amber Group confirmed its claims by leaving an on-chain message to prove its claims. When the Wintermute protocol was hacked on September 20, Chief Executive Officer, Evgeny Gaevoy noted that despite the exploit, the protocol is still very solvent and can fulfill all of its obligations to its creditors and users.

Per the insight that the Amber Group investigation proffered, the digital currency platform said that it too “could extract the private key belonging to Wintermute’s vanity address and estimate the hardware and time requirements to crack the address generated by Profanity.”

The attempt proved successful and Amber said “Profanity relied on a particular elliptic curve algorithm to generate large sets of public and private addresses that had certain desirable characters.” As part of Amber Group’s conclusion, the firm said the process that was used to generate the addresses that were used to exploit Wintermute is not random and could easily be regenerated.

“We figured out how Profanity divides the job on GPUs. Based on that, we can efficiently compute the private key of any public key generated by Profanity. We pre-compute a public key table, then do reverse computation until we find the public key in the table,” Amber said.

The replication exercise showcased that hacks can be successfully investigated, and proactive solutions designed to help forestall negative events like those of Wintermute’s.

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US CFTC Charges Crypto Futures Exchange Digitex for Registration and Trading Violations

by Blockchain News

The US Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CTFC) has charged crypto futures exchange Digitex and its founder and CEO Adam Todd for multiple violations associated with the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA).

According to the regulator’s filing, as seen on Friday in the Southern District of Florida, the CTFC’s complaint accused Todd of using various corporate entities – including Digitex LLC, Digitex Ltd., Digitex Software Ltd., and Blockster Holdings Ltd. Corp., – to run an illegal crypto derivatives trading platform.

As per the watchdog, Digitex Futures exchange met the definition of the designated contract market or foreign board of trade, but never registered with the CTFC as a futures commission merchant, and therefore violated the CEA.

The CTFC accused Todd and the entities of failing to implement proper know-your-customer checks and a customer information program as required by the Bank Secrecy Act – a violation that can land lawbreakers in jail for up to five years.

The CTFC further alleges that Todd attempted to manipulate the price of the exchange’s native token, DGTX, using noneconomic trading to “pump” its price higher. The regulator stated that Todd allegedly manipulated the price of DGTX by buying tokens, not with the intent of making money on the individual trades, but artificially inflating the exchange’s holdings by pumping the price of the token.

“Unless restrained and enjoined by this Court, Defendants are likely to continue to engage in the acts and practices alleged in this complaint and similar acts and practices,” the regulator stated in its filing document.

The CFTC is seeking full restitution on behalf of defrauded participants, as well as disgorgement, civil monetary penalties, trading, and registration bans against Todd and the Digitex-related entities.

The agency’s enforcement action is the latest in a recent series of crypto-related lawsuits brought by the watchdog, which appears to be an ongoing regulatory crackdown on rulebreakers in the cryptocurrency and other digital asset trading platforms.

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Simplify Asset Management Unveiled Bitcoin Strategy-related ETFs

by Blockchain News

On September 30, Simplify Asset Management, a registered investment advisor, announced the official launch of the Bitcoin Strategy ETF dubbed the “Simplify Bitcoin Strategy PLUS Income ETF” with the code “MAXI”.

The Simplify asset management firm’s ETFs have total assets under management of $1.4 billion. The MAXI Fund is listed on Nasdaq and charges a management fee of 0.97%.

The Simplified Bitcoin Strategies Risk Management Yield ETF holds not the cryptocurrency itself, but the price of cryptocurrency futures, and is designed to earn yield through three strategies: a Bitcoin futures strategy, a yield strategy, and an option stacking strategy.

MAXI seeks capital gains and income by providing investors with exposure to Bitcoin while generating income by selling short-term put or call spreads on the most liquid global stock indices.

As reported in April, the asset management firm filed an application for a bitcoin strategy ETF with the SEC.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has approved the third U.S. bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) product, which tracks futures prices for the world’s largest crypto asset. Teucrium’s approval joins other issuers such as ProShares and VanEck, both of which were approved last year to list bitcoin futures-based ETFs. More Bitcoin ETF products are expected to be traded in the market.

In late September, BlackRock, a New York-based US multinational investment company, expanded its crypto service offerings by launching a new exchange-traded fund (ETF) that provides exposure to blockchain and crypto companies for its European customers.

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SoftBank Vision Fund to Cut 30% of Global Workforce

by Blockchain News

According to Bloomberg reports, the investment department of the Vision Fund under the Japanese multinational company SoftBank Group is preparing to lay off 30% of its global employees, a total of about 150 staff.

Masayoshi Son, CEO of SoftBank Group, publicly stated that the reason is that the valuation of the companies invested in has fallen sharply, and SoftBank Group has collectively suffered a record quarterly loss.

The group lost about 3.2 trillion yen ($23.4 billion) in the three-month period through June, with $17.3 billion tied to the Vision Fund, according to Bloomberg.

SoftBank Vision Fund is a venture capital fund founded in 2017 and is part of SoftBank Group. With more than $100 billion in capital, it is the world’s largest technology-focused portfolio investment fund. In 2019, SoftBank Vision Fund 2 was established. As of March 31, 2021, the combined fair value of the two funds was $154 billion.

The second phase of the Vision Fund has invested in 269 companies, and the investment cost is about 48.2 billion US dollars. As of the end of June, the value was only 37.2 billion US dollars.

The Vision Fund has invested in many companies, such as Uber and Didi. From April to June, the Vision Fund lost $23.1 billion.

Japan’s SoftBank invested $200 million into the Mercado Bitcoin crypto exchange in Brazil, which is considered the largest capital raised through a Series B funding round in Latin America’s history in 2021.

In August, Softbank Ventures also invested in MarqVision, a startup known for its Artificial Intelligence (AI) powered platform.

The startup fights to counterfeit with an “advanced technology that effectively removes knockoffs and digital piracy – including product images, NFTs, and more.”

To raise cash, SoftBank has pulled out of companies such as Uber and property sales platform Opendoor Technologies for $5.6 billion.

Z Holdings, the internet subsidiary of Japanese multinational SoftBank Group, plans to launch a marketplace for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) by the end of this year, according to reports.

The marketplace aims to help the company hit its mid-term revenue goals by capitalizing on the growing craze surrounding digital collectibles. A market for non-fungible tokens (NFTs) is planned to be launched by the end of this year.

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DeFiance Capital Seeking $100M in Funding to Invest in Liquid Tokens

by Blockchain News

Crypto Venture Capital firm, DeFiance Capital is in the process of raising as much as $100 million as it looks to invest in “Liquid Tokens.”

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According to three sources familiar with the matter who spoke to The Block, the fund is dubbed the “Liquid Venture Fund,” and one of the sources affirmed that more than 50% of the projected capital had been raised.

 

DeFiance Capital prides itself as a “sub-fund and share class of Three Arrows Capital” of crypto hedge fund giant Three Arrows Capital (3AC). However, when the Su Zhu-led firm crashed back in June owing to its exposure to the collapsed Terra ecosystem, DeFiance Capital denounced its integral association with 3AC.

 

The Arthur Cheong-led VC came out to say it is a separate entity that was managed independently of 3AC upon the latter’s liquidation. That DeFiance Capital has not gone bankrupt is a testament to its upright financial standing at this time.

 

The firm is known as a major backer of some of the iconic names in both the Non-Fungible Token (NFT), Decentralized Finance (DeFi), and Web3.0 ecosystems. Specifically, DeFiance Capital’s top portfolio includes Axie Infinity, Avalanche, Solana, and ConsenSys to mention a few.

 

According to two of the sources, DeFiance Capital may not wait until 100% of the fund is raised before it starts injecting the funds into the project’s liquid tokens. The liquid tokens are digital currencies that have either already been listed on a trading platform or are about to be listed. 

 

Some of the sources confirmed that the firm has raised part of the funds from a crypto fund as well as a few family offices. There is no idea whether DeFiance Capital has earmarked the tokens it wishes to invest in prior to the completion of the funds.


Raising funds through token sales is becoming very prevalent in today’s crypto world and has been exploited by a number of protocols including Polygon and 1inch in the past.

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Tornado Cash’s Alex Pertsev to Remain in Custody as Appeal Was Rejected

by Blockchain News

Legal authorities in the Netherlands have rejected the appeal to release Alexei Pertsev, the chief developer of the Tornado Cash protocol was arrested and remanded by Dutch Authorities shortly after the United States Treasury Department sanctioned the protocol alongside as many as 44 of its associated addresses.

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The rejection of the appeal was faulted by Ksenia Malik, the wife of Alexei who noted that injustice was evident as the authorities did not even hear the appeal of the embattled developer. Citing her fears, Malik said the authorities are planning to auction Alexei’s properties with plans to leave her with nothing.

According to the current state of things, Alexei is likely to stay in custody until the end of November before the next hearing. When asked whether the Dutch officials can confiscate the personal properties of an untried suspect, Malik said the current actions of the prosecutors show they can.

“At the moment, only a car, but I think they can come and take something else at any moment. I don’t feel safe,” she said. Prosecutors will sell “all of our legal property at auction, leaving me with nothing.”

The arrest of Alexei Pertsev has sparked a lot of protest amongst crypto advocates as the sanction of Tornado Cash has also been condemned by a coalition of industry stakeholders. The defense is that Alexei should not be held accountable for developing an open source code, irrespective of how it is used by people.

Tornado Cash is used as a cryptocurrency mixer that can be used to obfuscate the origin and destination of funds in a bid to enhance user privacy. While notable personalities like Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin said they have used the mixing tool to shield their identities in the past.

However, the Treasury Department said the protocol has been used to launder as much as $7 billion with some linked to the North Korea hacking syndicate, Lazarus Group.

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MicroStrategy is Hiring a Bitcoin Developer to Design Enterprise Solutions

by Blockchain News

American Nasdaq-listed business intelligence firm, MicroStrategy Incorporated has put out a call in search of a Bitcoin Lightning Software Engineer. 

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The firm is looking for a veteran who will help it in designing enterprise-grade solutions that can help startups looking to integrate Bitcoin solutions with security through a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform.

 

“As a Bitcoin Lightning Software Engineer at MicroStrategy, you will build a Lightning Network-based SaaS platform, providing enterprises with innovative solutions to cyber-security challenges and enabling new eCommerce use-cases,” MicroStrategy detailed in its job posting.

 

MicroStrategy has accumulated more than 130,000 units of Bitcoin since it declared Bitcoin as its Treasury Reserve Asset (TRA) back in 2020. The company now occupies a very viable position in the crypto ecosystem, helping other institutional grade investors with education and motivation to adopt the digital currencies also.

 

With the new Bitcoin developer that is being projected, MicroStrategy will also seek to establish a reference point by creating a Decentralized Finance (DeFi) focused solution. With the focus to use the Lightning Network, a layer-2 solution built on the Bitcoin network, MicroStrategy is driving a solution that is proven to fasttrack retail payments at a more secure, faster, and cheaper rate.

 

The new engineer will also be tasked with contributing to open source code and representing the firm with top-rated Web3.0 projects.

 

MicroStrategy has yet again, set the pace amongst top institutional investors with a vested interest in digital currencies. With Michael Saylor setting the pace for the company’s Bitcoin embrace, Phong Le is billed to walk in the veteran’s footsteps and establish the firm as the premier digital currency at the top echelon of firms bolstering the general adoption of Bitcoin.

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Bitcoin (BTC) $ 26,573.12 0.40%
Ethereum (ETH) $ 1,591.95 0.54%
Litecoin (LTC) $ 64.79 0.06%
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 208.15 0.27%