Day: January 19, 2023

Hackers exploit Raydium protocol, sending $2.7 million

by Blockchain News

Blockchain security company CertiK issued a warning in which it revealed that an exploiter of the Raydium protocol had contributed 1,774.5 ether (ETH) to the mixer.

At the time of this writing, the sum had a value of around $2.7 million.

While security teams from several exchanges continue to battle the attempts of hackers, monies continue to flow to the sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash. [Cryptocurrency] Back on December 16, 2022, an assault was launched against the decentralised finance (DeFi) system that was based on Solana.

The developers claim that the hackers gained control of the account belonging to the exchange owner and stole the liquidity provider cash, which consisted of a variety of digital assets such as USD Coin (USDC), Wrapped Solana (wSOL), and Raydium (RAY).

Following the first examination, the DeFi protocol came to the conclusion that the attack was the result of a weakness in the smart contracts that were used by the decentralised exchange.

Because of this, administrators were able to withdraw fees from liquidity pools.

Because of the losses, the Raydium team has also presented a strategy to recompense the victims of the attacks. The idea involves utilising the treasury of the decentralised autonomous organisation to acquire missing tokens, which would then be used to refund people who were harmed by the exploit.

Chainalysis, a company that specialises in blockchain research, noted out in a paper that was published on January 9 that despite the fact that the penalties imposed on Tornado Cash had some impact on the mixer, no entity can “draw the plug” as quickly as centralised services.

The fact that its smart contracts may continue to function eternally despite the fact that its website can be taken down emphasises the fact that anybody can continue to utilise it at any point.

Although hackers continue to aggressively shift cash, their efforts may not always result in a successful outcome for them.

Binance and Huobi, two centralised cryptocurrency exchanges, have recently been able to identify and seize assets that were placed by hackers working for Harmony One.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, said that the company’s security team, in collaboration with Huobi’s security team, was able to recover 121 Bitcoin (BTC), which had a value of $2.5 million at the time of the incident.

Source

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Allegations of fraud against Compass Mining after company cuts ties with Russian

by Blockchain News

Compass Mining severed its ties with the Russian hosting provider Bit River and did not return Bitcoin mining gear to its customers. The company claimed the reason for its actions as a non-applicable sanction issued by the United States of America. Directly as a result of this, customers of Compass Mining have filed lawsuits against the company, alleging that it engaged in misleading business practises in an attempt to recoup more than two million dollars.

A document that was submitted to the court on January 17 reveals that Compass Mining informed the court in April 2022 that it had terminated its “relationships and transactions with Bit River” as a direct response to the sanctions that were issued as a consequence of Executive Order 14024. The information was revealed in the document that was filed with the court.

According to the accusations, Compass “did not offer” to return or even retrieve the assets that its clients had entrusted the firm with and which were being housed at Bit River’s facilities in Russia. These assets had been entrusted to Compass by its customers. The Russian Federation was the location of these assets.

On the other hand, it has been said that the claim that the return of the mining equipment would violate Executive Order 14024 is “false.” This order prohibits entering into deals with companies that have been blacklisted. Transactions with companies that have been placed on a blacklist are forbidden under this ruling. It was said that this directive may be the cause of the disagreement in question.

Compass has “both the right and responsibility” to ensure the return of its customers’ mines, as stated in the legal agreement between the two parties. The paper does have this stipulation as a part of it.

In an angry response to the concerns raised by clients, the management of Compass said that the company is “unable to execute or even assist” any business transactions with Bit River. This was done in response to the concerns expressed by the consumers.

Source

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Validator Infrastructure Developer Launches New Fund to Support Ethereum Proof-of

by Blockchain News

ssv.network, a provider of validator infrastructure, has announced the introduction of a new ecosystem fund to assist Ethereum proof-of-stake decentralisation. The business said that this step will foster innovation around Ether (ETH) staking technology. The business made the announcement on January 19 about the ecosystem fund, which has a value of fifty million dollars and would help companies creating apps employing distributed validator technology, or DVT.

The primary purpose of the fund is to provide financial support for DVT use cases that contribute to Ethereum’s efforts to decentralise the platform over the long run.

DVT is a protocol that is open-source and has the capability of distributing the tasks of a validator over a number of different nodes.

Because more DVT implementation results in increased decentralisation, the protocol was an essential part of the roadmap that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin developed for Eth2.

SSV made notice of the fact that a number of venture capital investors, including as Digital Currency Group, HashKey, NGC, Everstake, GSR, and SevenX, have advocated for Ethereum’s use of DVT.

SSV said that it had already contributed $3 million toward developer awards and that $1.2 million had been distributed to over 20 proof-of-stake projects. Some of these projects include Blockscape, ANKR, and Moonstake.

“Ethereum is now protected by a tiny set of corporations,” claims Alon Muroch, the core development lead at SSV. “When you bring all of these companies together, they control the whole blockchain.”

According to what he stated, the objective of the DVT technology is “to share Ethereum’s security by enabling rapid and simple access to an open-source, public good that will totally revolutionise the way that staking is done today.”

The switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake on Ethereum will take place in stages, and each one will be intended to improve the scalability, security, and decentralisation of the network.

The change led to the implementation of ETH staking, in which users take an active role in the validation of transactions.

On Ethereum, the minimum amount of ETH that must be staked in order to qualify as a validator is 32.

According to recent reports, the demand for liquid ETH staking was reportedly on the increase as of the beginning of December.

Staked ETH was characterised to as the “first yield-bearing instrument to attain considerable size in DeFi” by the blockchain analytics company Nansen.

Source

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1inch Network Launches Hardware Wallet Amid Rise of Self-Cust

by Blockchain News

1inch Network, a decentralised exchange (DEX) aggregator, is the most recent cryptocurrency platform to enter the hardware wallet business. This development comes at a time when self-custody is becoming more popular.

The 1inch Hardware Wallet is a proprietary hardware wallet that was built by an independent team operating inside the 1inch Network. The formal introduction of the 1inch Hardware Wallet took place on January 19. The 1inch Hardware Wallet is “completely air-gapped,” which means that it does not have a direct connection to the internet and does not need any kind of wired connection in order to function properly. This was done in order to ensure the highest possible level of security. ” All data is transferred via QR codes or, alternatively, using NFC,” 1inch claimed, pointing out that the 1inch Hardware Wallet does not have any buttons. In addition, 1inch noted that the 1inch Hardware Wallet does not have a display.

The forthcoming hardware wallet is comparable in size to a standard bank card and has a 2.7-inch E-Ink touch display with a grayscale gradient.

The impervious cryptocurrency wallet has a surface made of scratch-proof Gorilla Glass 6 and a frame made of corrosion-resistant stainless steel.

The Li-Po battery in the gadget is meant to provide power for the device for around two weeks, and the device enables wireless charging.

One of the unique characteristics of the 1inch Hardware Wallet is that it imitates the look of the Apple product line. This is one of the wallet’s key advantages.

The wallet is available in five colours, including hex, graphite, sierra blue, silver, and alpine green, which are the same colours as are offered for the iPhone 13 series.

1inch is not the only cryptocurrency company attempting to market its hardware wallet in an effort to capitalise on Apple’s widespread appeal.

The French hardware wallet company Ledger announced a cooperation with Tony Fadell, the creator of the now-iconic iPod Classic model, the previous year in order to produce its most recent cryptocurrency wallet, known as the Ledger Stax.

A spokeswoman for 1inch said that the company began the development of the hardware wallet in the early part of 2022 and anticipates that the device would be released in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In the not-too-distant future, the company also intends to continue with development and improve the security of the system. ” Next month, we will be launching the contributor programme, so everyone will have the opportunity to improve the device truly on their own,” a representative from 1inch said, adding that documentation and source codes will be available on GitHub. Additionally, the representative mentioned that the contributor programme will allow users to improve the device truly on their own.

1inch’s foray into the world of hardware wallets coincides with a growing trend for self-custody in response to widespread mistrust of centralised cryptocurrency exchanges (CEX).

Source

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Binance NFT to Delist Assets With Low Trading Volume

by Blockchain News

The cryptocurrency exchange known as Binance said on January 19 that it has strengthened its policies regarding the listing of nonfungible tokens, often known as NFTs.

All non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that were posted on Binance before to October 2, 2022 and that had an average daily trading volume of less than $1,000 between November 1, 2022 and January 31, 2023 will be delisted beginning on February 2, 2023.

In addition, beginning on January 21, 2023, NFT artists will only be able to mint a maximum of five digital collectibles each and every day. Before being allowed to list on the Binance NFT platform, merchants are required to go through the know-your-customer (KYC) verification process and have a minimum of two followers.

In addition to the updated regulations, Binance said that it will immediately “listings on the NFT that do not “meet its requirements” would be “periodically reviewed” and “recommended for delisting” if they do not.

Users have the ability to report NFTs or collections that they believe may be in violation of the terms of service or guidelines governing the minting of NFTs on Binance.

Reports of rule infractions or fraudulent activity will be thoroughly investigated, and our team of investigators will take the necessary corrective steps.”

By the second of February in 2023, any digital collectibles that do not fulfil the aforementioned two conditions will be removed from the listing automatically.

After then, users’ wallets will still contain the delisted assets even if they are no longer publicly traded.

Since the beginning of this year, authorities have increased their scrutiny on Binance in response to claims that the exchange has been processing illegal funds and has insufficient Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures. Binance has consistently refuted these allegations. In the midst of the accusations of money laundering involving Bitzlato that were brought to light on January 18, the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) stated that Binance was one of the “top three receiving counterparties” to Bitzlato.

Following the imposition of additional sanctions by the European Union, Binance was among the cryptocurrency exchanges that continued to provide services to non-sanctioned Russians. This was previously reported.

Source

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Hackers exploit Raydium protocol, send $2.7 million

by Blockchain News

Blockchain security company CertiK issued a warning in which it revealed that an exploiter of the Raydium protocol had contributed 1,774.5 ether (ETH) to the mixer.

At the time of this writing, the sum had a value of around $2.7 million.

While security teams from several exchanges continue to battle the attempts of hackers, monies continue to flow to the sanctioned cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash. [Cryptocurrency] Back on December 16, 2022, an assault was launched against the decentralised finance (DeFi) system that was based on Solana.

The developers claim that the hackers gained control of the account belonging to the exchange owner and stole the liquidity provider cash, which consisted of a variety of digital assets such as USD Coin (USDC), Wrapped Solana (wSOL), and Raydium (RAY).

Following the first examination, the DeFi protocol came to the conclusion that the attack was the result of a weakness in the smart contracts that were used by the decentralised exchange.

Because of this, administrators were able to withdraw fees from liquidity pools.

Because of the losses, the Raydium team has also presented a strategy to recompense the victims of the attacks. The idea involves utilising the treasury of the decentralised autonomous organisation to acquire missing tokens, which would then be used to refund people who were harmed by the exploit.

Chainalysis, a company that specialises in blockchain research, noted out in a paper that was published on January 9 that despite the fact that the penalties imposed on Tornado Cash had some impact on the mixer, no entity can “draw the plug” as quickly as centralised services.

The fact that its smart contracts may continue to function eternally despite the fact that its website can be taken down emphasises the fact that anybody can continue to utilise it at any point.

Although hackers continue to aggressively shift cash, their efforts may not always result in a successful outcome for them.

Binance and Huobi, two centralised cryptocurrency exchanges, have recently been able to identify and seize assets that were placed by hackers working for Harmony One.

The CEO of Binance, Changpeng Zhao, said that the company’s security team, in collaboration with Huobi’s security team, was able to recover 121 Bitcoin (BTC), which had a value of $2.5 million at the time of the incident.

Source

Tagged : / / /

U.S. sanctions: Customers suing Compass Mining

by Blockchain News

Compass Mining severed its ties with the Russian hosting provider Bit River and did not return Bitcoin mining gear to its customers. The company cited an inapplicable fine issued by the United States of America as the reason for its actions. Bit River was the Russian hosting provider. Directly as a result of this, customers are filing lawsuits against Compass Mining for over 2 million dollars, alleging that the company took part in fraudulent operations and defrauding them of their money.

According to a document that was submitted to the court on January 17, it is stated that Compass Mining informed Bit River in April 2022 that it had terminated its “relationships and transactions with Bit River” as a direct result of the penalties that were imposed as a direct result of Executive Order 14024. These penalties were imposed as a direct result of the fact that Compass Mining informed Bit River that it had terminated its “relationships and transactions with Bit River.” This information was included in the document that was presented to the court as part of the filing process.

Compass “did not offer” to refund or even retrieve the assets that its customers entrusted the business with, which were stored at Bit River’s facilities in Russia, according to the allegations that have been made against the company. These allegations come from the lawsuits that have been filed against the company. The assets at issue were located in Russia at the time of the investigation.

On the other hand, it has been asserted that the claim that returning the mining equipment would be a violation of Executive Order 14024, which prohibits doing business with sanctioned organisations, is “wrong.” In other words, returning the mining equipment would not be a violation of Executive Order 14024. This is due to the fact that Executive Order 14024 prohibits doing business with organisations that are under punishment.

According to the legally binding agreement that was signed by all parties, Compass has “both the right and responsibility to effectuate the recovery of its customers’ mines.” This provision is included in the agreement.

The management of Compass provided an aggressive reaction to the concerns that were raised by clients by declaring that the company is “unable to execute or even facilitate” any business transactions with Bit River.

Source

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1inch Network Launches New Hardware Wallet

by Blockchain News

In response to the growing popularity of self-custody, decentralised exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch Network has become the most recent cryptocurrency platform to enter the hardware wallet business.

The 1inch Hardware Wallet is a proprietary hardware wallet that was built by an independent team operating inside the 1inch Network. The formal launch of the wallet took place on January 19th. “Fully air-gapped” refers to the fact that the 1inch Hardware Wallet does not have a direct connection to the internet and does not need any kind of wired connection in order to guarantee the highest possible level of protection. According to 1inch, ” All data is shared via QR codes or, alternatively, using NFC.” The company also said that the 1inch Hardware Wallet does not have any buttons on it.

A 2.7-inch E-Ink grayscale touch display will be included on the next hardware wallet, which has the dimensions of a standard bank card.

The frame of the watertight cryptocurrency wallet is made of stainless steel, while its surface is made of scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass 6.

The gadget is compatible with wireless charging, and the Li-Po battery is meant to provide power for around two weeks of operation.

The aesthetic of the Apple product line is mirrored in the 1inch Hardware Wallet, which is one of the device’s distinguishing characteristics.

The wallet is available in five hues that correspond to the iPhone 13 colour lineup: hex, graphite, sierra blue, silver, and alpine green.

There are other cryptocurrency companies, in addition to 1inch, who are marketing their hardware wallets in an effort to capitalise on Apple’s widespread appeal.

The French producer of hardware wallets known as Ledger announced a cooperation with Tony Fadell, the creator of the now-iconic iPod Classic form, the previous year in order to build its most recent cryptocurrency wallet known as Ledger Stax.

According to a representative for 1inch, the company began the process of developing the hardware wallet in the early part of 2022 and anticipates releasing the product in the fourth quarter of 2023.

In the not-too-distant future, the company also intends to continue with development and make improvements to security. According to a spokeswoman for 1inch, “next month we will be introducing the contributor programme, so everyone will have the ability to enhance the device really on their own,” and they added that manuals and source codes would be accessible on GitHub.

The launch of 1inch’s first hardware wallet coincides with a growing trend for self-custody as mistrust of centralised cryptocurrency exchanges continues to spread (CEX).

Source

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Ethereum’s transition to proof-of-stake

by Blockchain News

ssv.network, a provider of validator infrastructure, has announced the introduction of a new ecosystem fund to assist Ethereum proof-of-stake decentralisation. The business said that this step will foster innovation around Ether (ETH) staking technology. The business made the announcement on January 19 about the ecosystem fund, which has a value of fifty million dollars and would help companies creating apps employing distributed validator technology, or DVT.

The primary purpose of the fund is to provide financial support for DVT use cases that contribute to Ethereum’s efforts to decentralise the platform over the long run.

DVT is a protocol that is open-source and has the capability of distributing the tasks of a validator over a number of different nodes.

Because more DVT implementation results in increased decentralisation, the protocol was an essential part of the roadmap that Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin developed for Eth2.

SSV made notice of the fact that a number of venture capital investors, including as Digital Currency Group, HashKey, NGC, Everstake, GSR, and SevenX, have advocated for Ethereum’s use of DVT.

SSV said that it had already contributed $3 million toward developer awards and that $1.2 million had been distributed to over 20 proof-of-stake projects. Some of these projects include Blockscape, ANKR, and Moonstake.

“Ethereum is now protected by a tiny set of corporations,” claims Alon Muroch, the core development lead at SSV. “When you bring all of these companies together, they control the whole blockchain.”

According to what he stated, the objective of the DVT technology is “to share Ethereum’s security by enabling rapid and simple access to an open-source, public good that will totally revolutionise the way that staking is done today.”

The switch from proof-of-work to proof-of-stake on Ethereum will take place in stages, and each one will be intended to improve the scalability, security, and decentralisation of the network.

The change led to the implementation of ETH staking, in which users take an active role in the validation of transactions.

On Ethereum, the minimum amount of ETH that must be staked in order to qualify as a validator is 32.

According to recent reports, the demand for liquid ETH staking was reportedly on the increase as of the beginning of December.

Staked ETH was characterised to as the “first yield-bearing instrument to attain considerable size in DeFi” by the blockchain analytics company Nansen.

Source

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Binance tightens NFT rules, announces delistings and KYC

by Blockchain News

The cryptocurrency exchange known as Binance said on January 19 that it has strengthened its policies regarding the listing of nonfungible tokens, often known as NFTs.

All non-fungible tokens (NFTs) that were posted on Binance before to October 2, 2022 and that had an average daily trading volume of less than $1,000 between November 1, 2022 and January 31, 2023 will be delisted beginning on February 2, 2023.

In addition, beginning on January 21, 2023, NFT artists will only be able to mint a maximum of five digital collectibles each and every day. Before being allowed to list on the Binance NFT platform, merchants are required to go through the know-your-customer (KYC) verification process and have a minimum of two followers.

In addition to the updated regulations, Binance said that it will immediately “listings on the NFT that do not “meet its requirements” would be “periodically reviewed” and “recommended for delisting” if they do not.

Users have the ability to report NFTs or collections that they believe may be in violation of the terms of service or guidelines governing the minting of NFTs on Binance.

Reports of rule infractions or fraudulent activity will be thoroughly investigated, and our team of investigators will take the necessary corrective steps.”

By the second of February in 2023, any digital collectibles that do not fulfil the aforementioned two conditions will be removed from the listing automatically.

After then, users’ wallets will still contain the delisted assets even if they are no longer publicly traded.

Since the beginning of this year, authorities have increased their scrutiny on Binance in response to claims that the exchange has been processing illegal funds and has insufficient Know Your Customer (KYC) procedures. Binance has consistently refuted these allegations. In the midst of the accusations of money laundering involving Bitzlato that were brought to light on January 18, the United States Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) stated that Binance was one of the “top three receiving counterparties” to Bitzlato.

Following the imposition of additional sanctions by the European Union, Binance was among the cryptocurrency exchanges that continued to provide services to non-sanctioned Russians. This was previously reported.

Source

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Bitcoin (BTC) $ 26,555.11 2.10%
Ethereum (ETH) $ 1,581.29 2.78%
Litecoin (LTC) $ 64.46 0.04%
Bitcoin Cash (BCH) $ 207.02 3.58%