SlowMist Reports Surge in Diverse Crypto Security Incidents for the Week of September 17-23, 2023

Key Takeaways

Total security incidents reported: 7

Estimated financial loss: Approximately $380,600

Notable trend: Increase in phishing attacks and rug pull tactics

New attack methods: DNS hijacking, contract vulnerability, and phishing attempts

Breakdown of Incidents

Phishing Attacks:

Unimevbot users were targeted through malicious MEV bot codes on the website. The exact loss remains undisclosed, but funds were transferred to the hacker’s on-chain address.

Coinbase Wallet also fell victim to a phishing attack that exploited the Web3 messaging network protocol. The exact financial impact is yet to be reported.

Contract Vulnerabilities:

Linear Finance exposed its $LUSD token to an exploit attack due to a contract vulnerability. No specific loss has been reported.

Rug Pulls:

BNBpay and YZER were involved in rug pull incidents, with losses amounting to approximately $114,000 and $28,600, respectively, following significant liquidity removals.

DNS Hijacking:

Balancer was targeted in a DNS hijacking attack by a phishing group known as AngelDrainer, resulting in a loss of around $238,000.

Infrastructure Vulnerability:

An unspecified infrastructure vulnerability led to significant funding and team token loss for a project named “None.” The exact financial impact remains undisclosed.

Conclusion

The Slowmist report underscores the increasing complexity and diversity of attacks in the crypto and blockchain landscape. SlowMist urges users to remain vigilant and adopt comprehensive security strategies.

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Balancer’s $2.1M Breach Impacts Pools Across Ethereum, Fantom, and Optimism

Blockchain security firm PeckShield Inc. has reported a significant discrepancy in the initial loss estimates related to the Balancer ($BAL) platform. According to a recent tweet by PeckShield, the loss, which also involves Beethoven X, is now believed to be greater than $2.1 million. This affects multiple pools across platforms such as Ethereum, Fantom Foundation, and Optimism Foundation.

The Balancer team had previously alerted its community to withdraw liquidity from the affected vaults. Their initial estimate suggested that “only 0.08% of total TVL ($565,199) remains at risk.” However, PeckShield’s analysis indicates that this figure might have been “seriously mis-calculated.”

In a related post dated August 27, Balancer acknowledged an exploit linked to a specific vulnerability. While they have implemented mitigation procedures to minimize risks, they were unable to pause the affected pools. As a preventive measure, Balancer urged users to withdraw from the impacted liquidity pools.

The current location of the stolen funds amounting to $2.1 million is yet to be ascertained.

For those unfamiliar, PeckShield Inc. is a renowned blockchain security and data analytics company, while Balancer is a platform that allows users to create or add liquidity to customizable pools and earn trading fees.

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Balancer Jumps as Team Weighs Curve-Style Tokenomics

Key Takeaways

  • DeFi protocol Balancer may soon adopt vote-escrowed system similar to the one pioneered by Curve Finance.
  • Balancer Labs CEO and co-founder Fernando Martinelli put forward a proposal introducing a vote-escrowed token called veBAL.
  • BAL is up 11.2% following the update.




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Balancer is looking at implementing a vote-escrowed token model for the Balancer protocol.

Balancer Looks to Follow Curve Tokenomics

Balancer has taken note of the Curve Wars.

The pioneering DeFi protocol is weighing adopting a vote-escrowed tokenomics model similar to the one popularized by Curve. If implemented, the system will enable BAL holders to lock up their tokens for a set period of time in order to receive pegged “VE” tokens, in this case veBAL.



Per a Thursday proposal from Balancer Labs CEO and co-founder Fernando Martinelli, the development team behind the project said it has considered adopting a vote-escrowed system to improve its existing tokenomics. Currently, BAL holders can stake their tokens to vote on proposals, but there isn’t any kind of locking mechanism. In the proposal, Martinelli said that Curve’s tokenomics “seems an obvious fit for Balancer Protocol.”

Curve introduced VE tokens to give CRV holders booster yields, a share of protocol revenue, and the power to vote on governance proposals. Receiving voting power is particularly notable as it can be used to determine decisions like the amount of liquidity mining rewards that get distributed to various pools.

The vote-escrowed tokenomics model is the driving force behind the so-called “Curve Wars”–an ongoing DeFi battle in which protocols compete to accumulate CRV, lock it for veCRV, and attempt to gain influence over Curve’s voting power in order to get more rewards for their users. The Curve Wars is effectively a game of liquidity capture in which protocols race to acquire as much CRV as possible to govern the project and Curve strengthens its place in DeFi’s top ranks.


If passed, the proposal will introduce veBAL as the main asset to vote on future proposals. The new system could help Balancer follow Curve’s lead and potentially fuel demand for BAL tokens. Interestingly, Yearn Finance also recently adopted a vote-escrowed system for YFI.

Notably, Balancer’s proposal slightly differs from the one introduced by Curve. While Curve lets users lock CRV to receive veCRV, Balancer users will have to acquire Balancer Pool Tokens from the protocol’s BAL/ETH pool to receive veBAL. Balancer Pool Tokens are issued to liquidity providers on Balancer; they represent the user’s share of the pool.

Though the proposal has not yet passed, the market appears to have responded well to the proposal. BAL is up 11.2% today.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and other cryptocurrencies.



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OlympusDAO Establishes OHM as a Liquid Asset within the Balancer Ecosystem

The decentralized finance protocol OlympusDAO collaborated with Balancer to set up OHM as a liquid asset within the latter’s network. CopperLaunch and PrimeDAO will facilitate the front end of the Liquidity Bootstrapping Pools (LBPs) by adding OHM as a collateral token.

The Specifics of The Project

According to a document seen by CryptoPotato, the decentralized reserve currency protocol – OlympusDAO – will initially deploy $50 million of liquidity to Balancer Protocol. The structure of the initiative focuses on the access point to OHM via DAI and WETH (wrapped ETH), while lowering the price impact is the primary goal of the collaboration. As such, it was determined that an OHM/ETH/DAI – 50/25/25 Pool would be the best option to present to the Olympus community.

The maximum treasury allocation will not exceed $25 million OHM and $12.5 million of each DAI and ETH. The Balancer liquidity pool should increase the network effects of OHM by generating trading fees and complementing the utility of the process.

Balancer will play a vital role in the joint program. Its multi-token capability and flexibility could lower liquidity fragmentation, the document reads:

“On Balancer, the OHM liquidity can be aggregated with both exchange assets (WETH and DAI), which results in a potential 25% improvement in price impact compared to fragmenting liquidity across two separate pools of OHM-DAI and OHM-WETH.”

CopperLaunch and PrimeDao are also key players in the initiative as they have the ability to pave the way for future token projects.

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Establishing OHM as a liquid asset on Balancer’s ecosystem brings about an LBP funding program, which significantly benefits the OlympusDao network. Through it, approved users of the DeFi protocol would be able to loan OHM.

In conclusion, the collaboration is expected to bring constructive additions to the DeFi ecosystem. As a result, one could make balanced trades and build pools with multiple tokens that act as a personal index.

OlympusDAO and the Metaverse Space

The DeFi protocol recently dipped its toes in the NFT field by partnering with the Metaverse project Paragon. As a result, the latter became OlympusDAO’s first metaverse liquidity partner.

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Balancer and Aave Join Forces to Launch Boosted Pools

Automated portfolio manager and liquidity provider Balancer Labs announced the official launch of Boosted Pools in collaboration with the leading DeFi lending protocol, Aave.

Boosted Pools to Increase LP Yields

In a press release shared with CryptoPotato, Balancer noted that the new product is geared toward solving the issue of decreased capital efficiency with yields on tokens deposited into Automated Market Maker (AMM) pools.

According to Balancer, traders typically utilize only 10% of the liquidity available on AMM pools since trade sizes are smaller than the available liquidity.

However, with Boosted Pools, the remaining liquidity, often left idle, will be deposited into lending protocols, allowing the liquidity to earn additional yield.

Speaking on the development, Fernando Martinelli, the co-founder, and CEO of Balancer Labs said,

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“The collaboration with Aave as the first iteration of the Boosted Pools launch is a natural fit and solidifies their place in the Balancer ecosystem. There are various levels of Boosted Pool innovations that lead to concrete results,  deeper liquidity, more efficient integrations for liquidity, and higher yields.”

Reducing Costs

AMM Pools typically hold wrapped tokens of yield-bearing assets to increase capital efficiency and improve the overall pool yield. But the wrapping and unwrapping of these tokens are often too expensive to do during swaps, and they need to be done with a relayer.

To solve this problem, Balancer Labs collaborated with Aave, effectively reducing the costs of wrapping and unwrapping tokens during a swap while leaving the task to arbitrageurs, who are correctly incentivized to do it.

A Game Changer

Commenting on the partnership, Aave founder and CEO Stani Kulechov said:

“The collaboration with Balancer for the launch of Aave Boosted Pools is a prime example of incredible innovation happening in DeFi. I have been following Balancer’s V2 launch closely and Boosted Pools offer users deeper liquidity and more access to Aave. With the help of Balancer, we look forward to providing users a seamless earning experience.”

Balancer noted that Boosted Pools could be a game-changer for traders and liquidity providers. It allows users to deploy a percentage of the liquidity in a pool to lending platforms like Aave and earn more yield while keeping a smaller percentage inside the pool for traders to use as liquidity.

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Balancer Launches ‘Boosted Pools’ on Aave to Improve DeFi Yields

Balancer Labs today announces the launch of Boosted Pools on DeFi protocol Aave. Aave is the industry’s most popular lending and borrowing protocol, boasting more than $13.4 billion in total assets (excluding assets being borrowed). 

Aave’s lenders earn interest by locking up their crypto in liquidity pools and borrowers can take out loans by providing crypto as collateral. The project is also responsible for developing flash loans. 

Only around 10% of the liquidity deposited into an automated market maker (AMM) like Balancer is utilized by traders since trade sizes tend to be much smaller than the money deposited in the pool to avoid slippage. 

Thanks to Balancer’s new Boosted Pools platform, users can deposit a given percentage of unused liquidity in AMM pools onto lending protocols like Aave where it earns an additional yield. 

Now typically, to increase capital efficiency (the ratio between spending and growth), AMM liquidity pools hold Aave DAI (aDAI), an interest-bearing token on Ethereum that can be redeemed for DAI at a 1:1 exchange rate. 

The aDAI token is minted on deposit and burned once redeemed, but wrapping tokens is a complicated process that can be too costly to do during a trade. Aave Boosted Pools solves this problem by outsourcing the wrapping/unwrapping process to arbitrageurs, who are incentivized to do it. 

Balancer first announced their collaboration back in February this year, when CEO and founder Fernando Martinelli wrote a blog post about an upcoming “Balancer V2 Asset Manager.” 

Martinelli said in a statement today: “The collaboration with Aave as the first iteration of the Boosted Pools launch is a natural fit and solidifies their place in the Balancer ecosystem. There are various levels of Boosted Pool innovations that lead to concrete results,  deeper liquidity, more efficient integrations for liquidity, and higher yields.” 

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DeFi Protocol Balancer Integrates With WallStreetBets Crypto App

Balancer, a popular automated market maker, has today announced a strategic partnership with WSBDApp, the blockchain-based trading platform created by the WallStreetBets subreddit original founders.

The collaboration will see WSBDApp’s decentralized exchange-traded portfolios (ETPs) launched on Balancer V2 to “further expand the possibilities of DeFi and increase crypto exposure to crypto-native and traditional investors alike.”

DeFi is a suite of decentralized financial applications that aim to replace traditional investing by facilitating intermediary-free lending, borrowing, and trading.

Balancer was initially built on Ethereum and represents a self-balancing weighted portfolio protocol that allows anyone to create or add crypto liquidity to customizable pools and earn trading fees. This design lends itself to the ETP metaphor.

Earlier this year Balancer also integrated with the Algorand blockchain, as well as with the recently-launched Ethereum scaling solution Arbitrum.

Through its collaboration with Balancer, the WSBDApp is rolling out a community-selected basket of stablecoins backed by fiat money like the U.S. dollar, as well as tokenized commodities and cryptocurrencies such as Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), Wrapped Ethereum (WETH), and others.

“The WallStreetBets community has something for everyone, and with democratic tools like ETPs, we’re showing the world how financial markets should really be managed,” said BTCVIX, the anonymous CEO of the WSBDApp.

Users will be able to connect their WSBDApp wallets to a portfolio rebalanced with the help of the Balancer protocol and then use fiat money to purchase a token representing their holdings.

What is WallStreetBets?

WallStreetBets, a controversial investing forum on Reddit, exploded in popularity at the start of the year after the community’s members coordinated the en masse purchase of the GameStop (GME) stock.

The event led to a so-called short squeeze, lifting the price of GME shares by as much as 400% and spelling bankruptcy for some Wall Street hedge funds.

Though WSB announced in May that any crypto-related discussion on the subreddit would be banned “indefinitely,” its founders revealed shortly after that they were working on  WSBDapp, a decentralized trading app that would harness “the transparency and community consensus mechanisms provided by blockchain and smart contract technology.”

The ultimate goal was to turn decentralized ETPs into “an alternative to the kind of market manipulation perpetuated by opaque and politically connected banks and hedge funds.”

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DeFi Protocol Balancer Joins Arbitrum to Scale Liquidity and Reduce Gas Fees

Leading automated market maker (AMM) Balancer Protocol has announced that it has launched support on the Layer 2 scaling solution, Arbitrum.

Balancer Launches on Arbitrum

In a press release shared with CryptoPotato on Tuesday, Balancer noted that the move is an effort to “significantly reduce gas costs and scale liquidity.”

Arbitrum is a leading scaling solution within Ethereum’s layer-2 ecosystem that has managed to make a name for itself in the industry despite being a relatively new project.

The explosive growth of the DeFi market has attracted many investors, pushing the total value locked in the sector to a whopping $82 billion. However, the influx of people into DeFi has also caused gas fees to shoot over the roof, thus making it difficult for small traders to create, join, and exit pools. This, in turn reduces the chances of aggregating liquidity across several uniquely composed pools.

Solving High Gas Fees and Scalability Issues

To solve this problem, Arbitrum introduced its optimistic rollups that improve scalability while reducing gas fees.

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The optimistic rollups remove the need for zero-knowledge proofs by changing the consensus mechanism. The network assumes all transactions are correct, allowing users to intervene only if one is incorrect rather than verifying all of them.

It also offers significantly higher transaction throughput compared to Ethereum, while cutting gas fees to near zero. With a strong focus on user accessibility, the system allows users to experience a convenient, fast, and secure service through Layer-2 technology.

With the recent integration, Balancer Protocol says it can now operate as “the ultimate flexible DEX,” and its users can trade on its app using Arbitrum.

Balancer Protocol’s Co-Founder and CEO, Fernando Martinelli, said:

“Arbitrum is a leading L2 solution, its distinctive features in scalability, especially compatibility with Ethereum, lead this industry to recognize that it will optimize the user experience and enhance growth. L2s show the promise of reducing Ether fees and network congestion, and we are excited Arbitrum is available to the Balancer ecosystem.”

Arbitrum’s CEO and co-founder, Steven Goldfeder, also expressed his enthusiasm for having Balancer onboard and he believes the AMM has an important role in building a robust DeFi economy.

“We look forward to working with the excellent Balancer team to bring more efficient, flexible trading experiences to Arbitrum users,” he added.

Meanwhile, CryptoPotato reported last month that Balancer Protocol launched on Polygon in a similar move to reduce gas fees for users.

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DeFi Protocol Balancer (BAL) Unveils Capital-Efficient Stable Pools

Leading DeFi protocol Balancer (BAL) has launched capital-efficient stable pools on Balancer V2.

Balancer V2 Introduces Stable Pools

In a bid to stand out in the competitive decentralized finance (DeFi) landscape, Balancer today announced the launch of stable pools which makes the protocol the first AMM with at least three different type of pools – weighted, Element, and now stable pools.


Notably, stable pools are highly capital-efficient in nature and leverage the Vault architecture of Balancer V2 via the use of batch swaps and internal balances.

Stable pools bring with them a plethora of benefits for traders and liquidity providers (LPs).

As their name might indicate, stable pools are designed specifically for digital assets that trade at a similar price which naturally capital efficiency for swaps involving similar assets. This not only benefits traders as they get to enjoy tighter spreads with low slippage but also ensure that LPs earn an attractive yield with minimal impermanent loss.

Focusing on Making Trades Efficient

Balancer’s newly unveiled stable pools offer a variety of advantages over other AMMs that only offer stable pools or traditional two-token weighted pools. For instance, Balancer’s stable pools are plugged into the same protocol as weighted pools. This means that all the tokens exist inside the same single vault leading to much more efficient trades.

Balancer allows users and traders to execute trades that route via both pools at the same time with minimal increase in gas costs compared to a trade that, say, routes through Uniswap or Curve. The best part about these Balancer V2 Vaults is that it extends these advantages as an increasing amount of assets are supplied as liquidity which, subsequently, paves way for more competitive trading opportunities.

At present, Balancer Labs has created two initial stable pools for traders and LPs – namely staBAL3-BTC – WBTC/renBTC/sBTC and staBAL3-USD – DAI/USDC/USDT.

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