Author: José Oramas

José is a journalist and translator with a keen interest in blockchain and cryptocurrencies.

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Crypto News DeFi Hackers

Users Praise Illuvium after Team Drains Uniswap Pool to Protect Billions from Protocol Flaw

Illuvium, a multibillion-dollar GameFi company, has drained its liquidity pools after finding a security flaw that could have ended in billions of dollars lost through exploits. And while it seems like a drastic action, the move has been praised by the Illivium community.

Attackers Steal Some Funds Before Team Plugs Breach

At 2pm ET on January 4, the team behind Illuvium drained all the funds of the sILV/ETH Uniswap V3 pool to prevent a major security breach from being executed, though the attackers were able to steal some of the funds in the pool before the team got their hands on it.

The hackers went on to create a fake Illuvium Twitter account posing as a support centre for users, which had already been reported by the real Illuvium account:

In a message in the project’s official Discord channel, Illuvium co-founder Kieran Warwick said the team would ensure future bugs are prevented by implementing several security measures, such as three independent audits per contract, a bug bounty program, and additional contract testing.

In a closing note, Illuvium will reimburse sILV owners once it gets a snapshot of them. While the sILV pool had been created by a DAO, the team, including Warwick, used it to trade in it.

GameFi Community a New Target

The Illuvium community has praised the company’s action instead of condemning it. The DeFi community has been subject to attack in the past, with big blows such as last month’s BadgerDAO $120 million exploit. Now it appears that malicious actors are flocking to the GameFi community to see if they can cash a few more bucks out of investors’ pockets.

Categories
DeFi Scams Tokens

Scam Alert: Security Firm Identifies Arbix Finance $10 Million Rug Pull

Blockchain security firm CertiK has identified Arbix Finance as a rug pull, warning users who have engaged with the protocol to stay way from it and its ARBX token.

Another Rug in the DeFi Space; This Time Users Are Warned

Arbix Finance is a Binance Smart Chain-based protocol that describes itself as a yield-farming aggregator. So far, it has amassed over US$10 million in deposits by users.

CertiK found several red flags in Arbix thanks to its Skytrace tool, which it uses to analyse the risk of fraud. Some of the firm’s initial findings were that investors’ funds had been allocated in unverified pools through the depositor contract, which were later drained by the Arbix team.

The protocol’s underlying code was purposefully made to allow developers to mint millions of ARBX tokens, with roughly 4.5 million tokens minted to only one wallet.

The exploited contract was not in the audit scope that was done for Arbix. The project inserted eight ‘mint()’ functions to a newly deployed ARBX ERC20 contract, which allowed the owner to mint any amount of ARBX tokens to any address.

CertiK statement

Arbix Disappears Amid Accusations

It appears that Arbix Finance quietly disappeared shortly after the accusations were made – the project’s website and Twitter account are gone, and the ARBX token dropped to $0.

Discerning between a legit DeFi project with goals and a scam is difficult for newcomers in the space. While CertiK managed to warn users before more damage was done, some warnings come too late. In November last year, Crypto News Australia reported how the creators of DeFi token launch Monkey Jizz rugged investors out of US$300,000 worth of BNB.

Categories
Crypto News Hackers Social media Solana

Solana Network Temporarily Down Again After Another DDoS Attack

High-performance network Solana has suffered another DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, specifically at 2:00 am (UTC+8) on January 4:

This is just another of the many exploits Solana has sustained in recent weeks. On December 14, Solana suffered a DDoS attack that jammed the network and caused huge transaction delays.

Outrage Among the SOL Community

The network appears to be back up again following the latest incident, but the continued breaches have caused outrage in the SOL community, who are now complaining en masse about how vulnerable the network is.

SOL users have expressed their outrage on Twitter and Reddit. One Redditor, angry for the constant delay, claimed that Solana Status has been lying to its users, insisting the network has been working “completely fine” and that the delay problems might be related to slow internet connections.


Turns out status dot solana page is lying to its own users. If you go into the Solana official groups, you can see dozens of people complaining about failing transactions, missing balances, transactions not being processed, etc. Users are repeatedly questioning the validity of the status dot solana page that shows 100 percent uptime even when the network was down, and even Coinbase flagged it as down.

Reddit user

‘Slowdown’, Not a Crash

Some users have said that this is just another slowdown instead of a crash. Crypto exchange Coinbase warned users that the SOL network had experienced a momentary downgraded performance with failed transactions that could be retried:

Whatever the cause, most users are complaining about lack of decentralisation and a dearth of security measures in the network.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Hackers

Algorand-Based DeFi Platform ‘Tinyman’ Exploited for $3 Million

The DeFi space has already had its first breach this year as Tinyman, an Algorand-based decentralised trading platform, was hacked and drained for roughly US$3 million.

On January 1, Tinyman announced via its Twitter account that its platform had been compromised, saying it had pulled the remaining liquidity from Tinyman on the TINY token. The platform has advised its community to withdraw their funds as the exploit is ongoing:

How the Breach Took Place

As per the investigation, the attackers managed to exploit various vulnerabilities in the platform’s smart contracts, giving them access to various liquidity pools. They started interacting with the targeted pools and swapped a portion of their funds to acquire ASAs, causing price instability in the following hours.

The attacker exploits an unknown bug in the burning of pool tokens and receives two of the same assets instead of two different assets. This worked in favour of the attacker since the gobtc asset was significantly more valuable than ALGO, which they immediately swapped against ALGO to receive more funds to continue their attack.

Tinyman blog post

The team behind Tinyman said that they were unable to block ongoing transactions on the blockchain as the contracts are permissionless. The first step, however, was to pull all of the liquidity from all Tinyman contracts and return it once the platform is clear of any attacks.

Another Day, Another Hack

DeFi protocols are always at risk of suffering smart contract exploitations on their platforms, or similar attacks such as security breaches or DoS (Denial of Service). As expected, each platform’s token drops massively after the liquidity pools are drained, leaving a wide cut on investors’ pockets.

In December 2021, the crypto community saw DeFi marketplace MonoX hacked for US$31 million, one of the largest hacks in that month. Two months earlier, Indexed Finance suffered its first hack, with US$16 million drained out of their two pools.

Categories
Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Stablecoins

Vitalik Buterin Reflects on 2021: ‘I Completely Missed NFTs’

Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of the second-largest cryptocurrency and decentralised ecosystem, Ethereum, has admitted he “completely missed NFTs” (non-fungible tokens).

In a recent Twitter storm, the programmer and crypto writer shared his thoughts about the current state of the industry. Since the launch of Ethereum, Buterin envisioned a future where programmers could build decentralised applications on the Ethereum network and release them to the public. These would include DAOs (Decentralised Autonomous Organisations), ERC-20 tokens, and Oracles.

However, Buterin admits he failed to catch the NFT wave:

Crypto and Stablecoin Adoption on the Rise

Buterin started his thread by saying he had visited Argentina, where he noticed a rise in crypto and stablecoin adoption as more Argentinian businesses were operating with USDT.

Argentina is one of the many examples of how crypto and blockchain technology can be used to combat rising fiat hyperinflation. In a 2013 article, Buterin wrote that cryptocurrencies could protect citizens against declining purchasing power and the reduction of wealth in countries such as Venezuela, Argentina and Iran:

Buterin went on to reflect on the negative impact of the “internationalisation and regulation” of Bitcoin, which he also predicted nearly 10 years ago:

My views today: sure, Bitcoin’s decentralisation would let it still “survive” under a super-hostile regulatory climate, but it could not “thrive”. Successful censorship resistance strategy requires a combination of technological robustness and public legitimacy.

Vitalik Buterin

‘The Internet Of Money Shouldn’t Cost More than 5 Cents’

The Twitter storm also served as the arena for both supporters and detractors of Ethereum. While Buterin claimed that his invention kickstarted the internet of money and that it is still working on scalability, some users fired back at him for the expensive gas fees on the network, which can take up to 50 percent.

Putting aside those discussions, Buterin ended the thread in claiming he had changed his mind about political organisations, saying he was “more naive then”.

On tech, I was more often right on abstract ideas than on production software dev issues. Had to learn to understand the latter over time. I have a deeper appreciation now of the need for even more simplicity than I thought we needed.

Vitalik Buterin

The Ethereum Exodus Continues

While Ethereum has become the largest DeFi ecosystem, its massive popularity has caused it to struggle due to enormous traffic on the platform, which in turn drives up gas fee prices.

This is the main reason why several projects, including NFTs, are moving to other networks to offset excessively high fees on the ETH blockchain, and to achieve a higher throughput.

Ether, however, is one of the most beloved cryptos for whales – as Crypto News Australia reported in August last year, over 43 percent of ETH circulation is in hands of whales, according to analytics platform Santiment.

Categories
Bitcoin Bitcoin Mining Crypto News Institutions

$900 Million Worth of New Bitcoin Mining Equipment Heading from China to USA in 2022

Nearly US$900 million worth of Bitcoin mining equipment is heading towards Las Vegas-based Marathon Digital Holdings. The firm announced the purchase last week, but the purchase price was only disclosed on December 30.

Last week, Marathon announced a deal with Bitmain for 199,000 S19 XP models to be delivered through the latter half of 2022. The mining rigs will be shipped from Bitmain between July and December, according to the delivery schedules.

The S19 XP rigs produce approximately 23.3 EH/s (Exa hashes per second), a 600 percent increase on the firm’s current hash rate, and a 75 percent increase from its prior objective of 13.3 EH/s by mid-2022, according to Marathon CEO Fred Thiel. All the rigs are expected to be operational by early 2023.

US Now Aims to Lead in BTC Mining

On the strength of this recent purchase, Marathon has made the largest single order Bitmain has ever received for the S19 XP models, with its ultimate ambition to become not only the largest mining company in the US but worldwide.

With 23.3 EH/s of total capacity expected to be online in early 2023 and ample access to renewable power behind the meter with one of the largest renewable energy providers in North America, we believe we have established Marathon as one of the leading bitcoin miners in North America and potentially the largest known miner in the world. We would like to thank the team at Bitmain for helping us realise this objective.

Marathon press release

Now that China is no longer the concentration point for bitcoin miners following the its government crackdown on crypto, the US has overtaken the People’s Republic by becoming the number one country with the biggest BTC hashrate.

Green Issues Addressed

Discussions regarding the environmental impact of BTC mining have been assessed by several experts who have explained why and how mining can support renewable energy.

Bitcoin mining has even proven to be useful for insulating cities from the winter chill. As Crypto News Australia reported in October, the City of North Vancouver has announced a partnership with its local energy provider to use BTC mining to heat the city.

Categories
Bitcoin Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Gold Institutions

Institutional Crypto Custodians Raised $3 Billion in 2021

Investments into institutional-focused crypto custody firms have skyrocketed in 2021 – over US$3 billion has been raised this year, a rate three times higher than 2020.

The amount of capital flowing to institutional-focused crypto custody companies is now worth a total of almost US$3.5 billion, 4.8 times the amount raised in 2018.

NYDIG Leads the Chart

In mid-December, bitcoin holding company NYDIG announced the closing of US$1 billion in investment funding, giving the company an estimated value of more than $7 billion.

A day later, Anchorage, a San Francisco-based crypto custody company for institutional investors, announced a US$350 million funding round.

The top companies leading investment rounds so far are:

  • NYDIG: $1 billion raised;
  • Ledger: $380 million raised;
  • Anchorage: $350 million;
  • Fireblock: $310 million; and
  • Copper: $50 million

More Institutions Replace Gold with Bitcoin

Institutions have been heavily hoarding some of the top cryptocurrencies in the market, and institutional interest in the crypto market has surged to the point that 84 percent of institutions are interested in a crypto ETF.

So far, the idea remains the same: institutions want to escape inflation, and gold was the preferred option by most industries. However, with the rise of Bitcoin and other decentralised currencies, more institutions – including investment firms and banks – are replacing gold with bitcoin.

Crypto News Australia has kept track of the latest Bitcoin purchases made by institutional players in the crypto market this year. You can check our list here.

Categories
Crypto News Gaming NFTs Scams Solana Tokens

SolGame NFT Rug Pull, Website and Social Media Shut Down

SolGame, a decentralised P2E (Play-2-Earn) NFT-focused project on Solana, appears to have pulled the rug after investors reported that the protocol’s social media channels and official website were shut down, denying them access to their money.

SolGame Offline – Developer Identified

On Christmas Day, a Twitter user by the name of Millesimal reported he had lost his money on Solgame after the official website, solgame.org, was shut down and the Discord channel deleted. The user managed to track down the developer, but there isn’t much information on either his whereabouts or his persona.

The project promoted the game using the voice actor of the Squid Game frontman and other promoters such as Plasma Crypto and NFT YouTuber Pingue. The presale was conducted and tokens sold out quickly, but the project was drifting away from customers and ultimately decided to delete all communication channels.

Yet Another Rug on the Solana Network?

Solana has been a fast gainer in the crypto market, with many innovative developments and interesting projects coming to the platform. Just last week, Crypto News Australia published a list of five interesting Solana NFT projects launching soon.

But scammers have tried to take advantage of the rising popularity of NFT projects on the network. On August 14, Solana suffered its first and biggest rugpull to date after Luna Yield, a cross-chain yield aggregator, stole nearly US$10 million from liquidity pools and quickly deleted its official website.

Categories
Airdrop Crypto News Hackers NFTs Solana

Twitch Co-Founder’s NFT Drop Went Badly, Users Lose $154,000 in Discord Scam

Fractal, a Solana-based NFT marketplace created by Twitch co-founder Justin Kan, has lost roughly US$150,000 worth of SOL after suffering a security breach this week.

Ahead of its debut, Fractal had around 100,000 users on its platform waiting for the NFT airdrop, but someone managed to hack the startup’s Discord channel, specifically the announcement bot, causing it to send out fraudulent links to a website that used the ‘i’ instead of an ‘l’, as in “Fractai” – prompting them to pay for non-existent NFTs.

Kan acknowledged the situation on Twitter, urging users to not follow any link in the Discord channel.

On the other hand, Fractal said it was working to “make things right” and will reportedly reimburse affected users.

Discord Scams on the Rise

Fractal users can only be patient and hope to be reimbursed sometime soon. Some protocols have had to reimburse their users after their platforms were attacked – such was the case with Animoca, which had to repay users 265 ETH after its Discord channel was hacked last month.

A few hours prior to the Fractal incident, another Solana-based project was hacked for over 1.3 million worth of SOL. The project, called Monkey Kingdom, suffered a similar security breach on Discord.

One of the biggest and most frustrating rugs for the Solana community occurred in October when an alleged 17-year-old artist promised to deliver 8000 NFT artworks on the project’s Discord channel but failed to deliver and instead absconded with US$500,000 worth of investors’ funds.

Categories
Crypto News Crypto Wallets Metaverse NFTs Social media

Instagram CEO Admits It is “Exploring” NFTs

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri has revealed the social network giant could possibly integrate NFT features to its platform, as per a Q&A posted on his Stories.

Nothing Official … Yet

During the Q&A, a user asked Mosseri his thoughts about NFTs and if there was any chance they would soon be integrated into Instagram. Messari tweeted that while there’s nothing official yet, the platform is “actively exploring” NFTs and how to take the best out of the space.

Nothing to announce yet but we are definitely actively exploring NFTs and how we can make them more accessible to a broader audience. I think it’s an interesting place that we can play … and also a way to hopefully help creators.

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri

Instagram Has Been Working Quietly on NFT Collectibles

Rumours of the Meta-owned photo-sharing giant exploring the NFT market started in early 2021 when digital artist Sean Williams posted a Twitter thread claiming that the app was building an NFT platform and reaching out to digital artists in the community.

It wouldn’t come as a surprise if Instagram announced support for NFTs anytime soon, considering the extant NFT boom and the rapid expansion of the Metaverse, propelled by Facebook’s decision to rebrand itself to Meta.

On top of that, app developer Alessandro Paluzzi has stated numerous times that Instagram was already working towards the integration of digital wallets such as MetaMask, Coinbase and Novi.

Social Media Giants Moving Toward Crypto

The crypto community is witnessing social media giants embracing crypto and blockchain technology, with Jack Dorsey’s Twitter one of the biggest advocates. Twitter Crypto is the name of the recently created team in charge of bringing blockchain, DApps (decentralised applications), and all things crypto to the platform for a variety of use cases.

The NFT space is expanding fast, but of course not everybody is an expert on the topic, a reason why so many scammers are taking advantage of boom to fool naive investors. To help fight theft, Adobe is preparing a tool that will assist users in proving that the person selling an NFT is the actual owner.