Author: Robert Drage

Robert is a freelance researcher, with a background in information science currently interested in blockchain technology and technical developments in the field.

Categories
Australia Crypto News Industries NFTs

Qantas Launches NFTs Despite Environmental Pushback

Australian airline Qantas is one of the newest major ASX-listed companies to include a non-fungible token (NFT) offering. The offering, however, has since seen considerable pushback from the community, citing environmental concerns with NFTs and other issues.

World First for Australian Airline

Qantas’s digital collection of memorabilia is a first for any airline to allow users to buy, sell, and collect NFTs and also enable buyers to earn Qantas Points. Holders might also have something extra to look forward to with Qantas stating, “exciting future benefits for Qantas NFT holders [are] under way”.

Chief customer officer Stephanie Tully said customers have been collecting physical Qantas memorabilia for years and NFTs would be the newest iteration. According to its post, the ‘Flying Kangaroo’ will allow cash transactions as well as crypto when it launches the NFT collection mid-year.

A Qantas NFT collection allows us to engage the next generation of aviation and digital art enthusiasts, leveraging blockchain technology to celebrate our heritage and future.

Stephanie Tully, chief customer officer, Qantas

Qantas Customers Take to Twitter

However, very few commentators on Twitter seemed to be as excited as Qantas about its new offering:

NFTs have become popularised as a way for audiences to have a new way of engaging with their favourite brands. On the other hand, some see them as a money grab scheme implemented by businesses to create a new revenue stream:

NFTs have boomed in the past year – according to Chainalysis, in 2021 a minimum of US$44.2 billion was sent to NFT contracts – though they have also come under fire for facilitating greater carbon emissions and running on unsustainable blockchains.

In February, Salesforce employees protested the company’s plan to implement the novel technology. And according to recent statements from WWF and Uber, Bitcoin and NFTs are both still too power-hungry and neither organisation will accept them until they’re greener.

Categories
Data DeFi Markets Ocean Protocol

OCEAN Surges 70% Amid Protocol Upgrade and Growing Partnership Base

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) has seen its price soar this month on the back of its anticipated Ocean v4 update, as well as a growing partner list and a thriving grant program.

With many industry leaders claiming that data is becoming the new oil, Ocean Protocol is building infrastructure that enables individuals and businesses to monetise and exchange data on the blockchain.

The protocol has seen its token make some considerable gains this month. According to CoinMarketCap, OCEAN has rallied nearly 70 per cent in March. The coin was trading at a low of US$0.40 on March 7 and from March 18 the price started to rally to a high of around US$0.69. The coin has since stabilised at around US$0.59. On March 21, the cryptocurrency saw a massive 562 percent surge in its 24-hour trading volume, which was responsible for the price spike.

OCEAN/USD price. Source: CoinMarketCap

Upgrades to Ocean Protocol

Some of the main reasons for the rally have been pinned to a few key events happening for Ocean this month. The launch of Ocean v4 is a major upgrade to the protocol and is expected to go into production in Q2 2022:

According to the project, Ocean v4 will include several upgrades including a mechanism that aims to solve rug pulls, one of the NFT industry’s biggest problems. The new protocol upgrade will also see the introduction of data NFTs, which add non-fungible token capabilities to base intellectual property (IP) as a way to help increase revenue streams, as well as providing new means for the community to monetise data.

OceanDAO Breeds TalentDAO

The second factor making OCEAN look more attractive to investors can be the OceanDAO, which serves as a launchpad for new projects. The US$140 million reserve announced in late 2021 was earmarked for grants and is now starting to see some of the fruits. A month ago, the Ocean Shipyard grants program was launched, giving builders their allocation of US$2 million to develop crypto and AI solutions.

More recently, though, TalentDAO has emerged as the winner of OceanDAO’s 15th round of grant rewards. The 16th round of OceanDAO is now under way, offering a pool of 200,000 OCEAN tokens for funding:

Real World Partners

Ocean Protocol has also raised awareness of its mission by having its data power a real-world use case that positively affects those in the food production industry:

In this partnership, Ocean’s Web3 capabilities will be employed to enable data sharing and monetisation so that small farmers can benefit from an extra layer of revenue.

The combined positive sentiment and creation of real value are factors that have contributed to the token’s rally. Recently, crypto companies have been branching out with projects such as IoTeX and Avalanche making various partnerships.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Hackers

DEX Aggregator Li.Finance Exploited for $600,000 But Users Reimbursed 

Li.Finance, a decentralised exchange (DEX) based in Germany, has had one of its smart contracts exploited, resulting in 29 users losing an estimated US$600,000 worth of various assets. The vulnerability has since been fixed and the majority of the affected users reimbursed.

According to the Li.Finance postmortem, on March 20 an attacker exploited a contract responsible for pre-bridge swaps and was able to steal an estimated 200 ETH in a single transaction:

The affected 29 wallets were emptied of a variety of tokens, with the attack based on wallets that had their token contracts set to give infinite approvals. The tokens included were USDC, MATIC, RPL, GNO, USDT, MVI, AUDIO, AAVE, JRT, and DAI. They were all converted to ETH and are still sitting in the hacker’s wallet.

Bug Bounty Option Ignored

The protocol also gave the hacker the option to claim a bug bounty, but there has been no response. The writer added in the post: “If you are reading this, we would be extremely grateful to provide a generous bounty and would obligate ourselves not to disclose any information about your identity.”

The thief’s wallet address containing the stolen funds. Source: Etherscan

Li.Fi Being a Nice Guy

The official post stated that the vulnerability had since been patched and the majority of affected users compensated within 24 hours. Out of the affected 29 wallets, 25 have been reimbursed for a total of US$80,000.

Owners of the remaining US$517,000 owed to four wallets have been given the option to transform the lost funds into an angel investment into Li.Fi, and thus future LI.FI tokens will be given to them under the same terms as an investor in the current funding round. Doing it this way reduces the damage to the platform’s treasury and also allows users to recover their investment with “an opportunity that would not be possible otherwise with huge upside potential”.

Importance of Audits and Security in DeFi

According to Li.Finance CEO Philipp Zentner, the platform was only a week away from its scheduled security audit. The audit might have been able to catch the bug before it was exploited, but nothing is assured:

This exploit has provided another example of why security must be of utmost importance. As builders in the space, it is our responsibility to ensure that users’ funds are safe above [all] else. Our users can rest assured that the audit is happening and LI.FI is safe to use

Li.Finance postmortem

This latest hack demonstrates how giving infinite approvals to smart contracts can potentially open up a user’s funds to a greater amount of risk. Infinite approvals allow users to swap coins at a decentralised exchange an unlimited amount of times without needing any further approval.

Earlier this month, Deus Finance also suffered an attack that cost the protocol US$3 million, following closely on the heels of the Fantasm Finance hack that cost the project US$2.6 million. The importance of security cannot be understated in the space; according to the 2021 Chainalysis Crypto Crime report, crypto stolen from DeFi has increased 1,330 percent since 2020.

Categories
Australia Blockchain Crypto Art NFTs

Australian Indigenous Yolngu Artists Are Entering the NFT Space 

Indigenous Australian artists are digitising their work as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to create a new stream of income and share their art on a global marketplace.

Artists from the Yolngu nation in the secluded East Arnhem Land of northern Australia are world-renowned for their drawings connected to nature. For the first time, these artists are venturing into the crypto space by minting their artworks as NFTs.

According to Chainalysis, US$44.2 billion worth of cryptocurrency was sent to ERC-721 and ERC-1155 contracts in 2021 – the typical NFT standards on Solana and Ethereum – and these Australian artists will be accessing a piece of the pie. Blockchain technology will also aid with the copyright of artworks from their community as well as create a new stream of income for local artists.

Preserving Indigenous Art and Culture with Blockchain

The project is being funded by venture capitalist Mark Carnegie and artists from the Buku-Larrnggay Mulka art centre in Yirrkala who will be creating NFTs. The bark paintings of one of the artists, Wukun Wanambi, have been sold all over the world. “I like to try new things, a new way of sharing art to the world,” says Wanambi, whose digitised artworks now being sold online.

Yolngu artist Ishmael Marika. Source: abc.net.au

These works can also be digitally stored and preserved for future generations to appreciate. One of the goals of the project, according to Joseph Brady, the art centre’s Mulka Project director, is to buy more physical work so it can remain in the Yolngu community.

If enough of these are sold, Mulka’s portion of that will go to buying that piece for the museum here […] So the work will stay here at the museum within the community.

Joseph Brady, director, Mulka Project

Sharing Culture

Ishmael Marika, one of the younger accomplished Yolngu artists, hopes that digitising his art will help protect it against forgery and become an asset he can monetise. “We want more of my clan and our tribes to show themselves to the world, so the world can see [us] and carry on our stories,” Marika says.

What is the Yolngu Art Culture? 

The art the Yolngu make represents their clan and all of nature. It is a unique part of their culture, which is why these artists are opting for NFTs. The use case for NFTs as a method to preserve indigenous art and knowledge over a decentralised network makes it a resilient method to keep safe the world’s cultural information.

The designs used by Yolngu artists, whether on paper, bark, ḻarrakitj (hollow logs), or on the body in ceremonial mode, reflect each artist’s clan and country. They are an expression of connection to family, country and to the Wangarr, or period of ancestral creativity. To learn more about the Yolngu art practice, click here.

Last month, the Aboriginal Yidindji Nation launched its own central bank digital currency (CBDC), making it the first indigenous nation on the Australian continent to become fully digitised.

Categories
Airdrop APENFT Bored Ape Yacht Club Crypto News Cryptocurrencies DAO NFTs Tokens

ApeCoin Surges and Then Dives 80% On Its Debut Trading Day

After Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) holders received an airdrop of the new ApeCoin (APE) this week, it was promptly sold off with the token dropping significantly as a result.

On March 17, ApeDAO launched the new ApeCoin linked to BAYC, one of the most valuable non-fungible token (NFT) projects in the space. The launch had a bit of a rough start after the APE token fell nearly 80 per cent in the first few trading hours, though it now seems to be steadily climbing as the accumulation phase starts for those who couldn’t get the coins for the airdrop.

ApeCoin/USD price chart. Source: CoinMarketCap

The token fell from its high of US$39.40 to a relatively stable $14.75 at the time of writing. At one stage, the coin was trading for as low as $6.48, according to CoinMarketCap. The total market cap for the token now sits at around US$4 billion, making it the 33rd-largest coin on the day of its launch.

APE was airdropped to BYAC NFT holders after the announcement that it was part of a new campaign by ApeDAO. Each holder received 10,000 coins that could be collected for a 90-day period, but users quickly sold their coins, pushing the price down considerably.

ApeCoin Airdrop Follows Familiar Pattern

If previous airdrops are anything to go by, this one might just be following a similar pattern, according to Braindrops’ co-founder, who attributes its classic price movement to a large release of tokens. This, however, remains to be proved:

According to its official website, the coin will serve as “a decentralised protocol layer for community-led initiatives that drive culture forward into the metaverse”. The token was developed by ApeCoinDAO, a different entity from Yuga Labs – the creators of BAYC – and has some heavy hitters, such as the co-founder of Reddit and the Head of Ventures and Gaming at FTX, sitting on its advisory board.

Is Coin Launch Helping the Project?

When looking at the marketplace, a consequence of the asset’s launch could have helped the average price of the BAYC collection. The project floor price rose significantly across the past seven days from 76.11 ETH on March 11, with a total volume of 913 ETH, to an average price of 110.15 ETH and a volume of 9,583 ETH in the hours following the launch.

Categories
Banking Industries Metaverse Sports The Sandbox

$3 Trillion Financial Services Giant HSBC Enters the Metaverse with Sandbox

One of the world’s largest banking and financial services organisations – with assets worth US$2,958 billion as at December 31, 2021 – has bought space in the metaverse. HSBC aims to take sports engagements to the next level by buying plots of LAND in The Sandbox (SAND) and dedicating it to esports and gaming enthusiasts.

According to a blog post from Sandbox, the banking giant will be purchasing a considerable amount of LAND in the metaverse to create a space where esports and gaming enthusiasts can connect.

HSBC plot of LAND. Source: Medium

Sandbox hopes this will open the doors for other institutions to join the metaverse as a new platform to reach out and create better-gamified offerings. HSBC joins over 200 existing partnerships including Gucci, Warner Music Group, Ubisoft, The Walking Dead, Snoop Dogg and Adidas, among some other big names.

Through our partnership with The Sandbox we are making our foray into the metaverse, allowing us to create innovative brand experiences for new and existing customers. We’re excited to be working with our sports partners, brand ambassadors, and Animoca Brands to co-create experiences that are educational, inclusive and accessible.

Suresh Balaji, chief marketing officer, Asia-Pacific, HSBC

With the metaverse market forecast to grow from US$45.4 billion in 2019 to a staggering US$1.5 trillion in 2030, according to PWC, other institutions are trying to find their niche in the metaverse.

SAND Token Spikes After News

The native SAND token from the Sandbox project saw a spike up from the US$2.80 zone where it has been ranging for the past few days. At the time of writing the coin had gone up to US$3.21, a near 15 per cent increase. However, the coin is still 65 per cent down from its all-time high in November.

SAND/USDT price. Source: CoinMarketCap

HSBC Bans Binance Crypto Purchases

To some extent, HSBC still has its reservations toward crypto. Since August 2021, the bank has suspended payments to Binance and has also barred its clients from investing in stocks of companies that hold bitcoin, such as Microstrategy or Block:

In early 2021 the bank said it had “no plans to launch a cryptocurrency trading desk” or offer cryptocurrencies as investments to customers, Reuters reported.

As the adoption of crypto steadily increases, more and more large institutions are opting to embrace it. In November 2021, ING, the Dutch financial service giant – with US$1 trillion under management – started looking into DeFi, while Australia’s CBA is also supporting crypto purchases, making it the first bank down under to do so.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Fantom Hackers Tornado Cash

DeFi Platform ‘Deus Finance’ Exploited for $3 Million

Fantom-based DEUS Finance has suffered a flash loan exploit when hackers made off with an estimated US$3 million and washed it through Tornado Cash. Luckily, affected DEI holders will be reimbursed.

Hackers Use Flash Loan Attack

According to a tweet from blockchain security firm PeckShield, hackers used a flash loan attack to destabilise the DEI, the other token issued by DEUS Finance:

Hackers set the flash loan to target the price oracle responsible for the price of DEI, making it think the DEI had collapsed. This resulted in a loss of all funds that were held in the DEI/USDC liquidity pool.

An estimated US$3 million was stolen and exchanged for 200,000 DAI and 1101.8 ETH, and moved via the Multichain cross-chain router protocol (CRP). The hacker moved the funds to Tornado Cash, a privacy-centric swapping tool, to help make the funds disappear (or at least make them much harder to track).

Deus Finance admitted the flaw in its lending process and stated that its $DEI lending contract had been closed. The DEUS token fell nearly 40 per cent following reports of the hack, but it seemed to have recovered somewhat by the time of writing.

Community to be Fully Recompensed

According to the postmortem on its official medium, Deus Protocol CEO Lafayette Tabor reassured users they would be completely reimbursed:

To make things clear: NO USER FUNDS are LOST. We will make everyone whole again – anyone affected by the exploit will be reimbursed completely. This means that the sAMM inside the borrowing contract will be replenished and the balances of users that got affected will be restored to the value they had prior to the exploit.

Lafayette Tabor, CEO, Deus Protocol

After also taking to Twitter to inform the community about the reimbursement plan, Tabor stated that the developers would create a new contract where affected users would be able to repay their loans:

DEUS community members were elated to hear about the reimbursement scheme, since it’s very rare for compromised protocols to recompense their community.

This attack comes little more than a month after Polygon DeFi protocol QiDao was exploited for US$13 million. And in January, Algorand-based DeFi trading platform Tinyman was hacked and drained of roughly US$3 million.

Categories
Algorand DeFi Ethereum Hackers Illegal Polygon Scams

Fantasm Finance DeFi Project Exploited for $2.6 Million

This week’s attack on Fantom Network-based synthetic asset protocol Fantasm Finance saw the loss of US$2.6 million worth of Ethereum. The stolen funds were run through the Tornado cash mixing service and totalled 1,007 ETH.

According to the protocol’s Medium page, the team will conduct a postmortem and consider all compensation options for victims.

Another Day, Another DeFi Hack

The address of the attacker shows the extent of the theft, with 1.8 million FTM remaining in the pool for redemption:

Since the March 9 exploit, the attacker has been using Tornado cash to mask transactions. Tornado Cash is a service that breaks the link between source and destination addresses, thereby obscuring the transaction history.

Attacks on DeFi Remain Rife

The crypto space and DeFi, in particular, have been under attack by hackers seeking to exploit protocols. The reason for the frequency with which new projects launch without undergoing a security audit makes them very vulnerable to attackers. In January, Algorand-based DeFi platform ‘Tinyman’ was exploited for US$3 million. The team at Algorand quickly tweeted it it had been compromised and pulled the remaining liquidity from the project.

The most recent DeFi attack prior to Fantasm targeted Polygon DeFi protocol QiDao’s Superfluid vesting contract, draining US$13 million. User funds on QiDao however remained safe, as the exploit was “solely on Superfluid”, according to the Polygon-based DeFi protocol.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Illegal NFTs Scams

Suspicious Code Detected in ETH Smart Contract Putting NFT Projects at Risk

According to the famous DeFi detective who goes by “Zahcxbt” on Twitter, 31 NFT projects may be at risk due to what he calls “suspicious code”. He posted a lengthy thread on Twitter and raised the issue of NFT project Thestarlab, which he alleges was compromised for 197.175 Ether (ETH), worth about US$580,325.

Zachxbt quoted his fellow blockchain investigator “MouseDev” who came to the following conclusion after reviewing the code behind Thestarlab:

What this means is that the contract can never truly be renounced or transferred! Only an additional owner. The original deployer will always be considered the owner! You can also check the relinquish and transfer ownership functions to see they never overwrite _creator.

MouseDev

MouseDev supposes that when the developer of the project deployed the contract, they stored two variables as the owner. “Then they later changed one of them to the null address to appear as though they relinquished but kept another unchanged variable,” MouseDev claims.

According to this information, Zachxbt claims to have uncovered 31 NFT projects that all contracted the same Fiver developer to launch the problematic smart contract. Zachxbt also remarked: “Please do proper due diligence. Always review the contract beforehand, especially if outsourced. Luckily, since then a few of the projects were able to migrate contacts and confront the Fiver dev. After reviewing internally, a few found other red flags as well.”

Thank Goodness for DeFi Detectives

DeFi detectives have been many a project’s saviour. “Void-of-Silence” posted on Twitter: “Some old info I’ve posted along with some new info out today 💚 a readdressing of the situation would be awesome or a new post about it all 🔥”

Another fellow detective who goes by “Thats AOK” replied to MouseDev’s Tweet by saying: “RUG RUG RUG RUG RUG RUG RUG.”

Last month, an infamous “internet detective” who goes by “Coffeezilla” confronted YouTuber “Ice Poseidon” and got him to admit to stealing US$500,000 in a blatant crypto scam. Coffeezilla later in February managed to expose an NFT scam that would have cost its users US$20 million, had it actually come to pass.

Categories
Crypto News DeFi Ethereum Gas Waves

BRISE DeFi Token Soars 120% as Bitgert Offers Business DeFi Products

As the overall crypto market continues to trend downward, the top-ranked cryptocurrencies have tumbled. Ethereum is one that has completely destabilised amid the current bear market, but as its price plummets another DeFi token has soared 120 percent – Bitgert (BRISE).

Bitgert has been doing well amid a tumultuous market, as is evident from its skyrocketing price and fast-growing market cap, fast approaching US$800 million, which has many wondering why this project in particular is doing so well.

Why is BRISE Soaring?

The short answer is the launch of the Bitgert BRC20 blockchain. As a zero gas fee blockchain, Bitgert is addressing current concerns regarding the network’s high gas fees – a problem Ethereum in particular deals with – and investors are excited by this. The gas fee associated with the Bitgert chain is only US$0.0000000000001. BRC20 has also overtaken Solana to become the fastest chain available after hitting an impressive 100,000 transactions per second (TPS), way faster than Solana’s 65,000 TPS.

These features ensure that Bitgert BRC20 is the most powerful chain in the crypto space as of now, and its anticipated mass adoption has prompted investors, including crypto whales, to buy more BRISE, which adds to its bullish trend. The team is bringing in hundreds of products and projects on the BRC20 blockchain to increase chain adoption. The Bitgert Startup Studio will also be the first program that will bring hundreds of projects to the ecosystem.

DeFi Does Well Amid Bearish Market

As the overall crypto market remains bearish, some DeFi projects seem to be beating the bear. Earlier in the week, Tornado Cash Token (TORN) surged 94 percent following protocol updates. WAVES saw similar surges when it shot up 120 percent in just a week following an announcement of a partnership with Allbridge, which will connect Waves with other popular blockchain networks.