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.

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Gaming Metaverse NFTs Theta

5 Incredible Crypto Projects from the Recent THETA Hackathon

With a total prize pool of US$500,000 and over 700 participants, the latest Theta Hackathon has crowned winners first to third in four different categories.

Out of all the placing teams that took part in the hackathon, here are Crypto News Australia‘s five favourites:

StreamVerse

Streamverse is the lovechild of streaming and metaverse concepts and is a place where streamers go to “monetise their streams and moments without any third-party arbitration providing player interaction as [a] base layer”. Users will be able to move around in a 3D virtual environment with friends and other fans to watch their chosen streamers.

Streamverse’s 3D virtual environment.

The team set its sights on building a platform that was realistic and where fans could interact more closely with their favourite streamers. Moments you never want to forget can be captured and converted to an NFT without relying on a centralised entity. The project also has efficient applications for charity and esports use cases.

TKETS

TKETS is a decentralised ticketing platform that aims to solve the security problems that plague the industry. The platform is fully permissionless, meaning anyone who has a Metamask wallet can interact with the platform and create an event directly.

The TKETS dashboard.

For event organisers, each ticket is minted as a separate smart contract that only they own, and every ticket purchase locks the funds directly into the contract. This means that after the event ends, event organisers can withdraw their funds immediately and directly with no need for any other approval. And on the other side of the coin, if an event fails to happen, payments are redistributed to the buyers.

SCUBR

Scubr is a short video content-sharing application. The goal is to introduce people to the blockchain space without scaring them off with the complexity that comes with it. Users can post videos of their own and watch videos of other creators. Based on the views and likes received on their owned videos, users earn SET (SCUBR Engagement Token). Using this token, they can purchase merch from other users or even trade NFTs.

SCUBD video-sharing platform.

By minting NFTs from their videos, users can sell them on the marketplace and buy other people’s videos as well. When the project is fully realised, people could hopefully even buy videos from celebrities or influencers. Once a user purchases an NFT through the marketplace, the video is transferred from the seller’s profile to the buyer’s profile, and any subsequent views of the video are credited to the buyer.

OpenTheta

ThetaDrop is run by Theta Labs and is its third-party marketplace where only selected artists, influencers and creators are able to launch NFTs. OpenTheta is the first independent and public NFT marketplace on the Theta blockchain that will allow any user to create, launch, and trade NFTs.

OpenTheta homepage.

The marketplace has a launchpad to support creators launching their new NFTs. Buyers can also check the sales history of an NFT, which gives them an understanding of overall supply and demand.

The Bug Adventure Show

The Bug Adventure Show is an adventure game where competitors play for NFT prizes, tokens and achievements. Competitors will need to solve puzzles and riddles set out by the team, and only one player can play the game at a time while their actions are live-streamed for all to see.

The Bug Adventure Show in-game footage.

The point and click game will be broadcast through Edgecast and each player will have five minutes to solve a puzzle with all the data being saved on the blockchain. The next player carries on where the previous one left off, and the game will continue until there are no more players in the queue.

Categories
Crypto News Gaming Industries NFTs

Gamers Revolt Against Ubisoft’s Move Towards NFTs, Calling It ‘Exploitative’

Ubisoft has received a massive backlash from the gaming community after announcing plans to add non-fungible tokens (NFTs) to its platform with the release of the latest title in the Ghost Recon series. The announcement has since been quietly withdrawn.

Ubisoft has announced the release of a new NFT offering called Digits. These in-game items will commence with the launch of the new Ghost Recon: Breakpoint and are marketed as digital collectibles that are completely cosmetic. The NFTs will be released in limited editions featuring an engraved serial number on the item that also serves as its cryptographic ID. The integration marks the first time a mainstream video game has added NFTs to its in-game economy.

Ubisoft Quartz an NFT Platform

The gaming industry has played with the idea for some time now and has met with many mixed opinions. EA has called NFTs “the future of our industry”, while Xbox boss Phil Spencer is worried they might be “exploitative”. Steam, the world’s biggest gaming platform, has completely banned NFTs and blockchain games.

The Digits come with a new wallet called Quartz, a platform where players can buy and sell in-game NFTs even on third-party markets. The platform will run on the Tezos blockchain, an energy-efficient Layer 1 solution, as part of its carbon-friendly campaign. Ubisoft’s partnership with Tezos to run a validator node also makes much more sense now after the launch of Quartz and the coming AAA-NFT titles.

Ubisoft has stated it will take a cut of NFT sales “in some cases”, making the gaming community feel it’s another moneymaking ploy. It seems that Ubisoft wants to take the micro-transaction era of Fortnite a step further by blending this tried and tested strategy with NFT technology and using it for its platform. After Ubisoft released its NFT trailer on December 7, it gained so much pushback that the company removed it, drawing a 96 percent disapproval rating.

Gaming Community Up in Arms

Blockchain technology has exploded in the past few years with all sorts of applications in different fields. Recently NFTs have infiltrated the gaming industry in a big way and the wider community is not happy about it. Many players and designers believe they are only added as a way to make money, rather than providing players with any benefit or enhanced gaming experience.

Will players be able to transfer in-game items to the next generation of their game, or if the servers go offline will they lose all their accumulated value? And why would someone buy an in-game NFT on a third-party market if they could never use it outside the game?

The consensus seems to be that gamers are upset that their hobbies could be moving towards crypto-based moneymaking machines rather than the fun and true experience of enjoying a game.

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Crypto News Crypto Wallets Hackers

Users of Pirated Windows Software Could Be Losing Bitcoin to Crypto Malware

Software pirates that use the KMSPico tool to activate Windows on their computers might also be inadvertently opening the doors for malware to steal crypto right out of their wallets.

Red Canary in the Coalmine

The issue, first spotted by security research firm Red Canary, was that users who installed cracked software – in this case a fake KMSPico installer – had opened up their computers to malware that could steal credentials straight off a PC.

KMSPico is a tool used to activate the full features of Microsoft Windows and Office products without the user actually owning a licence key. Alongside the difficulty in finding a clean download, the antivirus disabling instructions prepare unwitting victims to receive malware.

Crypto Wallets Beware

A classic stowaway on cracked software like KSMPico is Cryptbot, which harms people and organisations by stealing credentials and other sensitive information from affected systems. Cryptbot is able to collect sensitive information from a wide range of applications, including browsers and wallet applications such as:

  • Brave browser
  • Opera web browser
  • Google Chrome web browser
  • Mozilla Firefox web browser
  • Atomic cryptocurrency wallet
  • Electrum cryptocurrency wallet
  • Exodus cryptocurrency wallet
  • Monero cryptocurrency wallet

The list goes on, but you get the point.

Given the potential profitable rewards involved in cryptocurrency, malware, hacking and other forms of intrusion have been a continual thorn in the side of crypto users. Schemes have ranged from ‘Babadeda’ targeting users on Discord to fraudulent crypto apps designed to steal users’ private keys. According to a report from Google, 86 per cent of Cloud accounts hacked are then used to mine crypto.

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Crypto News EOS Industries

EOS Community Revolts and Blocks $250 Million Payments to Block.one

UK-based charity the EOS Network Foundation (ENF) has stopped payments to its parent company, Block.one, for allegedly not supporting the interests of the EOS network.

EOS Community Stops Vesting

On December 8, the EOS community elected to take the action against Block.one – the company that designed the EOS blockchain (EOSIO) – for failing to provide the ongoing support that was agreed on for 100 million EOS (10 percent of total supply) over 10 years from launch date.

The top 25 block producers out of 50 have approved a decision to stop the issuance of the remaining 67 million EOS, worth an estimated US$250 million at current prices, that was to be distributed over the next six to seven years.

Through a super majority consensus, the EOS network has taken its future in its own hands by voting to fire Block.one and stop vesting tokens to them. This begins a new era for EOS and highlights the power of the blockchain to enable a community to stand up against corporate interests that don’t align with theirs.

Yves La Rose, leader, EOS Network Foundation

Community Frustrated with Block.one’s Efforts

Over the past three years since the chain’s inception, some members of the EOS community have been disappointed by Block.one’s lack of commitment to developing use cases for the network. Although Block.1 has launched a social media platform known as Voice, the reality is that Voice has turned into an NFT platform.

ENF leader Yves La Rose also mentioned that the coins given to Block.one were meant for the development of “public goods” for the blockchain, and not a social media app or exchange. The chain also lost one of its largest DApps earlier in the year to Binance Smart Chain (BSC).

As a result of the community’s discontent, in August 2021 a group was formed by existing EOS members and block producers called the EOS Network Foundation. It appointed La Rose, who formerly ran the EOS block producer EOS Nation, as its leader and since then has been at odds with Block.one.

In November, La Rose made a speech outlining his plans for the network, stating that EOS had been let down by Block.one and needed to find a new way forward. “What we are experiencing is a shift whereby the EOS community is placing itself in a position to be able to move away from Block.one, essentially forking them out,” La Rose said.

Negotiations over Intellectual Property

Over the next month and a half, the ENF engaged in dialogues with Brock Pierce, co-founder of Block.one. The primary goal was to get hold of the EOS network’s intellectual property, and the main bargaining chip on the ENF’s side was the network’s continuance of payments.

But one key problem, according to the ENF, was that the EOS intellectual property sits on Bullish’s balance sheet, meaning that Block.one would need to purchase it from the exchange. This caused a roadblock since Block.one wouldn’t publicly commit to getting the intellectual property back from Bullish.

Several major EOS block producers met to discuss the matter, and after a series of failed negotiations and disagreements over who would deliver a letter of intent, it resulted in the final vote between the block producers, and here we are. As it stands, it’s unclear if further negotiations could lead to the release of payments and the holder of the IP.

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Australia CBDCs Crypto Exchange Payments Regulation

Treasury Moves to Consider Feasibility of CBDC and Crypto Legalisation Reforms

The Australian government is making strides in reforming consumer and business payments as well as building a framework for the regulation of the crypto market as innovations in payment technology rapidly increase.

The Rise of New Payment Technology

Australia has long been working on the possible implementation of a Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC), and a year-long study by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has determined that a CBDC could be used by the wholesale market for the funding, settlement and repayment of a tokenised syndicated loan on Ethereum-based distributed ledger technology (DLT). Research will continue accordingly.

The report comes as the Australian government is in the process of overhauling its regulatory framework for payment systems for the first time in more than 20 years. The concern with emerging payment technologies – such as those provided by Ant Group Co or even Tether – is that a digital currency pegged to the US dollar could pose a threat to monetary regimes and add a new layer to cross-border payments.

If we do not reform the current framework, it will be Silicon Valley that determines the future of our payments system […] These are significant shifts which we need to be in front of.

Josh Frydenberg, Australian Federal Treasurer

According to the Australian Taxation Office, more than 800,000 Australians have made transactions with digital assets since 2018. Since the technology is available and people are using it, the country has also opted to broaden its payment laws to cover online transaction providers such as Apple Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google, as well as buy-now-pay-later (BNPL) providers like Afterpay Ltd. This would effectively end their run of operating without direct supervision.

Australia Leading Crypto Regulation

Leading up to the reform, in October an Australian Senate committee released a 12-point crypto reform plan to assist in the regulation of the growing digital asset ecosystem. Now full-scale crypto regulation is coming to Australia, and it includes licences for exchanges, laws for DAOs, action on de-banking and a review of tax settings.

The move to regulate digital assets is an important one with many factors to consider, but consultation and discussion are essential first steps with the support of key individuals in government positions.

Categories
Crypto News Gaming NFTs Play to Earn

World’s First 8-Bit RPG Game ‘MetaGods’ Launching as Play-To-Earn MMO

MetaGods is the world’s first 8-bit play-to-earn experience, in the form of a multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) built on Binance Smart Chain (BSC). It’s come out of the gates with some fanfare, given that it is backed by some big names including YouTube celebrity Mr Beast, and top YouTube crypto channel, Boxmining.

The Gameplay

MetaGods players are in effect mythological demigods trying to gain ascension through battle in either Atlantis (casual) mode or Zion, the hardcore mode where you have only one chance to play for legendary loot. Your character, equipment and loot are stored as non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and can be sold or bought on the digital marketplace, giving players the chance to monetise their time in the game.

You can play as a Tank, DPS, or Healer against hordes of enemies and earn some loot. Playing with friends is encouraged with the push to Social GameFi, where gamers are rewarded: “With the holy trinity of MMO, you have a better chance to win against the pantheon to earn those sweet, sweet APY rewards,” according to the roadmap.

MetaGods can be played in either Atlantis (casual) or Zion (hardcore) modes.

Dual Token System Applies

The game incorporates a dual token system:

  • $MGOD is used for adventure packs, to enter raids, and in the marketplace; and
  • $RELIC is used in-game to forge new weapons, armour, or anything available in the crafting section.

In short, $MGOD is used as the governance token of the project and can be used to enter special events while $RELIC is an earnable in-game currency that supports the play-to-earn structure of MetaGods.

Mint Your Own NFTs

The game allows you to mint your own NFTs so that you can “fight your way through epic dungeons and earn loot”. With each character as a generative NFT, there are many roles that you can play to support your team whether you are a healer, a DPS or a tank.

Within that realm, NFTs are not just your avatar, but are your in-game character. Each character NFT will in turn have randomly generated character stats, as well as equipment including weaponry and armour.

NFT characters will have randomly generated equipment.

Battle the Gods for APY

To keep the game interesting there will be weekly special events with boss challenges, where a high APY incentive is provided for the community to band together and fight against the gods. There will also be tournaments and airdrops on special occasions for players who stick for the long run.

The official game release is set for Q1 of 2022, according to the roadmap, and with the game currently on BSC there are plans to integrate Solana as soon as possible with the other chains to follow. The project has raised US$3 million in funding from its supporting investors to build up the game, economy, and community.

MetaGods roadmap

Many new GameFi projects rely on their community and participation to make everything work. Recent project Genopets, for example, which uses players’ fitness data for the game, raised US$8.3 million in seed funding.

How to Get Involved

MetaGods announced the NFT sale via Twitter, which at the time of publication, kicks off in 10 hours.

Users keen to get involved should visit MetaGod’s NFT raffle sale page, which provides step-by-step instructions on how to participate. For other gameplay information, be sure to check out the MetaGods pitchdeck which, among other things, also covers information about the team, the roadmap and relevant tokenomics.

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Crypto Exchange Crypto News Crypto Wallets Hackers Tokens

BitMart Exchange Hacked for $200 Million

The centralised US crypto exchange BitMart has been hit by one of the most devastating hacks to date, draining an estimated US$196 million in various cryptocurrencies.

According to a Twitter thread by Sheldon Xia, founder and CEO of BitMart, on December 5 a “large-scale breach” of its Ethereum (ETH) and Binance Smart Chain (BSC) hot wallets was discovered. The losses were estimated to be around US$200 million by security firm PeckShield, who picked it up as it was happening.

Attackers Targeting Important Private Keys

According to an official update, withdrawals have been suspended and all other wallets are secured and unharmed, as fortunately “ETH hot wallet and BSC hot wallet carry a small percentage of assets on BitMart”. Xia later announced that the breaches had been caused by a stolen private key that the attackers used to gain access to the wallets.

The hacker made away with a mix of more than 20 tokens, including altcoins such as Binance Coin (BNB), Safemoon, BSC-USD and BNBBPay (BPay), as well as sizeable amounts of memecoins such as BabyDoge, Floki and Moonshot.

After the funds were leached, they were systematically swapped for Ether (ETH) using decentralised exchange (DEX) aggregator 1inch, and thereafter deposited into privacy mixer Tornado Cash, which made the hacked funds harder to track.

In August, Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency trading platform Bilaxy also suffered a serious attack, losing an estimated US$450 million.

BitMart to Compensate Affected Users

In terms of asset deposits and withdrawals, BitMart is confident that these functions will gradually begin from December 7. The affected users at least have a silver lining after BitMart made a statement that they would be compensated and pools refunded.

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Blockchain Industries Payments

Square Rebrands to ‘Block’ Amid Broader Push into Crypto

Jack Dorsey’s digital payments firm Square has rebranded as a symbol of its growth and continued movement into the blockchain industry.

On December 1, Square said it would be changing its name to ‘Block’. According to the announcement, the rebadge is a symbol of its continued growth and will act as an umbrella term for the various services created since its inception in 2009.

Block is a new name, but our purpose of economic empowerment remains the same. No matter how we grow or change, we will continue to build tools to help increase access to the economy.

Jack Dorsey, Block CEO and co-founder

The legal name “Square, Inc” is expected to be legally changed to “Block, Inc” around December 10, once all applicable legal requirements have been satisfied.

The Square’s new name has various associated meanings for the business. According to the announcement, the name Block represents “building blocks, neighbourhood blocks and their local businesses, communities coming together at block parties full of music, a blockchain, a section of code, and obstacles to overcome”.

The company has already expanded its crypto services to Australia with its A$39 billion purchase of Afterpay to make bitcoin purchases on a “buy now, pay later” (BNPL) basis. 

Dorsey Moving Further into Crypto

Square’s name change follows Dorsey stepping down as Twitter CEO late last month, with many believing he now wants to spend more time working on cryptocurrency and blockchain technology.

The Square rebadge announcement also mentions blockchain technology and further reveals that Square’s subsidiary, Square Crypto, will also change its name.

As a result of the name change, Square Crypto, a separate initiative of the company dedicated to advancing Bitcoin, will change its name to Spiral.

Block press release

Spiral and TBD are two initiatives under the Block umbrella that focus entirely on Bitcoin. Spiral is dedicated to building and funding “open-source projects aimed at making bitcoin the planet’s preferred currency”, while TBD is currently focused on developing a decentralised bitcoin exchange to “build bridges between the fiat and cryptocurrency worlds”.

Categories
Crypto News DAO DeFi Hackers

DeFi Protocol BadgerDAO Exploited: $120 Million in Funds Drained

BadgerDAO is the latest decentralised finance (DeFi) protocol to be hit by hackers, draining US$120 million worth of cryptocurrencies. Hackers obtained the API key for the protocol and launched a front-end attack that had users making unwanted transactions.

On December 1, BadgerDAO received reports of unauthorised withdrawals from their users’ accounts. The team’s engineers responded by pausing all smart contracts to stop any further withdrawals. However, it turns out that the hacker(s) used malicious contract permissions to drain funds from the Badger DAO yield vault.

“It looks like a bunch of users had approvals set for the exploit address allowing [the address] to operate on their vault funds, and that was exploited,” Badger core contributor Tritium wrote on Discord.

A Compromised Third Party

The postmortem stated that the hack didn’t involve exploiting smart contracts but rather an attack that targeted the protocol’s front end. According to a BadgerDAO support team member, it appears the attacker injected a malicious script into BadgerDAO’s front end after somehow obtaining an API key for BadgerDAO’s Cloudflare account.

The malicious script basically tricked people into giving the address rights to send the tokens to the exploiter address.

Jonto, Badger core team member

The affected users are stirring on social media, with some believing this might have been a rug-pull effort organised by BadgerDAO itself. Until the official investigation is concluded, however, there will be no way of telling who the culprit is.

Security Still Needs Work in DeFi

The growing pains felt in the DeFi sector are mostly due to how new the field is and that there are still many best practices that need to be established. Earlier this month, US$31 million was stolen in MonoX’s DeFi hack, while October’s Indexed Finance ‘incident’ cost its users US$16 million.

Matthew Green, a cryptography and computer science professor at Johns Hopkins University, wrote on Twitter that “it’s funny how little computer security people know about the [decentralised applications] ecosystem. It’s like they’re living in the hotel from [Kubrick film] The Shining and they have no idea what’s going down in Room 237.”

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Bitcoin Crypto News Investing Tokens

STX Token Shoots Up 65% Following Jack Dorsey’s Exit: Coincidence?

The Stacks Network (STX) token has spiked nearly 65 percent in the past week, half of which came after the announcement that CEO Jack Dorsey was resigning from his position at Twitter. Some in the investor community cite Dorsey’s decision to step down as the instigator for the price movement.

STX Token Price. Source: Tradingview

In the past four days, the STX price has risen nearly 65 percent to its new all-time high of US$3.61 and at the time of writing had cooled down to US$2.60, according to data from CoinMarketCap. On the day of the Twitter announcement, the price shot up 25 percent, pointing to some sort of correlation for some in the investing community.

Dorsey’s Connection to Bitcoin

While the reason for the spike is not cut and dried, multiple things have happened that could impact the increasing price of the token. The speculation around what Dorsey will do next is one of the driving factors – now that the ex-Twitter CEO has stepped down, will he pursue his passion for Bitcoin and decentralisation?

“If I were not at Square or Twitter, I’d be working on Bitcoin,” Dorsey said at Bitcoin 2021, a conference held in Miami in June. The tech entrepreneur has shown his interest in blockchain technology multiple times. Even at Twitter, Dorsey spearheaded Bluesky – a project aimed at turning the social media company into a decentralised protocol.

Upgrades Coming to STX

Among the other reasons for the price spike, Stacks Network recently announced a major upgrade (SIP-012), due December 12. The improvement proposal aims to increase the network capacity by 100 percent as well as launch its CrashPunks non-fungible token (NFT) collection. The Stacks NFT marketplace has also contributed to the protocol’s rallying price action in the past.

Bitcoin, being the first of its kind, was not built with smart contract capabilities, therefore to utilise new functionality such as DeFi and smart contracts, a protocol will need to plug into Bitcoin.

Co-founded in Princeton University’s computer science department in 2013, Stacks Network is a layer 1 network facilitating smart contracts that settle on the Bitcoin blockchain. The STX token acts as fuel to power those smart contracts on the network, and by staking STX and supporting consensus, participants are paid in BTC.