Category: Blockchain

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Blockchain Cardano Crypto News

Cardano Breaks $3 as Smart Contract Upgrade Begins

Cardano’s ADA token has broken the US$3 mark on September 2 as it approaches Alonzo, the much-anticipated hard fork for the blockchain.

Cardano (ADA), the third-largest cryptocurrency by market cap (US$93.7 billion) behind Ethereum’s (ETH) (US$439 billion), is scheduled to release its much-awaited Alonzo update to the blockchain, which will add smart contracts to its functionality.

Since the announcement by lead developers at IOHK earlier this month, ADA’s price rose nearly 10 per cent in one day, pushing its all-time high to US$3.09.

Cardano Now in Phase 3 of 5

A major network update is known as a “hard fork” and is generally seen as a major milestone for blockchain companies in development.

The Cardano network is in the third phase of its five-era road map, which is currently in the “Goguen” era and aims to add smart contract functionality to Cardano. By giving developers the ability to build decentralised applications on the blockchain, the ecosystem should start to expand, bringing more utility and value to the chain.

The Alonzo hard fork is scheduled for September 12 and in the meantime tests are being done to ensure Cardano’s smart contract language, Plutus, is working properly.

Cardano has been busy with some serious development, also releasing its new Djed stablecoin to protect it from volatility in the market, making it useful for its DeFi operations.

ADA Up More Than 2300% in a Year

Cardano (ADA) is up more than 130 percent over the past 30 days and is up more than 2,300 percent over the past year. With the news of the smart contract update, the price rose to new all-time highs. At the time of writing, ADA is trading at US$3.017, with the price up nearly 15 percent since the beginning of this month.

ADA price chart. Source: TradingView

A recent report also shows that the number of Cardano millionaires has mushroomed by 1,850 percent from 3,625 on July 20 to 9,830 on August 24.

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Blockchain Crypto Art NFTs

Playboy Set to Release NFTs on the ‘Art of Gender and Sexuality’

The latest brand to jump aboard a non-fungible token bandwagon already groaning under the weight of art, music, gaming, beverages and sports collectibles is soft-core porn publishing pioneer Playboy, which is inviting submissions for its first NFT exhibition next month.

In partnership with Sevens Foundation, a non-profit that helps digital artists create and exhibit NFTs, Playboy will choose 50 winning submissions for its inaugural series, mint them as NFTs and promote them on social media.

The first topic of the proposed four-part series is “The Art of Gender & Sexuality”, with October 1 the closing date for submissions. In the month following, winning artists will have their work showcased at the NFT.NYC conference to be held in Times Square, New York City.

Playboy Has Form in the Crypto Space

In previous flirtations with the NFT space, Playboy collaborated with digital artist Slimesunday on May’s “Liquid Summer” collection featuring archival photographs of Playboy model Lena Forsen, the so-called “First Lady of the Internet”. Last month, the multimedia brand posted articles teaching artists how to mint NFTs, using the example of its initial foray into collecting NFTs via 2020’s Beeple Bull Run series.

Image from the Beeple Bull Run series, some of which Playboy collected.

The leisure and lifestyle magazine’s crypto journey actually began in 2018 when Playboy TV started accepting payments in bitcoin.

For Liz Suman, its vice-president of art curation and editorial, Playboy’s interest in crypto and NFTs is “a natural fit” for a magazine with a near 70-year history of resisting censorship and championing free speech.

We’ve always been a place that champions art in sometimes controversial ways and see NFTs as the frontier of creative expression going forward … As a female curator working in the digital art space, I’m most excited about the opportunity to build on that legacy by working with more female artists and diverse voices.

Liz Sulman, VP, art curation and editorial, Playboy

Sevens and Playboy Chase ‘the Global Promise’ of Blockchain

For its part, Sevens Foundation developer Tim Kang says the non-profit organisation is selective in who it works with to ensure niche social issues and minorities are represented in “the global promise” of blockchain.

We seek out partners and relationships who represent and align with our goals. It’s important for us to elevate women and LGBTQ+ voices to achieve healthy equality and understanding, so we’re excited to work with Playboy to highlight artists in the community who value cultural progress and integrity through creative expression and digital works. 

Tim Kang, Sevens Foundation developer

Neither Sevens nor Playboy will derive any profit from the exercise, and both entities will showcase the chosen artists’ work across their collective social media channels and digital platforms, with a combined reach of more than 25 million followers.

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Blockchain Europe Google United Kingdom

Decentralised Search Engine Becomes Default Option for EU Android Devices

Decentralised search engine Presearch (PRE) has officially been added to Google’s default browser choice screen for all UK and European Android devices.

Fair Play Among Browsers

After receiving a €4.24 billion (A$6.8bn) fine from the European Commission in 2018 for using the Android operating system to solidify its place as the most used search engine in the world, Google stopped requiring competing search engines to pay in order to get on the default settings page.

In 2019, the agreed changes were that the five most popular and eligible search engines (including Google) in each EU country would be displayed in random order at the top of the Android choice screen, conforming to metrics from StatCounter.

Nearly 70 percent of smartphone owners in Europe use the Android operating system, which means there is strong potential for the search engine to grow its user base.

With potentially hundreds of millions of users just a click away on the search choice screen, this is one of the biggest wins for any project within the crypto space.

Colin Pape, founder, Presearch

What is Presearch? 

Presearch operates its own advertising platform that uses Keyword Staking, which allows advertisers to stake PRE tokens to a specific word or term. Whichever advertiser stakes the most tokens to a given keyword has its ad show up when someone searches that term.

With more than 2.3 million registered users, Presearch is one of the world’s top 10 most-trafficked blockchain websites and one of the fastest-growing alternatives for private, unbiased searches. Competing with Brave, Presearch aims to join the decentralised service landscape and provide users with a privacy-centric search engine.

Presearch currently processes more than 1 million searches per day and the company says daily searches have increased more than 300 percent since January 2021. The searches are processed by Presearch node operators that earn PRE for their efforts on the Ethereum blockchain.

PRE Token Up 80% Amid Announcement  

PRE tokens are currently trading at A$0.20, having shot up just over 100 percent in the past seven days. The project has a total market capitalisation of nearly US$74 million.

Presearch(PRE) Price: Coinmarketcap

With Android running on about four-fifths of the world’s smartphones including hundreds of millions in Europe, we see this as a huge win in taking decentralized services and blockchain mainstream and driving mass adoption.

Colin Pape, founder, Presearch
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Blockchain Coinbase Crypto News DeFi

Fantom Token Surges 35% Amid Coinbase Wallet Support Announcement

Fantom announced on September 1 that its network is now supported on Coinbase Wallet, which means users can access and interact with the decentralised applications (DApps) available on the Fantom mainnet. The price of Fantom token (FTM) surged by over 35 percent amid the announcement.

Fantom’s Transaction Count Up 2400% Since May 

Given the high performance and scalability of the Fantom network, it has attracted lots of decentralised projects, including Sushiswap, Curve and C.R.E.A.M (aka Cream Finance). The transaction count and value of digital assets locked on the network have also increased by 2,400 percent to over US$750 million since May. 

With Coinbase Wallet, users are provided more options to easily participate with the fast-growing Fantom DeFi ecosystem. Additionally, the wallet can be synched with Fantom fWallet to enable users to stake and earn FTM rewards. 

To set up the Coinbase Wallet, users need to:

  • Select Fantom Opera as Active Network on Coinbase Wallet mobile app.
  • Download Coinbase Wallet extension on desktop and scan the QR code using the mobile app.
  • Deposit FTM or supported coins to the extension. 
  • Connect the extension to Fantom fWallet or supported DApps to explore the opportunities.   

Following the announcement, the price of FTM surged from A$0.9638 to A$1.3035, which represents a +35 percent increase. 

What is Fantom Token About?

Fantom is a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG) platform that aims to address the scalability issues facing smart contract platforms. The Fantom token makes up a significant part of the network. FTM serves as the governance, staking and transactional currency of the Fantom network.

The price and market capitalisation of FTM has more than doubled over the past seven days, following a series of announcements from the team. Recently, Fantom declared a US$370 million incentive program for developers to build and grow DeFi protocols on the network. 

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Blockchain Crypto News Real Estate VeChain

Real Estate Giant Inks Deal With VeChain in Blockchain Sustainability Push

Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL), a global commercial real estate services company with offices in 80 countries, has recently partnered with blockchain platform VeChain as part of the company’s greater push towards sustainability.

VeChain Steers JLL Towards Sustainability

As JLL is a real estate services provider and rational commercial actor, this push is no doubt driven by increased levels of client demand for sustainability practices within the sector.

In JLL’s recent China-focused sustainability report , it found that 66 percent of Chinese corporations have incorporated carbon emissions reductions into their real estate strategy. In addition, it also found that the vast majority of occupiers proactively planned to prioritise locations that would help them reduce carbon emissions in the future.

The big challenge, however, was the “lack of consistent and validated carbon data” which posed a “huge reporting challenge”. What’s the point of going green if you can’t prove it to your shareholders?

VeChain was sought as a solution to help deliver consistent and transparent data and help the company move towards its net-zero carbon goal.

Reimagining Building Management

In reimaging how blockchain could manage an entire building, VeChain considered three main scenarios:

1. For Owners/Developers – Easy Traceability of Full Lifecycle Carbon Footprint

Blockchain could help with the authenticity, consistency and integrity of carbon emissions data generated during the construction, operation, maintenance and renovation/demolition phases of a building.

2. For Enterprise Tenants – Better Choice of Green Office Space With a ‘Carbon Label’

For corporate tenants with sustainability goals, choosing green office space with a transparent carbon label will help companies demonstrate responsibility to reduce associated carbon emissions.

3. For Enterprise Employees – Incentives For Low-Carbon Behaviour

Blockchain technology, combined with computing models provided by third-party services, can effectively and authentically record individual behaviours and transform data into value which can be rewarded and used to incentivise action by tenants or employees of the tenants.

Other VeChain Use Cases

Vechain describes itself as a public blockchain providing the “best resources to anyone who wants to solve real world economic problems”.

Earlier this year, micro-nation San Marino leveraged VeChain for the issuance of its NFT-based digital vaccine passports, while a Danish company used it to verify the removal of over three tonnes of plastic waste from the ocean.

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Blockchain Crypto News Ethereum NFTs Scams

Fake Banksy NFT Sells For A$465,000 Amid Suspicion the Artist’s Website Was Hacked

A British crypto art collector who paid almost half a million dollars for a non-existent NFT by graffiti artist Banksy was most likely the victim of a hacker, as it turns out.

A link to an online auction for the purported NFT was posted on a since-deleted page of the artist’s website, banksy.co.uk, a week ago. The only item on the page was a JPEG (below) of Banksy’s impression of a CryptoPunk, the NFT craze that’s already generated more than A$1.5 billion.

The artwork, evidently Banksy’s comment on the substantial carbon footprint NFTs generate, was titled “Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster”.

Banksy’s purported NFT, Great Redistribution of the Climate Change Disaster.
Source: yahoonews.com

Soon after an image of the artwork was listed yesterday on the OpenSea NFT marketplace, furious bidding broke out for what people assumed was a “genuine” Banksy NFT.

100 ETH For an NFT That Never Was

The winning bid, fully 90 percent higher than any other, was made by an otherwise anonymous crypto art collector who calls himself “Pranksy”. It ran to a gobsmacking 100 ETH, or just over A$465,120, according to blockchain records.

Meanwhile, the page on Banksy’s website was quietly taken down, with no word about how it had appeared on the site in the first place. The buyer told the BBC that he suspected Banksy’s site had been hacked, and that some random scam artist put up the seemingly legitimate webpage.

No Such Thing as a Banksy NFT

Banksy’s PR team also denied that any NFT existed in the artist’s name. But in a happy ending to a bizarre story, the hacker has since refunded the 100 ETH to Pranksy’s bank account, less the transaction fee of around A$10,000.

Pranksy says he’s planning on keeping the artwork, for now at least.

The refund was totally unexpected. I think the press coverage of the hack plus the fact that I had found the hacker and followed him on Twitter may have pushed him into a refund. I feel very lucky when a lot of others in a similar situation with less reach would not have had the same outcome.

Pranksy, duped NFT art collector

Just a fortnight ago, Crypto News warned Australians about the prevalence of fake crypto trading websites. Pranksy, for one, seems to have missed the memo.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Hackers

Cream Finance DeFi Loses $19 million in Flash Loan Hack, its Second Breach in 6 Months

Decentralised finance (DeFi) platform Cream Finance has fallen victim to an exploit, the second time the protocol has been targeted. This latest flash loan attack on August 30 stole an estimated US$19 million from the protocol.

While Cream Finance runs on Ethereum, Binance Smart Chain and Fantom, luckily the only affected market was the v1 market on the Ethereum blockchain:

How Did It Happen?

According to PeckShield, a blockchain security company, the hacker made “a flash loan of 500 ETH and deposited the funds as collateral. [Next] the hacker borrowed 19M $AMP and made use of the reentrancy bug to re-borrow 355 ETH inside the $AMP token transfer. Then the hacker self-liquidated the borrow.”

The flash loan attack process. Source: PeckShield

The process was repeated 17 times, allowing the hacker to get away with around US$18.8 million.

“The funds are still parked in 0xCE1F … 6EDE. We are actively monitoring this address for any movement,” PeckShield noted, providing the hacker’s address via Etherscan.

The price of AMP token plunged more than 14 percent in the first few hours following the exploit but has been recovering since. This is the second time in six months that Cream Finance has fallen victim to an exploit.

The Importance of Reviewing DeFi Contracts

Various security and crypto experts have identified some of the major concerns surrounding the emerging DeFi market. “DeFi can be hacked for two main reasons – vulnerability in the DeFi smart contract code, or hacking the private key of the smart contract owner who has permissions to control the protocol,” said Lior Lamesh, CEO of GK8.

Lamesh added that “in order to prevent such attacks, financial institutions looking to offer DeFi services need to do two main steps: First, review the DeFi smart contract code and validate that it has no vulnerabilities; second, protect the smart contract owner’s private key at the highest level of security.”

As more institutional investors flock to DeFi and the benefits brought by the technology, it’s becoming increasingly important to review code and to ensure contracts execute as intended.

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Blockchain Cryptocurrencies DeFi Gaming Market Analysis Solana

Solana Gains Steam, Breaking $100 to Become 8th Largest Crypto

Solana’s momentum is strong as it gained almost 50 percent in the past week, hitting new all-time highs daily in a steady upward climb.

Source: Coinmarketcap

From US$30 just a month ago, Solana has now reached a top of US$114 and doesn’t seem to be slowing down any time soon. According to CoinGecko, Solana’s trading volume is currently at almost US$5 billion, with a market cap now just short of US$33 billion, coming for Dogecoin’s #7 spot, the meme coin with a current market cap of US$37 billion.

Solana Dubbed the ‘Ethereum Killer’

Solana solves the ‘Blockchain Trilemma’, which basically states that among the three factors of decentralisation, scalability and security, a blockchain network must sacrifice one to properly implement the other two. Solana has managed to find the answer to the issue of scalability without the need for layer-2 solutions.

Solana is a Proof of History (PoH) blockchain with much faster transaction speeds and lower transaction fees compared to Ethereum, currently the most popular smart contracts platform and blockchain of choice for the DeFi and NFT market. The Solana network boasts approximately 1,000 live transactions per second (with testnet numbers as high as 50,000 TPS).

It could soon become the choice for many dApps that will choose to build on the Solana network instead of Ethereum, which has been widely criticised for its network congestion, high gas fees, and lack of scalability. Recently launched Solana-based DEX, Mango Markets brought bullish news for Solana, as did the Degenerate Ape Academy NFT drop, a project based on Solana’s NFT marketplace, Solanart.

Major companies using blockchain technology are also adapting to the Solana network, as per July’s announcement by Australian renewable energy trading platform Power Ledger that it would migrate from Ethereum to Solana.

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Blockchain Crypto News Ethereum

Ethereum Experienced Software Upgrade Issues Over the Weekend

In a recent situation affecting the Ethereum blockchain, not all full nodes have installed an important update, resulting in a chain split. It seems like a bug in the older versions of the Ethereum (ETH) Geth client needed fixing and some node administrators were slow to respond.

An Unintended Chain Split

During mid-August, a “high severity” vulnerability was spotted on the Ethereum Geth client used for running nodes to keep the network safe and the data accurate; this prompted the hotfix called “Hades Gamma”.

The exact attack vector will be provided at a later date to give node operators and dependent downstream projects time to update their nodes and software. All Geth versions supporting the London hard fork are vulnerable (the bug is older than London), so all users should update.

Ethereum core developer

The Chiliz exchange even temporarily paused deposits and withdrawals of ETH, BSC and HECO due to the bug. But now, since too few of the nodes had the newest patch up and running, the chain has split.

However, at the time of publication, the majority of nodes are running updated versions of Ethereum, meaning the hash rate is supporting the longest chain. 

Geth client versions: ethernodes.org

What Are the Implications for Ethereum?

This means that the Ethereum blockchain is currently processing at least two chains simultaneously, which could lead to double-spending where users spend cryptocurrency but the transaction is overwritten on an alternative chain.

The Geth client accounts for 74.63 percent of the network nodes and only 66 percent have the most up-to-date version, leaving the rest at risk. An address has been identified by The Block Research as the address that exploited the bug.

What is the Latest?

At the moment the nodes are catching up to get the chain completely up to date, with many within the community calling for node operators to update.

Delays are also to be expected since this is a massive community update requiring many different node operators to update their clients.

There are technologies to make transitions such as these smoother by forcing important updates on nodes, but the Ethereum blockchain should reach normality as soon as nodes catch up.

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Banking Blockchain Crypto News Regulation

Tezos Soars 29% in a Day Amid Adoption by Swiss Banking Giants

The value of open-source blockchain platform Tezos surged 29 percent in 24 hours after it was chosen by a Swiss banking consortium to develop regulatory-compliant digital financial products.

Tezos Price Analysis chart. Source: TradingView

Incore Bank, a business-to-business transaction bank based in Zurich, is collaborating with two other Swiss entities – IT company Inacta and fintech specialist Crypto Finance Group – to power smart contracts for a range of on-chain digital financial products and use cases.

Along with Tezos, the three companies have launched a new standard for tokens called DAR-1, allowing smart contracts to help comply with anti-money laundering regulations, handle governance and support asset management activities.

Assets to be Issued in DAR-1 via Tezos Later This Year

Developed by Inacta, DAR-1 is based on Tezos FA2, a token contract interface for single and multi-token smart contracts. Incore and Inacta intend to begin issuing assets in the DAR-1 tokenisation standard via the Tezos network later this year.

In conjunction with Crypto Finance Group, Incore has announced a new range of services that include institutional-grade storage, staking, and trading services for Tez (XTZ), the native token of the Tezos blockchain.

This [three-way collaboration] is a tangible example of how FA2 on Tezos broadens the potential for tokenisation significantly. The launch of these Tezos use cases for the financial sector make innovative, compliant on-chain financial products a reality today.

Stijn Vander Straeten, CEO of Storage Infrastructure, Crypto Finance Group

Under the deal with Tezos, Incore Bank will also offer staking for its clients’ assets directly via e-banking. The Tezos platform has the necessary security to protect assets and other high-value use cases at the protocol and application layers, ideally suiting it to applications in banking.

This is not the first time Tezos has been targeted by major players in the banking industry. Last year, French bank Société Générale issued its official security token using the Tezos blockchain.