Category: Blockchain

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Australia Blockchain New Zealand Real Estate VeChain Western Australia

Australian Real Estate Body: Blockchain Will Revolutionise the Industry

A new report from the Real Estate Institute of Australia (REIA) confirms it is firmly in favour of blockchain adoption by the industry. The report outlines the various uses for blockchain in the sector as implementation methods become a hot topic.

Web3 Will Revolutionise Real Estate

The Blockchain: Opportunities and Disruptions for Real Estate report, released this week, details how the Aussie real estate industry can utilise blockchain tech to stay ahead of the game in an unstable market. The report is the result of a collaboration between REIA, REINZ (its New Zealand counterpart), and the RMIT (Royal Melbourne University of Technology) Innovation Hub.

REIA president Hayden Groves predicts that “fully integrated Web3 technology” will allow the industry to cope with rising interest rates, and housing affordability and supply issues. And according to Professor Jason Potts, co-director of RMIT University’s Blockchain Innovation Hub, blockchain has the potential to reshape customers’ experience into something far more positive:

https://rmitblockchain.io/jasonpotts

The time is right for Australia and New Zealand to become early adopters and in doing so provide more options for their customers such as tokenisation of real estate assets, which can lead to lower costs, increased liquidity, and therefore faster settlement times.

Professor Jason Potts, RMIT

However, Groves stresses that the research is only as good as the adoption, and that an implementation strategy is yet to be decided on. He wants “agents and agencies to be trusted members of their communities” with property transactions and blockchain offering the potential to “completely improve and grow trust in a real way”.

To learn more about how blockchain can function in the real estate industry, the video below is a useful starting point:

Sustainability and Training Also to the Fore

This is only the latest chapter of real estate’s exploration of blockchain in the industry. In September 2021 Jones Lang LaSalle Incorporated (JLL), a multinational commercial real estate company, made a deal with blockchain platform VeChain to promote more sustainable practices in the sector.

More recently, REIA Western Australia introduced ‘mandatory blockchain training’ for its real estate agencies. The May 2022 initiative sought to aid the industry’s adoption and evolution as crypto and blockchain progressed into the mainstream.

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Blockchain Ethereum Hackers Harmony

Harmony Protocol’s Multi-Sig Wallet Compromised in $100 Million Heist

The Harmony blockchain’s Horizon cross-chain bridge has been hacked, resulting in the theft of  approximately US$100 million worth of assets.

The Harmony team says it has identified the hacker’s wallet and is now working closely with security partners, forensic specialists and law enforcement to recover the lost assets.

During the attack – which occurred on the morning of June 23, US time – the hacker was able to steal a variety of assets including BUSD, USDC, ETH and wBTC, which have all since been swapped for ETH and remain in the hacker’s accounts on the Ethereum blockchain.

Hack Exploited Multi-Sig Wallet

According to Harmony founder and CEO Stephen Tse, the hack on Horizon bridge wasn’t due to vulnerabilities in the smart contract code. In a statement released in the days following the attack, Tse said the attacker somehow compromised several of the private keys used to sign transactions on the multi-signature wallet that controls the assets stored in the bridge:

The incident response team has found no evidence in any breaches of our smart contract codes nor vulnerabilities on the Horizon platform. Our consensus layer of the Harmony blockchain remains secure.

Stephen Tse, founder and CEO, Harmony

Tse added: “Our incident response team has discovered evidence that private keys were compromised, leading to the breach of the Horizon bridge. Funds were stolen on the Ethereum side of the bridge. The private keys were encrypted and stored by Harmony, with the keys doubly encrypted via passphrase and a key management service, and no single machine had access to multiple plaintext keys.” 

Before this hack, the multi-sig wallet controlling assets in the Horizon bridge required only two of four private keys to sign a transaction, making it highly vulnerable to attack. Since the attack, Tse has tweeted saying that the multi-sig wallet has been hardened to require four of five private keys to sign any transactions:

Harmony Offers Reward, Won’t Pursue Legal Action

In the aftermath of the hack, the Harmony team tweeted an offer of a US$1 million bounty for the return of the stolen funds and said it would advocate for no criminal charges if and when the funds are returned:

This is a relatively common tactic used by crypto projects to incentivise hackers to return lost assets, and while it sometimes works it’s not a widely supported tactic as it is seen by some as rewarding criminal behaviour:

Cross-Chain Bridges Vulnerable

Cross-chain bridges like Horizon provide interoperability between various blockchains, allowing users to swap tokens between the chains and easily take advantage of different applications and services on various chains, however they aren’t without risk.

One of the primary risks of cross-chain bridges is that their assets are often held in highly centralised multi-sig wallets controlled by a small number of individuals. This centralisation of enormous quantities of crypto assets makes them very attractive targets for hackers. Already this year, several cross-chain bridges – including Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge and Solana’s Wormhole bridge – have been hacked for a combined total of close to US$1 billion.

Despite this recent spate of hacks on cross-chain bridges, DeFi remains by far the crypto sector most vulnerable to exploits. A recent report from blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis found that since the start of 2020, 97 percent of crypto hacks have targeted DeFi applications. Just weeks ago, the decentralised exchange Osmosis was forced offline after a US$5 million hack was identified by a Reddit user.

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Blockchain Crypto News Solana

Solana Launches Web3-Focused Smartphone, Crypto Twitter Not Convinced

Solana Labs this week announced the launch of the Solana Mobile Stack software ecosystem for Android, alongside ‘Saga’ – an Android smartphone. Unfortunately, the news has been greeted with outright contempt by some sections of crypto Twitter:

Network Outages Still a Concern

Mobile phones are finally set to accommodate Web3, and the reaction has been mixed, to say the least. Solana’s announcement of the ‘Saga’ Android and the most recent Solana mobile stack (SMS) software for developers has been accompanied by comparisons to Apple and Ethereum; however, many voices have also raised concerns regarding Solana’s frequent network outages:

Regardless of the negative public feedback, some of the features users can expect to see in the Saga include a software custodian solution called Seed Vault, a mobile wallet adapter, and Solana Pay for Android. Solana also has plans to release a DApp store for its mobile devices so users can access Web3 with ease. The SMS development kit is available for download now, though the phone itself is unlikely to hit the market before early 2023.

But Why a Smartphone?

The idea for the Saga smartphone followed the release of SMS and was conceived by Anatoly Yakovenko, co-founder and CEO of Solana Labs. Yakovenko wondered what it would look like if one billion people were using crypto and realised that the best method for supporting the take-up would be to create a hardware wallet out of a phone:

The Android will feature a 6.67” OLED display, 12GB RAM, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8+ Gen 1 processor, and 512GB of internal storage. Solana is hoping that Saga will become the “gold standard” for Web3 smartphones and plans to display the full capabilities of SMS.

Solana Has Been Suffering

The Saga announcement follows a relatively negative past few months for Solana. January saw the company slide by 42 percent in seven days, with $SOL (Solana’s native token) hit hard thanks to the new year crypto sell-off. This and the addition of several duplicate transactions and downtimes led to rising tensions among users.

And in May, Solana experienced a seven-hour down period after bots targeted the NFT minting tool ‘Candy Machine’. The bots caused four million transaction requests, which the platform could not cope with, and users were once again left questioning the competence of the blockchain.

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Blockchain Crypto News eBay NFTs

eBay Expands NFT Foray With ‘KnownOrigin’ Marketplace Acquisition

The world’s largest e-commerce enterprise, eBay has extended its reach into the world of digital collectibles and blockchain by acquiring Manchester-based marketplace KnownOrigin.

The move comes only a month after eBay released its debut NFT collection in partnership with Tezos and Polygon-based NFT platform OneOf.

Timing Right for KnownOrigin

KnownOrigin enables artists and collectors to create, purchase and resell NFTs via blockchain-enabled transactions. Co-founder David Moore said in a statement that the company was built to “empower creators and collectors by giving them the ability to showcase, sell and collect unique, authenticated digital items”.

Moore added:

As interest in NFTs continues to grow, we believe now is the perfect time for us to partner with a company that has the reach and experience of eBay.

David Moore, co-founder, KnownOrigin

eBay Continues Digital Exploration

It was just over a year ago that eBay began allowing its users to buy and sell NFTs, at a time when the market exploded. Its foray into collectibles shows continued interest in leveraging cryptocurrency and blockchain technology to improve its operations, and eBay has even begun looking into integrating crypto payment options.

Jamie Iannone, eBay’s chief executive, said in a statement:

KnownOrigin has built up an impressive, passionate and loyal group of artists and collectors, making them a perfect addition to our community of sellers and buyers. We look forward to welcoming these innovators as they join the eBay community.

Jamie Iannone, chief executive, eBay
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Australia Blockchain Metaverse

Melbourne Sees $100 Million Invested in Metaverse Research Centre

Thai metaverse startup Translucia Global Innovation has announced it will partner with Australian software and design studio Two Bulls to launch the Metaverse Research and Development Centre (MRDC) in Melbourne. 

The MRDC is expected to have an initial budget of US$100 million and will be one of the largest metaverse research centres in the world, aiming to attract top global talent and innovate in the metaverse space.

Melbourne Centre Will Develop Translucia Metaverse Project

Last year, T&B Media Global, the Thai-based parent company of Translucia Global Innovation, announced plans to launch a metaverse project named ‘Translucia’ with several international partners, including Two Bulls. 

The new Melbourne-based hub will help develop the Translucia metaverse while also undertaking research on advanced technologies to enhance and support the experience and push the broader metaverse space forward.

Jwanwat Ahriyavraromp, founder and CEO of T&B Media Global, expects big things from the Translucia metaverse, insisting it will be “a world of happiness and smiles where people can live, work, enjoy business, socialising and entertainment in new ways”.

T&B Media Global expects the Translucia metaverse will soft-launch in November of this year during the company’s virtual expo.

Metaverse R&D Centre Hopes to Attract Best Minds

Speaking to the Bangkok Post, Two Bulls CEO James Kane said the new centre would attract the best minds in the industry and create a new kind of metaverse experience for users:

I think the Metaverse R&D Centre will be a great way to attract metaverse visionaries, helping Translucia fulfill its incredible vision and benefiting the world, introducing people to the concepts of the Translucia metaverse with its fresh perspective. 

James Kane, CEO, Two Bulls

Austalians are generally yet to embrace the metaverse, with a recent study finding only 44 percent of respondents were familiar with the technology. Despite this relative lack of awareness at home, globally the metaverse presents a huge opportunity – a report released last month suggested it may account for 2.8 percent of global GDP in 10 years, a whopping US$3 trillion.

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Australia Blockchain

Blockchain Could Help Aussie Government Recover $45 Million Annually, Report

A world-first Australian blockchain pilot could be the answer to Australia’s lost excise tax revenue issue. The collaboration between the federal government and consulting company Convergence.Tech will mark the first radical tax system overhaul in a century, addressing the hundreds of millions of dollars lost in uncollected excise each year.

Alcohol on the Blockchain

The pilot targets one of Australia’s significantly haemorrhaging industries: alcohol. According to Australian Taxation Office (ATO) estimates, alcohol excise duty should bring in A$6.5 billion annually for the government. However, the ATO estimates that 9 percent of this figure currently cannot be collected – equating to A$582 million in lost revenue.

The Pilot Grants Program has tasked Convergence.Tech with leading exploration into reducing regulatory compliance burdens for businesses via blockchain tech, according to Australia’s new National Blockchain Roadmap.

The resulting pilot Blockchain Excise Program can track excisable goods from production through the supply chain to their eventual sale. The platform will use a private blockchain to allow the industry to provide a real-time ledger of alcohol transactions directly to the regulator.

This type of technology … allows us to focus our efforts, have a differentiated approach and hopefully reduce compliance costs for the legitimate operators.

Anthony Barnard, director, Excise Centre, ATO

According to analysis by KPMG, this tax system overhaul could potentially recover A$45 million in lost excise revenue each year. Anthony Barnard, director of the ATO’s Excise Centre, says that the “prospect of being able to trace goods through the supply chain is very exciting for the ATO”.

A$DC Powers the Pilot

However, a relationship with fiat currency must be established prior to the implementation of any of this technology. Thus Convergence.Tech and the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) have been working together to integrate the platform with A$DC – ANZ’s Australian dollar stablecoin. Doing so will provide digital assets with financial liquidity and enable automatically triggered remittance of the excise duty liability to the regulator as alcohol moves through the supply chain:

https://bluenotes.anz.com/posts/2022/06/anz-institutional-news-stablecoin-tax-excise-blockchain
How the pilot functions. Source: ANZ Bluenotes

ANZ will also be able to offer wholesalers and distillers digitised inventory via custodian services, alongside remittance and refunds through highly secure digital wallets and immediate transfers.

The pilot is currently trialling this innovation with spirits; however, it could be extended to beer and ultimately real estate, hydrogen, fuel and tobacco, thereby reaping larger benefits for the relevant industries, taxpayers and regulators alike.

Blockchain and the Aussie Government

In July 2021, the Australian government’s Blockchain Grants Program allocated A$5.6 million towards supply chain pilots. The goal was to explore how blockchain could positively influence Aussie supply chains by aiding companies to navigate regulatory hurdles. Everledger, a digital transparency company, received A$3 million, and Convergence.Tech A$2.6 million.

In additional positive news, the federal government included blockchain in its co-called ‘Blueprint for Critical Technologies’ in November 2021. The blueprint is a strategy to both protect and promote essential technology, and the inclusion of blockchain has signposted the government’s position on the matter.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Solana

Solana Challenges Poor Safety Rating from DeFi Watchdog

Solana has rejected the safety ranking of “second-worst” that it received from DeFi Safety this week after the DeFi watchdog raised concerns over the platform’s frequent downtime and unsatisfactory node structure:

Lack of Transparency Cited

There are five different criteria that DeFi Safety uses in its blockchain evaluations: security and testing, node count, node diversity, documentation, and supporting software. The concerns raised by the watchdog predominantly revolve around the lack of transparency from the network’s archive node, alongside Solana’s processes for storing the blockchain’s data.

Beyond the platform’s insufficient node clients (software aiding users in connecting to the blockchain), Solana’s repeated downtime was a decisive factor for DeFi Safety.

Solana presents systemic technical risk. There is no doubt about it. User funds, in our eyes, are at risk. We penalise them heavily for downtime because users cannot access their funds when the chain goes down.

DeFi Safety Twitter – @DeFiSafety

Presently, Solana has only a single piece of software for its node operators, which DeFi Safety claims has not been audited since 2019. However, the report isn’t entirely negative as the watchdog has given the platform credit for aspects where it performs well.

Credit where it’s due, Solana has made significant strides in validation decentralisation. Thanks to an impressive program that incentivises many validators on other continents, Solana scores well on this point.

DeFi Safety Twitter – @DeFiSafety

More than 15 blockchains and 240 decentralised finance protocols have been reviewed by DeFi Safety so far. Ronin blockchain, Axie Infinity’s popular play-to-earn gaming platform, was ranked the worst. Ronin was hacked for US$625 million in March, in what was the biggest DeFi hack to date.

Solana’s Plagued Past

Heavy downtime has plagued Solana for some time, with several instances over past months inconveniencing users. On January 6, Solana crashed temporarily following a Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attack which caused massive transaction delays. Upsettingly, a second crash followed in the same week. Solana denied it was due to another potential DDoS attack, claiming the downtime was the result of an increase in high compute transactions.

Last month, Solana was down for seven hours after bots attacked ‘Candy Machine’, the platform’s NFT minting tool, causing four million transaction requests that the platform could not keep up with.

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Avalanche Blockchain Crypto News Metaverse

30 Years After Coining the Term ‘Metaverse’, Neal Stephenson Launches Blockchain ‘Lamina1’

Thirty years ago, American cyberpunk science-fiction author Neal Stephenson conceived the term “metaverse” in his 1992 bestseller Snow Crash. Now he’s bringing the concept to life.

Stephenson and crypto trailblazer Peter Vessenes, original convenor of the Bitcoin Foundation, this week announced the joint creation of their metaverse-specific blockchain, Lamina1, with Vessenes named as CEO and Stephenson chairman of the project:

Testnet, Betanet Set for Later This Year

The testnet and betanet of Lamina1 are scheduled to be launched later this year, with the pair’s ultimate goal to create a fully immersive 3D open metaverse directly inspired by Stephenson’s novel.

The “provably carbon-negative” Lamina1 chain will offer high transaction volume and an economic design with new incentive mechanisms to help create what its architects describe as thriving, vibrant economies for creators and entrepreneurs.

Vessenes says the first iteration of the blockchain will be “somewhere between a friendly fork and partnership” of Avalanche, though nothing is set in stone as yet.

We Just Want to ‘Build Cool Stuff’

“When I look at the things that have made the top chains work, it’s really just how successful they’ve been at getting their communities all the resources they need, and just helping them succeed,” Vessenes adds. “What we’re wanting to do is bring in very, very high-quality IP partners, enterprise partners, help everybody meet each other and just build cool stuff.”

Financial backers of the project already named include Ethereum co-founder Joseph Lubin, PSL co-founder Geoff Entress, Bloq chairman Matthew Roszak, Transparent Systems president Patrick Murck and blockchain pioneer David Johnston.

The Multi-Trillion-Dollar Frontier

Last month, an Analysis Group report estimated that the metaverse could make a US$3 trillion GDP contribution in its first decade. Goldman Sachs is even more bullish, predicting as much as US$8 trillion in potential earnings. And JPMorgan – another global investment bank – believes the metaverse is likely to infiltrate every sector in coming years, having entered the Web3 space with its own virtual Decentraland lounge in February.

Of course, such continued exponential growth is only likely if the industry reaches its expected potential.

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Blockchain Crypto News Terra

Whistleblower Claims LUNA ‘Isn’t Community-Owned’ After Token Drops 56%

A Terra whistleblower has taken to Twitter to rubbish claims by founder Do Kwon that the newly launched Terra 2.0 network is “community-owned”, accusing Kwon and his company, Terraform Labs (TFL), of holding substantial amounts of LUNA 2.0 in what he (the whistleblower) calls “shadow wallets”: 

These accusations follow a rough week for LUNA 2.0 in which it lost over 50 percent of its value. At the time of writing, CoinGecko shows LUNA 2.0 valued at US$4.59, down from its recent high on May 31 of US$10.24, a drop of 56 percent in seven days.

Accusation of Shadow Wallets

The accusations of TFL holding secret stashes of LUNA come from Twitter user and prominent Terra critic FatMan. On June 6, FatMan posted a Twitter thread laying out his evidence that TFL and Kwon secretly hold large quantities of LUNA. FatMan listed several Terra accounts linked to TFL and Kwon which collectively hold approximately 42 million LUNA, currently valued at around US$200 million:

This is a serious accusation as Kwon has repeatedly insisted the newly launched Terra blockchain is community owned and controlled. According to FatMan, his evidence shows this claim is not true, tweeting:

“Do Kwon has stated numerous times that TFL has zero new LUNA tokens, making Terra 2 ‘community-owned’. This is an outright lie that nobody seems to be talking about. In fact, TFL owns 42M LUNA, worth over $200m, and they’re lying through their teeth.”

Claims Secret Holdings Used to Manipulate Governance

FatMan further claimed that Kwon used his LUNA holdings to influence governance of the new blockchain and approve his own proposal, claiming in another tweet:

“Do [Kwon] used his shadow wallet to approve *his own proposal* through governance manipulation (TFL is not supposed to vote), told everyone it would be a community-owned chain, and then gave himself a nine-figure score. These are just the verified wallets – there are many others.”

Terra 2.0 Dogged by Issues

Most responses to FatMan’s thread expressed concern about the alleged dishonesty and called for Kwon to be held accountable:

However, some users also questioned the significance of these allegations and accused FatMan of conspiratorial thinking:

Terra 2.0 was launched in late May following the collapse of the original Terra ecosystem. Since its launch the new blockchain has struggled, losing almost 80 percent of its value immediately after going live and continuing to be dogged by accusations of shady practices.

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Australia Banking Blockchain Regulation Stablecoins

ANZ Bank Pushes Forward With Stablecoin A$DC, But Isn’t That Bullish On Crypto Yet

The Australian and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ) wants to extend the usage of its cash-backed stablecoin, A$DC, amid demand for access to it from its institutional customers. It also seeks to target additional use cases through a pilot program with the federal government and extensive engagement with regulators.

A$DC was launched by ANZ in March and has so far been used primarily to ease crypto trading for one of its major corporate clients, Victor Smorgon Group. It’s a fully collateralised stablecoin, unlike the recently collapsed Terra-based UST which was an algorithmic stablecoin.

Stablecoin to be Extended to More Institutional Customers

Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, ANZ executive Nigel Dobson said the bank was looking to extend the use of A$DC to a wider number of institutional customers, driven largely by customer demand:

Are we going to extend it [the A$DC]? Yes, absolutely we will. And this will be based on our institutional customers’ demand, as they reveal, increasingly, their own tokenisation strategies.

Nigel Dobson, ANZ executive
ANZ executive Nigel Dobson. Source: financeasia.com

Increasingly, real-world assets, such as real estate and art, are being tokenised and traded on blockchains. Dobson believes this trend will continue and will provide several advantages over the way these assets have traditionally been traded:

“We believe that tokenised assets can be inexorably developed to deliver greater efficiency, speed, transparency, and value for customers over time,” Dobson said.

Pilot to Collect Excise Tax, Plans for Carbon Credits

A$DC is also being used in a pilot program, in cooperation with the federal government, designed to ease the collection of excise tax in the distilling industry. The program uses smart contracts to facilitate the collection of excise – according to KPMG, this single-use case could result in the recovery of at least A$45 million per year in lost tax revenue.

Another application on the horizon is the use of stablecoins to increase liquidity in carbon credit markets, an area in which ANZ sees huge potential for growth:

We think that’s going to have exponential growth over the next 10 years, and the elements of tokenisation that can be applied to that marketplace to make it much more efficient, more global and, frankly, more available to a wider range of consumers but certainly to institutional investors.

Nigel Dobson, ANZ Executive

As part of its push for increased usage of its stablecoin, ANZ has been working closely with several regulators, including the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA), the Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) and financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC, to develop a framework for the use of stablecoins in the Australian economy. 

Dobson said that so far, the conversations with regulators have been positive, explaining that “it is nice to see APRA, ASIC and AUSTRAC all on the same virtual call together. We’ve got this kind of coalition of the curious going on at the moment, which I think is wonderful, and you know, the integrated interactions have been incredibly constructive.”

ANZ into NFTs, Crypto Not So Much

ANZ seems to be focused more on the potential of tokenised assets and NFTs rather than cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin. The bank sees its role primarily as providing a stablecoin that can streamline transactions and simplify the sale and purchase of assets.

“We believe stablecoins form a very important element of the settlement value and the settlement process,” Dobson said.

Initially A$DC will only be offered to institutional customers, but in the longer term, retail customers may well gain access to the coin to simplify crypto trading and the purchase of both metaverse-based digital assets and tokenised real-world assets:

We think that the growth area is not going to be so much in crypto, but in NFTs. NFTs are already in the market around sports memorabilia and [can extend to] anything digitally created. 

Nigel Dobson, ANZ Executive

ANZ Bank has had an interest in developing stablecoins and CBDCs for some time; last September, the bank was one of 15 finalists in the Monetary Authority of Singapore’s Global CBDC challenge, which attracted more than 300 submissions from 50 countries.