Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) needed to be “recognised and regulated as a matter of urgency”, according to Australian Liberal Senator for NSW, Andrew Bragg.
Speaking at the Australia Blockchain Week conference this week, Bragg said DAOs posed an “existential threat to the tax base” since they are recognised as partnerships and as such are not liable to pay company tax.
Australia Cannot Rely on Company Tax to Raise Revenue
According to Bragg, Australia’s “reliance on company tax is unsustainable” given that it accounted for only 17.1 percent of total federal government revenue in 2020-21.
“DAOs are self-regulating and transparent, with an in-built system for governance,” Bragg said, adding that legal recognition of DAOs also guarantees a set of “minimum standards” that should be legislated. These would give consumers the ability to distinguish between retail and wholesale organisations.
Bragg called for the Australian Treasury to address those issues while also “leaving the field open for DAOs to continue to live up to their name”.
In 10 or 20 years’ time we may well be talking about the inverse situation – applying the rules for cryptocurrency to traditional finance.
Andrew Bragg, NSW Senator
By the end of this year, the Australian government is expected to receive a report on digital asset taxation and undertake a token mapping exercise. It will also examine the potential of DAOs and how they can be incorporated into existing legal and financial frameworks.
Bragg Also Pushes for Policy on NFTs and Blockchain
Bragg has also urged the Australian blockchain industry to “pick up the pace” or risk falling behind other developed nations, adding that Australia was likely to miss an opportunity to become a world leader in cryptocurrency if the government was not given more power to prioritise digital asset reform.
Time magazine is set to release its first issue in full non-fungible token (NFT) form, with Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin – dubbed the “Prince of Crypto” – on the cover.
The double issue, datelined March 28/April 4, will be launched in collaboration with the LITDAO, an NFT project launched in December 2021 about which little is known. No roadmap has been revealed, nor any use case; one of the very few concrete facts to have surfaced about LITDAO is that it operates with its own native currency, LIT.
LITDAO has reported that LIT Genesis holders will be eligible to receive an airdrop of Time‘s “historic NFT” alongside TIMEPiece Genesis holder. The latter is a Web3 community initiative created by Time, launched in September 2021 with a collection called “Build a Better Future”.
The airdrop will roll out with support from Circle, the company behind stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), with Transient Labs acting as the project’s technical partner.
According to Time, the Buterin issue will “live on the blockchain”, on a decentralised protocol. Holders of the NFT magazine will be able to read the content and interact with it.
Buterin Rails Against ‘$3 Million Monkeys’
Regarding said content, in the cover story interview with Andrew Chow, Buterin expresses concern about the dominance of DeFi and NFTs and the “shameless displays of wealth” driven by collections such as Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). He also worries about the rise in transaction fees and “overeager investors”.
In the TIME cover story interview, Buterin worries about “shameless displays of wealth” as exemplified by BAYC owners. Source: investing.com
“The peril is you have these $3 million monkeys and it becomes a different kind of gambling,” Buterin says in reference to BAYC. “There definitely are lots of people that are just buying yachts and Lambos.”
Buterin tells Chow that his vision for the transformative power of Ethereum is at risk of being overtaken by greed:
If we don’t exercise our voice, the only things that get built are the things that are immediately profitable. And those are often far from what’s actually the best for the world.
Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin
Time Has Mixed History with Ethereum
Time‘s close association with Buterin and the Ethereum blockchain harks back to November last year, when the media giant revealed a deal with Galaxy Digital. As part of the deal, Time would hold ETH on its balance sheet.
Two months earlier, when Time announced a new collection of NFTs offering “unlimited access” to its website throughout 2023, all 4,676 tokens tied to the digital artworks sold out in minutes. But the sale rush also clogged the Ethereum blockchain, sending gas fees through the roof. So much so that buyers spent almost four times as much on transaction fees as they did on the NFTs themselves.
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:
— JUSTIN // BrainDrops: A Platform for AI-Gen Art (@justintrimble) March 17, 2022
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.
Racy online video subscription platform OnlyFans has donated 500 ETH (about US$1.27 million) to UkraineDAO, a decentralised autonomous organisation raising funds to support Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion.
Risque vs Reward: Personal Element to OnlyFans’ Altruism
The website says it has now contributed over US$5 million to various humanitarian efforts supporting the besieged country, its charitable effort led by OnlyFans’ Ukrainian-American owner Leonid Radvinsky.
Since Russia’s invasion began last month, UkraineDAO has been a leading crypto contributor to Ukraine’s government, which has now received more than US$100 million in crypto donations from a range of sources.
UkraineDAO was formed by radical Russian art collective Pussy Riot and NFT studio Trippy Labs. OnlyFans’ 500 ETH contribution was counted as part of the largest single donation to date, from a US$6.5 million crowd-funded NFT sale on March 2.
CEO Extends Sympathy to Creator Community
“These tragic events have had a terrible impact on individuals, including members of our creator community,” OnlyFans CEO Ami Gan said in a statement.
Given our strong personal ties to Ukraine, we wanted to support in a way which felt true to who we are at OnlyFans, and which focused on getting aid and support to the Ukrainian people.
An unknown actor has taken over the Build Finance DAO by using an inflated number of votes to pass a self-serving proposal, allowing the minting of millions of BUILD and other coins and a subsequent getaway, effectively killing the DAO.
The Build Finance DAO has been the target of a hostile governance takeover in which a malicious actor has put forward and succeeded with a proposal to take control of the Build token contract. 1/18
According to a Twitter thread, Build Finance DAO suffered a “hostile governance takeover” with the attacker taking control of the key infrastructure from the DAO. By doing this, the malicious actor was able to wreak havoc on the protocol and drain nearly all of its funds, leaving the community out to dry.
The loss cost the DAO an estimated US$470,000 at the time of the incident. Since then the price of BUILD has tanked after the individual sold more than 1 billion coins into the market, flooding the supply.
It is with deep regret that we have to inform the community of this total and irrecoverable loss of BUILD DAO treasury assets through the deeds of one malicious actor.
BUILD Finance DAO tweet
What is a Hostile Governance Takeover?
On February 9, a proposal was made to pass full control of the governance contract, minting keys and treasury to a user named ‘Suho.eth’. After a failed first attempt, the attacker took additional steps to hide evidence of the proposal by disabling the gitbooks and proposal bot.
By sneaking the proposal underneath the radar, the unknown actor used a large supply of tokens to vote through the proposal, allowing total control of the DAO.
With all the access rights, the attacker was able to mint 1.1 billion BUILD tokens as well as drain the liquidity pools on two decentralised exchanges, Balancer and Uniswap. After this, the attacker took a further 130,000 METRIC tokens from the project’s treasury, sold them, and minted an additional 1 billion BUILD tokens.
Since then, the perpetrator has sent a significant amount of funds to the mixing service on Ethereum, Tornado Cash. The funds transferred add up to around 160 ETH, or just over US$500,000 at the time of writing.
A DAO Left With Nothing
After the looting of its treasury and liquidity pools, members of Build Finance tried make contact with the attacker but it seems there is no reparation in sight. With such major damage done to the DAO’s liquidity, it would be difficult to continue with its project goals.
We would welcome a discussion in the discord with community members about the way to move forward from this, but it is difficult to see a future for BUILD with only its brand recognition and IP assets, and no liquid treasury.
Cypherpunks and Ethereum holders have pooled nearly US$50 million into AssangeDAO, a fund to help prevent WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to the US.
After 10 years, Assange still finds himself in a legal battle with the US government after blowing the whistle on sensitive military information. In December last year, the US won an appeal against a British court ruling that had barred Assange’s extradition to the US. If extradited, he faces 175 years in prison for publishing information exposing US war crimes.
In reaction to this, a decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO) was set up to help with “legal fees and campaigning to raise awareness about [Assange’s] extradition case”.
Cypherpunks Unite!
Julian Assange needs our help. Our JuiceBox fund raising page has gone live in which we will distribute our governance token JUSTICE.
At the time of writing the fund had accumulated 14,871 ETH (an estimated US$46 million) since its launch on February 3, including a 10 ETH donation from Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. The aim of the DAO is to collect funds that will be used to buy into the “Censored” NFT collection created by Assange’s brother Gabriel in collaboration with renowned artist Pak.
According to the DAO, “proceeds raised from the NFT sale will benefit Assange’s legal defence fund and campaign to raise awareness about the free speech implications of his case”.
Motivated by the success of RossDAO, which raised US$12 million to help free jailed Silk Road entrepreneur Ross Ulbricht, the AssangeDAO intends to do something similar. According to its Twitter feed, it is now the largest JuiceBox Ether fundraiser to date, exceeding ConstitutionDAO, which raised 11,613 ETH last November in an unsuccessful attempt to purchase an original copy of the US Constitution.
Cypherpunks to the Rescue
With Assange facing 175 years in prison, many among the cypherpunk community have made sizeable donations to help the whistleblower in distress. WikiLeaks was famously among one of the first websites to accept bitcoin and to help bring mainstream exposure to the cryptocurrency early in its inception.
We, the cypherpunks, are rallying to the cause of a fellow cypherpunk in distress.
Assange founded WikiLeaks in 2006. The website gained international attention in 2010 when it published a series of leaks provided by US Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning. Assange has been seeking asylum ever since, fighting off extradition, and has languished in a London prison since 2019.
The US government launched a criminal investigation into Assange and charged him with violating the Espionage Act of 1917 by leaking classified information. Assange infamously went on the run, avoiding extradition to Sweden on since-discredited sexual assault charges, before taking refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London in 2012.
Ethereum sidechain project Polygon (MATIC) could well have lost all of its MATIC tokens, worth US$24 billion, after it discovered a “severe” bug that had gone unnoticed for some time. To offset the enormous loss, the Polygon network underwent a hard fork to save the project.
‘Critical’ Vulnerability Found in Polygon’s PoS Genesis Contract
The hard fork proceeded after a “critical” vulnerability was found in Polygon’s proof-of-stake genesis contract, which would have allowed attackers to steal 9.2 billion MATIC tokens. The total supply of MATIC is 10 billion, and any vulnerability would have put 9.2 billion of those tokens at risk, a potentially devastating loss.
The problem was reported on the bug bounty platform Immunefi by a white hat hacker known as Leon Spacewalker. Following the discovery of the bug, Immunefi informed the team at Polygon, after which they confirmed it.
All you need to know about the recent Polygon network update. ✅A security partner discovered a vulnerability ✅Fix was immediately introduced ✅Validators upgraded the network ✅No material harm to the protocol/end-users ✅White hats were paid a bounty https://t.co/oyDkvohg33
However, Polygon did not come out entirely unscathed. Before the upgrade on the mainnet could be completed, an unknown black hat hacker stole 801,601 MATIC, worth about US$1.6 million.
The team at Polygon reported: “Despite our best efforts, a malicious hacker was able to use the exploit to steal 801,601 MATIC before the network upgrade took effect.”
Co-founder Conceded Pre-existing Vulnerability
Although Polygon did not release details regarding the incident until December 29, chatter on social media had emerged mid-month about the network zero-warning hard fork. During that time, Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic did concede that a vulnerability existed and that the team would subsequently release details of the problem.
Bjelic wrote at the time: “We are now investing much more on security and we’re making an effort to improve security practices across all Polygon projects.”
When asked why the project waited until this week to disclose information regarding the bug, the core development team explained its “silent patches” policy:
All in all, the team struck the best possible balance between openness and doing what’s best for the community, partners and the broader ecosystem in handling this extremely urgent and sensitive issue. But you can be the judge of that.
Polygon core development team statement
Polygon Records Exponential Growth
Polygon is undergoing a period of growth and mass adoption, and is evolving and adapting along with it. The scaling solution has seen an increasing number of decentralisation applications (dApps) running on the network. Data has also revealed that Polygon is growing at a rate two times faster than Ethereum at a comparable time in its history.
Blockchain is set to influence gaming in a big way throughout 2022 and beyond, and one of those lesser known players is the WAX blockchain. Home to some of the most interesting blockchain based card strategy games, WAX appears to be a silent growing in stature.
DAOs, decentralised autonomous organisations that provide self-enforcing open-source protocols, are helping WAX games do this. DAOs bring native tokens and smart contracts that allow the network to remain transparent.
WAX is a purpose-built blockchain and protocol token designed to make e-commerce transactions faster, easier, and safer for all participants. Offering a lot of potential for those who enjoy P2E and also the wider industry of traditional gamers.
To help you out, we’ve compiled a list of what we think are the Best 10 WAX blockchain games using DAOs.
StarShip – a Binance Smart Chain project and a game.
Seeking to bridge the gap between blockchain and business, StarShip may be the NFT-orientated outer-space Pokémon game for you. StarShip is both a Binance Smart Chain project and a crypto game. The main token for this project is $STARSHIP; however, within the game you can mine $KYANITE, which is where the P2E aspect takes place.
Within this NFT game, it’s all about locating and customising the best starship you can get your hands on. If you wish, you can put your tokens toward a pack of NFT cards. These cards allow you to optimise your starships via NFT stacking in local space stations.
If you are more of a mobile gamer, fancying apps such as Candy Crush or Clash of Clans, Clash Dome could be more your style. The phone-app-style games within WAX’s Clash Dome can be gambled on to earn. With the game’s main token being $WAX, most of the mini-games available are pay-to-enter, allowing the tokens to pool for a winner-takes-all outcome.
While these games are typically played by a large group of players, you can play quick 1v1 games instead. $WAX isn’t the only available token; players may also obtain $LUDIO, which can be traded on the exchange or used for in-game powerups.
Alien Worlds – the game dominating the WAX blockchain.
If you’re looking to opt for one of the big-name games running on the WAX blockchain, Alien Worlds is your giant. The NFT metaverse strategy game has seen staggering growth since its original release in mid-2021. Offering NFTs with utility, a Binance-listed token ($TRILIUM), and planet DAOs, Alien Worlds is another space-situated game with some unique features such as earning NFTs by playing the ‘play to earn’ game.
One such feature is the opportunity to ‘teleport’ your $TRILIUM (TLM). Once you connect to MetaMask you can teleport from the Binance Smart Chain to WAX or Ethereum, allowing you more room to move with your earnings. Connection to the metaverse permits you to find a group of explorers – from there, the prospects available are vast.
Currently, Taco is another project that is split in half, with a utility side and a gaming side. While the utility aspect of the project is up and running, much of the game is still in development. The Taco app allows users to earn and trade $TACO tokens at the best market price. It also permits you to transfer $WAX and your tokens to other accounts without fees. Interestingly, you can also find a music player on Taco for your enjoyment.
Taco Universe – the game side – is still in development and aiming to arrive soon on the Apple and Google Play stores. With phase one being the launch and two the landing, you can look forward to creating worlds that feature little taco ingredients.
Farmers World – your typical farming game combined with NFTs.
Another P2E, Farmers World is one of the first farming games to land on the WAX blockchain. Some of the elements featured within the game include mining, construction, cultivation, reproduction, and wild animals.
The game’s NFT marketplace allows players to purchase farm animals, tools, associations, and farm buildings. These are all unique features that contribute to a successful agribusiness lifestyle. Farmers World is rapidly increasing in popularity as this is a game genre that seems to be tried and tested. Adding NFTs and elements of crypto only further intrigues players.
Another collectible card game, Splinterlands is the next game to rival the success of Alien Worlds in terms of sheer popularity among gamers. The game has been in circulation since 2018, but it is only now growing into its boots. If you are a fan of Magic the Gathering or simply enjoy the format of collecting cards and battling with them, Splinterlands might appeal to you.
Splinterlands is a colourful game combining ‘mayhem and magic’. Not only this, but the developers have found a way to combine digital and traditional gameplay, with three available game methods: physical games, digital games, and Splinterlands. There truly are multiple opportunities within this project.
Sony’s Funimation has teamed up with WAX to present NFTs for the anime franchise of Robotech. Originating as a science-fiction series, Robotech has enough of a fanbase to garner interest in the concept of purchasing NFTs based on the show.
In collectible card format, these NFTs are ranked by rarity. With categories such as build, base, bronze, silver and gold, you’ll know exactly whether your purchase is worth its money. Combining cards increases their power level. The WAX blockchain works to ensure that your cards are 100 percent authentic, meaning they cannot be duplicated or changed.
WAX Arena – battle your collection against other players.
Described as enabling users to “collect NFTs, raise power points, and earn WAX”, WAX Arena offers three distinct game modes for you to explore. When beginning the game, you have the option to choose one of four distinct races and create a character that can be linked to your WAX cloud wallet. Much like many of the other game formats in this list, the main objective of WAX Arena is battling against other players with your collection of cards.
The game modes available include player vs player, challenge mode, and player vs environment. The WAX Arena cards feature aesthetic illustrations; the higher your card’s rarity, the more power your character will receive.
Green Rabbit seeks to offer an exciting new experience to the industry of NFT gaming. The Green Rabbit developers claim that the game has been developed with “integrity and ethics” and caters to the industry’s collectors. The Green Rabbit story begins in Nanotopia, and if game lore is of interest, you can find a lengthy dissection on the website.
Within the game, you can get access to chests classed from common to mythic. Inside these chests, players can find the game token $SHELLINIUM, which can be put towards your rabbit. The game also offers concepts such as ANIMA-armour, which you can craft with your tokens.
Train of the Century – trains combine with time travel.
If you’re a train enthusiast, then out of all the WAX blockchain games available this one could be your go-to. Train of the Century presents the opportunity for you to become a railroader – a time-travelling entrepreneur. This means that you can play in any period, providing it has trains.
The cards available are NFT trains of the century. Using the games token, $TOCIEN, you can collect, build, and rule the rails. The game also allows you to purchase commodity cards – the freight that your train can haul – providing the commodity is compatible. For more information about how the game operates, there’s a beta gameplay guide on the website.
Conclusion
We’ve seen NFT avatar meme projects surge in popularity through 2021 and we could see this surge transition into the gaming industry. WAX is providing the next steps towards building this new enterprise of blockchain-based games with low transaction fees and high throughput.
An added layer of ownership and governance will be provided by games adopting DAOs which allow the token holders to have a big part in the organisations, providing an ecosystem that is designed for the players.
Currently, the WAX blockchain is processing more than 80 percent of in-game transactions across all blockchains. With many of the games on this blockchain being play-to-earn (P2E), WAX is ideal for the gamer looking to monetise their time while having fun.
Yet WAX isn’t the only blockchain bringing cryptocurrency and NFTs to gaming. Alongside the metaverse projects and the THETA projects, the future of gaming is looking bright and experimental.
Crypto Island is a group of investors that incentivises business, nonprofits and individuals to join its DAO of over 22,000 members. The Crypto Island DAO was born after the success of ConstitutionDAO.
Through crowdfunding, the DAO plans to buy a private island in the Bahamas – Little Whale Cay, 37.6 hectares in the Berry Island group – with a price tag of US$35 million. This would be the first decentralised and community-owned island, with every member of the DAO having membership rights by holding CISLA.
CISLA can be bought only with BNB on PancakeSwap. Members of the DAO will co-own the fully operational private island with its own airstrip. The DAO has already completed all the necessary negotiation and legal works. New investors only need to buy the token to help the DAO reach its US$35 million goal to buy the island.
Benefits of Tokenising Properties
The tokenisation of properties is an emerging real-estate ownership alternative with a wide set of benefits. To name a few, it provides higher liquidity for investors, making it a more accessible market for everyone, along with the benefits of using blockchain technology such as transparency and cheaper transactions.
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.
Badger has received reports of unauthorized withdrawals of user funds.
As Badger engineers investigate this, all smart contracts have been paused to prevent further withdrawals.
Our investigation is ongoing and we will release further information as soon as possible.
“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.
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 investigation continues.
Badger has retained data forensics experts Chainalysis to explore the full scale of the incident & authorities in both the US & Canada have been informed & Badger is cooperating fully with external investigations as well as proceeding with its own.
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.”
The BadgerDAO hack makes me think of this. All the best consensus game theory and clean coding bypassed by a compromised third party API. Much of defi is exposed to similar trust assumptions. Not a criticism, just the current reality. Long way to go. https://t.co/gddgJcWtOD
