Category: DeFi

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Axie Infinity Binance Crypto News DeFi GameFi NFTs

Binance Leads $150 Million Round to Reimburse Ronin Attack Victims

Following last month’s record-breaking hack of the Ronin network, responsible for Axie Infinity transactions, Binance has led a funding round to help reimburse affected users.

According to an announcement this week by Vietnamese gaming studio Sky Mavis, a funding round was led by Binance with other venture capital firms – including Animoca Brands, a16z, Dialectic, and Paradigm – to help reimburse funds lost in the US$625 million Axie Infinity hack.

Community to the Rescue

The hack is the biggest decentralised finance (DeFi) hack on record and has done a lot of damage to the Axie Infinity ecosystem Sky Mavis has created. Axie is the best performing blockchain game in the space, having processed 10 times more all-time volume than the next biggest NFT game.

We have seen the tremendous work and growth of the Sky Mavis team since working together on the Axie Infinity project on Binance Launchpad. We strongly believe Sky Mavis will bring a lot of value and growth for the larger industry and we believe it’s necessary to support them as they work hard to resolve the recent incident.

Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, CEO, Binance

Proceeds of the funding round along with funds on the Sky Mavis balance sheet will be used to ensure that all affected users are reimbursed. According to the post, “The Ronin Network bridge will open once it has undergone a security upgrade and several audits, which can take several weeks.”

The post also stated that “the 56,000 ETH compromised from the Axie DAO treasury will remain undercollateralised as Sky Mavis continues to work with law enforcement to recover the funds”.

If the funds are not fully recovered within two years, it has been decided that the Axie DAO will vote on the next steps for the treasury.

Sky Mavis post

Increasing Ronin’s Security

Following the attack, Sky Mavis started the process of implementing rigorous internal security measures to prevent future attacks.

On March 23, Sky Mavis’s Ronin validator nodes and Axie DAO validator nodes were compromised, leading to the record-breaking hack. With the support of Binance, the Ronin chain has now been able to expand its validator set from 5 to 21 – increasing the security of the network – according to Sky Mavis CEO Trung Nguyen.

There have been only a few cases where affected users were reimbursed, especially in a case as large as this. With Axie being the biggest NFT game, major players have come together to help the project get back on its feet. Last year, Rari Capital also reimbursed up to US$25 million after being hacked.

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Crypto Hardware Wallets Crypto News DeFi Ledger NFTs

Ledger Launches NFT-Focused Hardware Wallet ‘Nano S Plus’

A new hardware wallet released by Ledger this week promises to let people securely explore more of Web3 by offering management tools for NFT collections and space to install up to 100 apps.  

The Nano S Plus improves on the popular Nano S – released five years ago – by adding a larger screen that makes it easier to make transactions as well as more memory, enabling the installation of up to 100 apps to manage over 5,500 digital assets:

Ledger flagged its intention to become a gateway for the broader digital asset ecosystem in June last year when it announced a US$380 million fundraising round. 

A Secure Wallet Designed to be DeFi and NFT-Friendly

Ledger said the new wallet provides offline security for investors’ crypto as well as the convenience to securely manage a range of other digital assets. 

By pairing the wallet with Ledger’s digital asset management app, Ledger Live, users can display and manage their NFTs with their private keys, including securely sending and signing NFT transactions. 

The Ledger Nano S Plus is a Nano S on steroids. It provides you with more space to freely enjoy the ever-expanding world of DeFi and NFTs. We keep improving our world-leading hardware devices to allow you to securely explore the Web3 ecosystem.

Pascal Gauthier, Ledger chairman and CEO

Nano S Plus is compatible with Desktop and Android Mobile with a USB cable, has a 128 x 64 pixel screen, a storage size of 1.5MB, and costs A$129. 

Ledger has sold more than 3 million Nano S devices around the world. All signs point to Nano S Plus being in strong demand too – a limited-edition release of the wallet in March sold out 10,000 units in one day.

This is despite issues that call into question Ledger’s security, such as data breaches in June last year that resulted in sophisticated fake hardware wallets being sent to exposed customers’ addresses.

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Crypto News DeFi Stablecoins

Neutrino Dollar Stablecoin Loses Peg, Drops 15% Amid Manipulation Speculation

Neutrino Dollar (USDN), a dollar-pegged stablecoin backed by the Waves protocol, has lost over 15 percent of its value due to accusations of market manipulation.

Not So Stable After All

USDN fell to US$0.82 on April 4, dragging down a large chunk of the currency’s market capitalisation – over US$200 million from its year-to-date high of almost US$1 billion.

USDN Chart. Source: CoinGecko

USDN is an algorithmic stablecoin whose supply can expand and contract by burning or minting WAVES (Waves protocol’s native token). Along with USDN, WAVES dropped nearly 50 percent from its all-time high of roughly US$64 on March 31; it is currently trading at US$30, as per data from CoinGecko:

WAVES Chart. Source: CoinGecko

When Did It All Start?

The massive sell-off began in response to concerns of manipulation, with the crypto community calling Waves “a Ponzi scheme” on Twitter. Pseudonymous analyst 0xHamz accused the project of borrowing USDC, another stablecoin, to buy the WAVES token, artificially pumping its price over 750 percent in the past two months (significantly, it surged 70 percent following the March 28 launch of Waves Labs).

As the price of WAVES increased, so did the interest earned by stakers, with 0xHamz breaking it down as follows:

  • the protocol collateralises USDN to borrow USDC on Vires.Finance, a liquidity protocol based on the Waves blockchain;
  • buy WAVES;
  • convert the funds to USDN;
  • use the proceeds to borrow more USDC on the Vires.Finance pool; and
  • repeat.

Waves CEO Dismisses Accusations

Waves CEO Sasha Ivanov dismissed the allegations and in turn accused Alameda Research – a quantitative crypto trading firm headed by FTX’s Sam Bankman-Fried – of manipulating WAVES prices through a “hostile FUD campaign” fuelled by a “crowd of paid trolls” to ultimately trigger panic-selling:

0xHamZ also accused the project of pumping WAVES under a Russian ETH narrative, which Ivanov also dismissed, stating that neither he (Ivanov) nor the Waves team had any ties with Russia.

Peter Guo, a researcher at Hong Kong-based crypto fund Babel, noted that WAVES’ price surge coincided with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in late February.

In response, FTX’s Bankman-Fried dismissed Ivanov’s accusation, calling it an “obvious bullshit conspiracy theory”:

After the incident, Ivanov announced that Vires.Finance would be subject to a protocol change proposal under a new DAO (Decentralised Autonomous Organisation) to protect the protocol from market manipulation:

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Crypto News DeFi NFTs Tokens

NFT Music Token OPUL Surges 175% Amid DeFi Staking Announcement

Opulous, a relatively new blockchain-based music platform built for creators and investors, has seen the price of its token, OPUL, rally 175 percent after the project announced DeFi staking, CEX listings and S-NFT sales.

The biggest driver of interest in OPUL over recent weeks was the 45-minute sellout performance of its latest S-NFT (a non-fungible token sold as a security) for the song Patek Myself, by British rapper Ard Adz:

Opulous has foreshadowed a “major announcement” in the coming week that entails an S-NFT sale for an entire music album:

New Staking Pools with AlgoFi

In other Opulous-related news, Algorand-based automated market maker Pact has established two liquidity pools for OPUL to be paired with ALGO and USD Coin (USDC). It has announced a joint campaign with the Algorand Foundation set to distribute 1 million ALGO tokens to supported pools between April 8 and June 2. Opulous has also revealed that new staking pools will join the Algorand DeFi hub, AlgoFi, from April 5:

The ‘Biggest Thing Since Streaming’

Pretty good going, in all, for a platform that is little more than a year old. Launched in February 2021, Opulous provides a unique model for music artists to calculate future earnings and accept loans based on that forecast, while retaining 100 percent of their music’s copyright.

With its NFTs, Opulous makes it possible for artists to break down ownership of their music into tokenised shares and offer them directly to fans. This means fans can invest in the artists they love and financially benefit themselves through earnings made from sales.

The Opulous model provides a monetary incentive for fans to promote the artists they have invested in. The more successful the artist, the more money the fan makes, through royalties paid out monthly. It has rightly been described as “the biggest thing since streaming”.

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Crypto News DeFi Polkadot

Polkadot Project ‘Astar’ (ASTR) Doubles Amid $22 Million Fundraise

Astar Network recently announced it had secured over US$22 million in a fundraising round led by industry-leading crypto companies and angel investors.

Astar Making Waves in DeFi Space

There’s been a lot of movement within the Polkadot ecosystem since the Parachain auctions started in January this year. Hundreds of projects are still competing to secure a slot over the next two years or so.

One of these Polkadot-based projects is Astar Network, a multi-chain DeFi protocol that’s calling the attention of retailers and institutional investors alike due to its wide range of innovative Web3 solutions and financial incentives:

TVL Hits an ATH

The total value locked (TVL) in Astar has reached an all-time high of US$1.3 billion, making it the eighth-largest EVM blockchain. This signals growing interest for the project.

There are now over 100,000+ unique wallet addresses on the ecosystem, a bigger inflow of users, and more decentralised protocols are building on the network, whose TVL now sits at US$1.24 billion.

Source: DeFi Llama

Astar has been hosting numerous protocols since the launch of its mainnet (there are more than 40+ dApps as of now) and it’s planning to host 15 more in April – a month the project has proclaimed as the “Astar Season”:

Big Steps Ahead For Astar

Astar is an ambitious protocol that aims to create a broad, self-sustaining ecosystem with top-quality dApps and better financial incentives for users and developers. Along with its support for bridges, Astar allows developers to deploy existing Solidity and Polkadot native smart contracts on its network.

The next step for the Astar protocol is to create a multi-chain smart contract hub, which the company says is now in progress:

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Crypto News DeFi Hackers Scams

DeFi Lender ‘Inverse Finance’ Exploited for $15.6 Million

Inverse Finance, a decentralised lending protocol built on Ethereum, has lost over US$15 million in the latest multimillion-dollar DeFi hack of the year. Hackers were able to lean on an exploit and take out massive loans and get away through Tornado Cash.

As spotted by blockchain analytics firm PeckShield, the lending protocol had 4300 ETH stolen:

The hackers targeted Inverse’s Anchor (ANC) money market by artificially manipulating token prices to borrow loans against extremely low collateral:

The hackers were funded with 901 ETH (US$3 million) from Tornado Cash in order to pull off the exploit. By tricking the price oracle into thinking the native INV token was at a much higher price, massive loans were then taken out on Anchor using INV as collateral.

List of stolen crypto. Source: EtherScan

This was done by injecting the funds into several trading pairs on SushiSwap, inflating the price of INV. A representative from PeckShield told CoinDesk that “the attack was high-risk, since the $3 million worth of crypto used to trick the price oracle would have been completely lost if the price of INV [had fallen] back to normal levels before the attacker took out the loans”.

Inverse’s Plan of Action

Inverse has since paused all borrowing and stated in a thread that a plan would be sent to governance to “ensure all wallets impacted by the price manipulation are repaid 100 percent”, adding that it would not mint new INV to repay affected users, which might affect its already falling price.

A bounty has been made available to the hacker but no further updates have been issued. To minimise the risk of future problems like this one, a representative for the protocol added that it is working with Chainlink to build a new INV oracle.

This event only adds to the list of DeFi hacks to have occurred this year. In March, Deus Finance was exploited for US$3 million in a flash loan attack, while in February QiDao also suffered a multimillion-dollar exploit.

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Blockchain Crypto News DeFi Hackers

Ola Finance Suffers $3.6 Million ‘Re-Entrancy’ Attack  

DeFi protocol Ola Finance has called on users to resist pointing fingers of blame and asked the community instead to focus on the growth of the project, as it addressed a US$3.6 million hack via Twitter on April 1.

The attack took place on Fuse Lending, Ola’s implementation on the Fuse blockchain:

Re-Entrancy Bug Responsible for Theft

The incident involved a “re-entrancy bug”, which is a commonly known culprit at the heart of DeFi attacks. The smart contract vulnerability enables hackers to make repeated calls to a protocol in order to steal assets, without having to pay back borrowed funds. 

The attack began by mixing funds through Tornado Cash, making the crypto hard to trace. The funds were then withdrawn over the Fuse Bridge and transferred to the Fuse network (Ola’s decentralised lending platform). The hacker used the assets as collateral to take out loans, and by exploiting the re-entrancy bug was able to then remove the starting funds without having to repay the loans.

This process was repeated several times across different Ola pools. The hacker then transferred the drained assets to wallets on Ethereum and BNB Chain. In total, the hacker holds US$3 million on Ethereum and another US$637,000 on BNB Chain.

Official Report Forthcoming

Ola tweeted that it would soon publish an “official report detailing the exploit”. For now it has responsibly paused the use of the Fuse network lending protocol while looking into rectifying the bad code.

This is not the first, nor will it be the last, re-entrancy attack in DeFi. Only two weeks ago, Agave and Hundred Finance, two lending DeFi protocols, were exploited for approximately US$11 million. Three months ago, Grim Finance DeFi protocol was hacked for US$30 million in Fantom tokens as attackers exploited a flaw in the vault contract.

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Australia Blockchain Crypto News DAO DeFi Immutable X Maple NFTs Synthetix

Australian Web3 Ecosystem Is Growing Fast, Driven By Crypto and Blockchain Technology

The Australian Web3 ecosystem has grown immensely over the past couple of years and is driven by cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

The emergence of NFTs, DeFi, and decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) has expanded the space. The days of ICO token raises have been superseded by building meaningful communities. Notable communities/projects in the space include Immutable, Synthetix, Sigma Prime, Maple Finance, and DAOunder, all of which have helped garner increasing interest in the ecosystem.

Australia web3 economy. Source: crypblizz

The branding surrounding Web3 has made the space more inviting than the nuanced word ‘crypto’ would have suggested a few years ago.

Aussie Blockchain History in Brief

  • pre-bitcoin 1970 -2000s: cypherpunk movement;
  • 2009 – 2013: the birth of Bitcoin and underground knowledge of the space;
  • 2014 – 2016: Ethereum launches and early adopters spring up;
  • 2017 – 2018: ICO boom and an influx of capital and interest;
  • 2018 – 2020: ‘DeFi Summer’, where projects started to build the foundations for decentralised finance;
  • 2021: NFTs, DeFi and DAO boom interest; and
  • 2022: who knows?

The following categories summarise the activities within the Australian Web3 ecosystem:

Communities/DAOs

These form the backbone that brings people together, and with recent events, many communities have moved online to Discord. In-person events such as Blockchain Week show that people are willing to meet in real life again. By bringing it all together, people feel a sense of community and the ecosystem grows accordingly.

Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)/Gaming

NFTs took 2021 by storm and a lot of people are forking out vast amounts of money for expensive JPEGs. However, a lot of great Aussie projects such as Immutable, which was recently valued at US$3.5 billion, and Illuvium have also been making waves in the Web3 ecosystem.

Decentralised Finance (DeFi)

DeFi is such a vast category that it can be been broken down into the following:

  • Layer 1 blockchains: Fantom, Algorand, ThorChain;
  • Finance layer: Synthetix, Ren Protocol, Maple Finance, Zeta Markets and Drift;
  • Infrastructure: Rocket Pool, Chainflip, Sigma Prime; and
  • Identity: ArcX and BronID.

Venture Capital

Over the past two years, traditional Web2 funds have been spinning off an extra allocation into the space. Airtree, for example, launched a US$50 million Web3 fund, which is a very healthy sign for the growth of this sector.

Media

The right kind of media is essential in this growing space, with click-bait schemes popping up left, right and centre. Influencers who are voicing their opinions in this space can be invaluable.

Legal/Regulatory/Government

Bodies like Blockchain Australia are helping form relationships and policies within the ecosystem. Collaboration between these associations and regulatory bodies will accelerate the adoption process.

Exchanges and Retail Investors

Retail investors use these exchange platforms to enter the Web3 markets. BTC Markets, Independent Reserves, Coinjar and Coinstop are some of the first Australian native exchanges.

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Crypto News DeFi Hackers NFTs Scams

Suspicions Raised as $350,000 Bored Ape NFT Sells for Just $115

The owner of a Bored Ape NFT worth US$350,000 sold it for only 115 DAI (US$115) in what appears to be either a costly mistake or some kind of hack of the owner’s OpenSea account.

We’re accustomed to seeing NFTs – especially those from the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) – being sold for hundreds of thousands or even millions of dollars. Mistakes abound in this space, however. Three months ago, the owner of a Bored Ape mistakenly sold his NFT for US$3,000 instead of its market value price of $300,000.

In this latest case, however, bells started ringing in the NFT community as it’s unusual to see an owner of a valuable Bored Ape accepting such a low offer.

Second Undervalued Transaction, Same Buyer, Same Day

The owner of Bored Ape #835, who goes by the moniker “cchan“, accepted a bid of only 115 DAI – an Ethereum-based stablecoin – for his NFT. But what’s striking is that cchan also sold his Mutant Ape (from the Mutant Ape Yacht Club) #11670 for 25 DAI to the same buyer on the same day.

Bored Ape #835 is now owned by a user with the handle “6315EF”.

Currency Confusion or Tax Dodge?

People on crypto Twitter started conjecturing possible explanations for this event, such as cchan confusing ETH with DAI. Another possibility is tax-loss harvesting, which is selling certain assets at a loss to offset capital gains made via the sale of other assets or stocks, thus minimising the amount of taxes owing.

However, one user on Twitter said cchan was not aware of the situation, which suggests he had his account hacked:

This is quite a significant loss for cchan, having acquired his Bored Ape #835 in August last year for 15 ETH (US$51,000 today).

The NFT space is chock-full of horror stories like this. As Crypto News Australia reported a week ago, a trader with the online handle Dino Dealer sold his US$1.2 million clipart rock for less than a cent after erroneously listing the NFT for 444 wei, the smallest denomination of ETH, instead of 444 ETH.

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Crypto News Crypto Staking Crypto.com DeFi Stablecoins

Crypto.com Slashes Interest Rates Suddenly on Crypto Staking Services

In what is a worrying precedent for investors across the board, leading exchange Crypto.com has again slashed the rate of returns it offers on token deposits.

Announced on March 26, the cut – the platform’s second this month – reduces flexible returns offered by Crypto.com on popular tokens such as Bitcoin and Ethereum to 0.5 percent from between 1.5 – 2 percent. Returns on larger amounts, particularly stablecoins, have effectively been halved to 4 percent.

The promotional face of Crypto.com, actor Matt Damon.

Crypto.com said the new rates would apply immediately, and that pre-existing deposits will not be affected. In an announcement earlier this month, the platform said its planned rate cuts would come into effect from April 4. This latest interest cut also makes returns offered by Crypto.com lower than those on other major platforms, including Celsius and BlockFi.

Backlash Swift and Considered

Users took to social media to protest the cut, especially as it came without warning. Reddit user u/wyzard135 summed up the overall reactive mood of investors with the following post:

“The backlash [Crypto.com] is facing is well-deserved. Even though its rate cut in this market condition […] is understandable, some transparency and communication [would] go a long way.

“However, can’t help but notice this is exactly what banks do; the past couple of years their interest rates have been plummeting and there’s practically no communication to customers about it. Customers will only see their interest paying continuously shrink, and will have to manually look up interest rates, only to see [them] keep falling.

It pains me to see Crypto.com stooping to this behaviour and I fear not only crypto.com but other crypto exchanges will start behaving like banks, which ironically crypto is trying to replace, once they get big enough with unchecked power.

Reddit user u/wyzard135

Stablecoin Staking Reduced from 12% to 8% on Three-Month Term

The move has also spilled over into the DeFi space, with returns on stablecoin deposits falling to around 12 percent across most platforms, after initially being as high as 20 percent. Some platforms are only offering 8 percent on a three-month term.

Crypto News Australia has published a list of the 10 best crypto staking websites to earn daily returns. At the top of the list is Zipmex Australia, and a guide to investing on the platform can be accessed here.

Second on the list is Swyftx, Australia’s top-rated exchange, which offers staking rewards for top market cap coins including Solana, Cardano and Polkadot. In total, 12 assets are available for staking through the platform with zero fees.

Last week, ANZ became the first Australian bank to mint the Australian dollar stablecoin A$DC.