Category: Ethereum

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Blockchain Crypto News Ethereum

ETH Devs Activate ‘Sepolia’ on Testnet, Inching Closer to ‘The Merge’

Ethereum is officially one step closer to “The Merge”, a long-awaited move to a proof-of-stake blockchain from its current proof-of-work consensus mechanism.

On July 6, Ethereum test network Sepolia moved over to proof of stake, leaving only one step remaining before the entire network completes the transition, expected to happen later this year:

Two Testnets Down, One to Go

Developers have now tested the merge on two public testnets: Ropsten, which successfully merged with the original proof-of-work mechanism on June 8, and now Sepolia. The next step in the process will be for a test to take place on the Goerli testnet. When that is completed, the entire network will securely use a proof-of-stake blockchain:

Ethereum developers also agreed to delay the Ethereum ‘difficulty bomb’, which is designed to intentionally increase block difficulty exponentially over time. After a certain period, it becomes almost impossible for validators to mine a new block, thereby discouraging miners from remaining in the proof-of-work consensus.  

Ethereum’s journey to a proof of stake has been a long time coming, with the process suffering many delays. The Merge is expected to be completed by the end of 2022.

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Crypto News Ethereum Ethereum Name Service

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) Registrations Surge 216% in a Week

Ethereum Name Service (ENS) registrations have surged over 200 percent in a week, according to ENS developer Nick Johnson (Nick.eth on Twitter).

The ENS had a bullish first weekend of the month, with over 64,000 accounts created on July 3 – a 216 percent spike that translates to US$684,000 in revenue, half a million more than on the previous day.

In June, ENS had more than 120,000 .eth registrations, registering over US$3 million in revenue:

Source: Data Studio

ENS is a domain name protocol that issues .eth domain registrations on the Ethereum blockchain. In other words, ENS turns a long crypto address into something similar to an URL, like Bob.eth or Alice.eth.

ENS Exceeds a Million Domain Names Milestone

On May 6, the ENS achieved the milestone of a million domain names created. At time of writing the ENS token was up 16 percent in the previous 24 hours, and was priced at US$10.25 apiece as per data from CoinMarketCap.

Budweiser is one of the few brands to have purchased an .eth domain. Back in August 2021, the American beverage giant announced its dive into crypto by paying 38 ETH for Beer.eth.

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Blockchain Crypto News Ethereum Gaming Metaverse NFTs Stablecoins Stratis

Stratis (STRAX) Token Soars 160% Amid NFT, Gaming and Stablecoin Announcement

Ethereum-based, decentralised blockchain platform Stratis has witnessed its native token STRAX rocket 103 percent in one 24-hour period this week, cooling off from a rally that at one point reached 160 percent.

STRAX took off minutes after the project announced a series of updates, including a new ticketing system via which NFTs will be used to validate entry to venues and distribute rewards at events.

Stratis has also foreshadowed several new blockchain-powered video games set to hit its mainnet later this year, along with issuing an update on its launch of a stablecoin pegged to the British pound called Great British Pound Token (GBPT).

PwC to Provide Audit Services for New Stablecoin

The platform is currently working with Price Waterhouse Coopers (PwC) to complete regulatory registration and expects the partnership to be ongoing with PwC providing auditing services for the GBPT stablecoin’s implementation.

According to the Stratis announcement, “With entities like Visa increasingly willing to accept stablecoin payments, there’s a huge opportunity to simplify cross-border and wholesale payments using blockchain technology.”

Prior to this week’s STRAX price rally, the team behind the protocol teased the upcoming launch of Sky Dream Mall, a new metaverse project powered by the Stratis blockchain:

STRAX Defies Market Conditions

All of which is in clear defiance of the current bear market and the onset of the so-called ‘crypto winter’. These are arguably the most positive developments in the sector since April, when blockchain-based music platform Opulous saw the price of its token, OPUL, rally 175 percent after it announced DeFi staking, CEX listings and S-NFT sales.

You’d have to go back even further to find another one-day performance to rival that of STRAX this week. In February this year, the utility and governance token for the DEX Injective Protocol rallied more than 100 percent in a single day following the listing of Cosmos (ATOM) perpetual futures on the platform.

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Axie Infinity Ethereum Hackers

Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge Re-Opens, Set to Compensate Victims of $625 Million Hack

Axie Infinity’s Ronin bridge has re-opened and the company will reimburse all affected victims of the US$625 million hack on March 30, according to a tweet from officials.

The Ronin bridge is a sidechain to the Ethereum network that allowed users to transfer assets between both chains. The re-opening will take place this week, but it will require a hard fork and all validators to update their software and upgrade their nodes:

The company also shared that blockchain security company Certik had audited the Ronin bridge multiple times and came back with minor suggestions.

Important News for the Axie Community

The Axie Infinity community bled after the company’s Ronin bridge suffered the biggest DeFi hack in history, with over US$600 million stolen in just a few hours.

It was later reported that a South Korean hacking group, Lazarus, was behind the hack, according to US authorities, who found out that a sanctioned Ethereum wallet was the same wallet used to receive the stolen funds. The hackers used TornadoCash to launder over 20 percent of the funds.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum

US Regulator Affirms BTC is a Commodity, Won’t Comment on Other Cryptos

Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) chair Gary Gensler has confirmed in a recent interview with CNBC that Bitcoin is a virtual commodity. Notably, he declined to comment on the status of any other cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin: the Only Commodity?

In an interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer, Gensler was probed as to whether he was collaborating with the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) in relation to the regulation of cryptocurrencies.

The significance? While the SEC focuses on securities regulation, the CFTC (as its name implies) is responsible for regulating commodities such as oil, gold, silver or wheat. According to Gensler, and his predecessors, you can add Bitcoin to that list:

Some, like Bitcoin, and that’s the only one, Jim, I’m going to say because I’m not going to talk about any one of these tokens, my predecessors and others have said, they’re a commodity.

Gary Gensler, chair, SEC

Interestingly, former SEC chair Jay Clayton argued that Ethereum was a commodity, saying it was sufficiently decentralised. However, when pressed, Gensler refused to provide a direct response.

Gensler’s view, expressed during his tenure teaching blockchain at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), is that Ethereum’s ICO (initial coin offering) passed the “Howey Test”, a legal precedent used to classify securities:

Given the time passed, Ethereans have argued that the network is now sufficiently decentralised to constitute a commodity, although Gensler has thus far refused to provide an official view.

Bitcoiners remain convinced that Bitcoin is the only commodity, a view that MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has repeatedly stated:

A quick scan of Twitter reveals that the general sentiment among Bitcoiners is that if you raised money, and/or you have a foundation, leader or CEO, it is a security and cannot be regarded as decentralised:

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Australia Banking Ethereum Stablecoins

ANZ Bank Uses Its Stablecoin A$DC to Buy Tokenised Carbon Credits

The stablecoin created by the Australia and New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ), A$DC, has been used by one of its large institutional customers to purchase a tokenised representation of Australian carbon credits, marking a significant milestone for the usage of stablecoins in the Australian economy.

In March, ANZ became the first bank to mint an Australian dollar stablecoin when it created 30 million A$DC, which were used by investment company Victor Smorgon Group (VSG) to significantly speed up and avoid conversion fees on its purchase of crypto assets.

Zerocap Acts as Market Maker

In this latest transaction, ANZ provided the A$DC stablecoin to longtime institutional customer VSG to facilitate the purchase of tokenised carbon credits known as BCAUs from the blockchain-based carbon trading platform BetaCarbon.

Digital asset manager Zerocap was also involved in the transaction, acting as a market maker and providing liquidity to convert VSG’s A$DC, which BetaCarbon doesn’t recognise, into USD Coin (USDC) so it could be accepted by BetaCarbon. Unlike VSG’s previous stablecoin transaction with ANZ, the value of this transaction has not been disclosed.

Using this payment method meant the transaction could be completed entirely on the Ethereum blockchain, removing the need to use any external payment platform such as the Visa network or the new payments platform (NPP), which would have introduced complexity, additional fees and settlement delays.

ANZ Anticipates Big Things for A$DC

ANZ’s A$DC is fully collateralised by Australian dollars and is redeemable at parity with funds held by ANZ in its managed reserve account. 

Unlike algorithmic stablecoins such as Terra-based UST and Tron-based USDD, which have faced huge issues maintaining their pegs to the US dollar, A$DC has no pegging mechanism and there is no risk that it could become de-pegged from the Australian dollar. 

According to Nigel Dobson, ANZ’s head of banking services, the bank’s stablecoin can be thought of more as a “tokenised deposit” than a typical crypto stablecoin.

Speaking to the Australian Financial Review, Dobson said ANZ saw potential for stablecoins like A$DC to help banks and other financial institutions transition to a more efficient blockchain-based infrastructure:

We see this is evolving from being internet-protocol based to one of ‘tokenised’ protocols. We think the underlying infrastructure – efficient, secure, public blockchains – will facilitate transactions, both ones we understand today and new ones that will be more efficient.

Nigel Dobson, head of banking services, ANZ

Ethereum Blockchain of Choice for Now

Dobson added that the Ethereum blockchain was favoured at the moment because it had established a set of de facto standards, including ERC-20 smart contracts. However, he anticipates a possible shift away from Ethereum to other, faster and more sustainable networks, such as Solana or Polygon, as these networks implemented similar standards and matured:

Standards are absolutely fundamental to interoperability, and they will soon allow organisations to transfer assets off expensive, and arguably unsustainable, blockchains to ones with lower cost, faster throughput and sustainability credentials.

Nigel Dobson, head of banking services, ANZ

To date, A$DC has only been used for real-world transactions by VSG, but that’s likely to change soon. Earlier this month, ANZ revealed it was planning to extend access to its stablecoin to a wider range of institutional customers and, in the long term, possibly to retail investors.

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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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Avalanche Binance Coin Crypto News DeFi Ethereum

DeFi Yield Protocol (DYP) Pumps 107% Amid Coinbase ‘Experimental’ Listing

One of six Ethereum-based altcoins just listed on US crypto exchange Coinbase’s roster of digital assets, DeFi Yield Protocol (DYP), is up a significantly bullish 107 percent in a week and as a result is currently trading at US$0.43:

Experiment Gets Real

Coinbase says DYP will be phased in along with five other Ethereum-based altcoins – HOPR, MATH, PARSIQ, Elastos (ELA) and ALEPH – in trading pairs with Tether (USDT) after appropriate liquidity conditions are met. All six altcoins are grouped under the exchange’s ‘Experimental’ label, introduced in March this year:

DYP aims to offer users the ability to stake Ethereum, Binance Coin and Avalanche to earn a fixed 25 percent APR (annual percentage rate). It is also said to be working on an array of products for the decentralised ecosystem and seeks to be “accessible for both beginner and advanced users” through a combination of DeFi, NFTs and metaverse gaming.

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Bitcoin Crypto News Ethereum Vitalik Buterin

Vitalik Buterin Claims BTC Stock-to-Flow Model is False

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has renewed his attack on the stock-to-flow (S2F) price model for Bitcoin, dismissing it as “false”, “harmful” and “deserving of mockery”.

He went even further in echoing EthHub co-founder Anthony Sassano who, in a same-day tweet, damned S2F as an “epic failure”:

How the Stock-to-Flow Model Works

The S2F price model, authored by crypto analyst PlanB, predicts the future price of bitcoin based on its supply in circulation (stock) relative to the number of coins mined each year (flow), which decreases by half every four years. According to S2F predictions, 2022 would see bitcoin trading within the US$100,000-110,000 range, though the most recent market crash marked an 18-month low for BTC under US$20,000 last week, calling the model’s accuracy into question.

At that time, Buterin railed against “the ‘halvings cause BTC price rises’ theory”, implying that any price can be cited as evidence that the S2F model is correct.

S2F author PlanB countered Buterin in saying that the market’s slump made some people look for “scapegoats for their failed projects or wrong investment decisions”:

BTC vs S2F: Which Will Thrive to Survive?

In an earlier tweet, PlanB admitted that the model had enjoyed a “good run” for three years (until March 2022) but had since wobbled from its trajectory. As for the current market, PlanB considers that “either BTC is extremely undervalued and will bounce back soon, or S2F will be less useful in the future”.

Just last month, Buterin voiced his admiration for Bitcoin, saying he’d like to see Ethereum attain a similar level of stability. To do so, however, would require significant short-term change and instability – an apparent contradiction that has since come to pass.

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Australia Ethereum GameFi Immutable X NFTs

Australia’s ‘Immutable X’ Launches $500 Million Fund to Accelerate Web3 Game Development

Immutable, the Sydney-based company behind the NFT-focused Ethereum scaling solution Immutable X, has announced the launch of its new US$500 million developer and investment fund:

The so-named Immutable Developer and Venture Fund will help accelerate the growth of Immutable X by providing grants to, and investing in, the most promising projects building on the protocol, with a particular focus on fostering the growth of Web3 game development.

New Fund to Supercharge Adoption

The fund will provide investment and grants in both cash and crypto, with crypto funding in the form of Immutable X’s native token, IMX.

The ventures side involves partnerships with several large VC firms including BITKRAFT, Animoca, AirTree, GameStop and others. The fund will look to invest in the most promising projects building on Immutable X, providing them with the necessary resources to help them scale and launch successfully.

Grants will provide developers with financial support tied to project milestones, as well as technical and educational support to help them realise their project goals. Drawing on its experience in blockchain-based game development, Immutable X will provide guidance to grant recipients to support them to transition to blockchain gaming:

We’re taking the lessons learned from building two of the blockchain’s biggest games – Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians – and hiring the smartest people from Web2 studios like Riot Games to make entering the NFT gaming world simple and rewarding for gaming studios.

James Ferguson, CEO and co-founder, Immutable

Web3 Gaming Presents Huge Opportunity

James’s brother Robbie Ferguson, president and co-founder of Immutable, sees Web3 gaming as an enormous growth area moving forward that Immutable X will be well placed to benefit from with the launch of this fund:

Gaming is bigger than movies and music combined, and is compounding by 10 percent every year. With the knowledge we have from building two of the blockchain’s biggest games in-house, we’re going to be providing the funding, expertise and infrastructure needed to grow this to a trillion-dollar ownable economy over the next decade.

Robbie Ferguson, president and co-founder, Immutable

Immutable X Focuses on Gaming

Founded in Sydney in 2018, Immutable X was designed specifically to bring scalability and affordability to Ethereum’s NFT ecosystem. The protocol is fast – able to process up to 9,000 transactions per second – and has zero gas fees and is carbon neutral. 

Immutable X works by leveraging StarkWare’s zero-knowledge proof technology, which allows it to ‘roll-up’ thousands of transactions on its own network separate from Ethereum, and then commit them to the Ethereum blockchain in a single transaction.

Immutable X has had a busy few months, having raised $US200 million in its most recent funding round in March and in May partnering with gaming company Kongregate to launch a US$40 million developer grant fund.