Category: Tokens

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Crypto News Ethereum Tokens

Ethereum Name Service Token Surges 86% as Registered ETH Domains Surpass 1 Million

The Ethereum Name Service (ENS) this week announced it had surpassed a milestone of one million domain names created, with the news triggering an 86 percent value surge for the ENS token:

The Ethereum Name Service is helping to provide a smooth transition from Web2 to Web3, with its latest milestone clearly demonstrating its impact. A spike in registrations over the past 30 days has also had a knock-on effect on the ENS token:

The demand for three- and four-digit domain names is up and likely related to the NFT community’s new interests. These shorter domain names can also be used as the owner’s crypto address, instead of the random and more unwieldy alphanumeric combination.

Likely contributing to the spike is the fact that ENS’s protocol revenue rise has permitted the company to increase the funds available to its DAO. This, plus record registrations for April, contributed to the ENS token’s massive value surge.

Other Registered ETH Domains

Last August, American beer brand Budweiser dived into crypto and purchased the beer.eth domain name for 30 ETH. Adding Budweiser’s purchase of a Rocket Factory NFT for 8 ETH, the total venture was worth the equivalent of US$120,000.

More recently, Puma renamed itself puma.eth on Twitter and purchased several cat-related NFTs. These purchases can only mean there are more future crypto partnerships in the making.

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Crypto News DAO Ethereum Optimism Tokens

ETH Scaling Solution ‘Optimism’ Launches DAO, Plans to Airdrop OP Token

Optimism, a leading Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution, has unveiled its new governance structure and is preparing to release a token called OP to help power the change: 

Governance of Two Houses

Optimism’s newly announced governance structure is to be split into two halves: the Citizens house and the Token house. The Citizens house will be governing the distribution of funding for retroactive public goods, whereas the Token house will focus on driving growth, protocol upgrades, and project incentives.

The new governance token, OP, will be the power behind the Token house. It will create incentives for users to contribute to governance, as much of the project’s decisions will be voter-based. This house will be established through a token airdrop to users.

This airdrop will not just be a one-time event, as users can expect a second drop in Q2. While awaiting an official date for the first airdrop, users can find eligibility information and an allocations link within the initial announcement.

Layer 2 and DAOs

Aside from Optimism, there is a wide range of projects working to continue the expansion of the DeFi ecosystem and resolve network performance issues. Crypto News Australia has compiled an informative list of projects worth watching.  

Decentralised autonomous organisations (DAOs) are the blockchain-based version of companies that are native to the internet. There’s a lot to know about DAOs, not to mention a list of risks and benefits, but it doesn’t have to be complicated. Crypto News Australia has also published a handy guide to DAOs.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Markets Mutant Ape Yacht Club Tokens

APE Token Pumps 55% Following Rumours of Land Drop Going Viral

The price of ApeCoin (APE) has exploded 55 percent following Twitter speculation that holders of the token would be able to purchase land in the Otherside metaverse MMORPG via a Dutch auction land sale.

Since the morning of April 18, APE has surged from its recent low of US$11.05 to a high of US$17.30 on April 21. According to CoinGecko, at the time of writing APE had retraced its gains slightly and was trading at US$15.95.

A Tale of Two Tweets

The APE buying frenzy has been driven by speculation that holders will have access to land in the Otherside metaverse MMORPG, which is currently being developed by the creators of the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), Yuga Labs.

Rumours had been circulating online since April 18, but two tweets in particular sparked investor interest. The first, tweeted a day later by a user known as ‘WillyTheDegen’, suggested that holders of the Yuga Labs-created NFTs BAYC and Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC) would be airdropped land in Otherside:

The second tweet, posted on April 20 by ‘renegademasterr’, stated that Yuga Labs would be running a Dutch auction – where the starting price is high and bids get gradually lower – to sell Otherside land using APE as the purchasing currency:

This surge illustrates just how fickle the crypto market can sometimes be, driven by social media chatter and a healthy dose of FOMO.

APE Has Had a Turbulent Time

Since launching in March 2022, APE has been quite a volatile asset, even by crypto standards. On its first day of trading the token plunged 80 percent from its all-time high of US$39.40, and early this month it fell 20 percent following a hack on the related BAYC Discord servers.

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Australia Binance Blockchain BNB Crypto News Play to Earn Solana Tokens

Move-To-Earn Token STEPN Has Soared 217x in 2022  

Active types can now get paid to exercise and breathe in the fresh outdoor air with new Australian fitness app STEPN – an NFT-based play-to-move Web3 crypto “game” powered by the Solana blockchain.

Following in the footsteps of Genopets – the first move-to-earn NFT crypto game developed on Solana – STEPN is basically a mash-up of Apple’s step-counting Health app with Axie Infinity-style play-to-earn (P2E) tokenomics.

With over half a million downloads so far on Android alone, STEPN has taken off and so has its governance token, $GMT.

STEPN’s Green Metaverse Token (GMT) has sprinted upwards, increasing five-fold in value over the past month, from US$0.65 to an all-time high of US$3.79. $GMT is the token required for making upgrades to the App’s in-game NFT virtual sneakers. GMT’s market cap is now over US$2 billion and the token is currently ranked #60.


STEPN price chart (GMT). Source: CoinGecko.com

The most recent 26 percent spike came after STEPN announced a partnership with Japanese sports apparel giant Asics on April 18 via Twitter, launching a sneaker sale on the Binance NFT marketplace. Selected subscribers will be able to purchase the first STEPN sneakers on the BNB Chain version of the game:

Earn Crypto Exercising Outside

Users can earn crypto by walking or running with the STEPN App. The app tracks movement via your phone’s GPS and rewards are paid in STEPN’s game token: Green Satoshi Token (GST), which can be traded for USD Coin (USDC) or Solana (SOL).

Players begin by choosing a fitness level that suits their goals, which also determines how many tokens can be earned using the app. The four tiers are divided by different types of virtual sneakers: walker, jogger, runner or trainer. STEPN sneaker NFTs can be found and purchased from the in-app marketplace. Check the stepn.com website for full instructions on how to play.

Since the game has taken off, the price to get started playing has elevated accordingly. Currently the floor price for a pair of sneakers is 13.67 SOL (US$1,400+). Participants in the upcoming STEPN Shoebox sale on Binance will be offered mystery boxes containing a pair of NFT Sneakers of random quality and type, for 0.5 BNB (US$210).

STEPN plans to implement a sneaker-rental feature, coming soon to combat the high cost to entry.

How to Start STEPN

  1. Download the app from the App store (available for Android and Apple) and log in with your email address and verification code.
  2. Get verified. Join the official Discord and Telegram channels and get your activation code to enter the app on your phone. Note: due to popular demand, the development team is only releasing 1000 activation codes per day via Discord and 1000 per day via Telegram. You have to be quick, as codes refresh at midnight AEDT. You can also follow @Stepnofficial on Twitter for more activation code releases.
  3. Link your Solana wallet in the STEPN app and purchase your first pair of virtual sneakers from the STEPN marketplace. Sneakers can be customised and enhanced to increase token rewards.

STEPN buzz continues to gain traction amid rumours of further upcoming partnership announcements with other big shoe brands, including Nike and Adidas. Since the STEPN token sale in March, the app is off to a flying start, but it’s a marathon, not a sprint. Whether the move-to-earn model can prove sustainable over time will be the real test, but for now STEPN is showing no signs of slowing down.

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Crypto News Monero Tokens

Monero Holders Coordinate Mass Withdrawal to Highlight ‘Not Your Keys, Not Your Coins’

The Monero (XMR) community on Reddit has planned a bank run targeting numerous centralised exchanges (CEXs) in a response to a “lack of transparency” over the coin. The date of the run, April 18, coincides with the XMR anniversary.

Across social media, members of the Monero community have expressed their concerns over how CEXs are misleading XMR clients. Some of the allegations include that centralised exchanges are suspending XMR withdrawals and misrepresenting XMR reserves.

Customers Led Up the Garden Path

Security engineer and Monero holder Seth Simmons joined the list of users fed up with misleading statements from centralised exchanges. “Looking more and more like exchanges are paper trading Monero and lying about how much they have to customers,” he tweeted:

The event, called “The Monerun”, was thoroughly detailed on Reddit. Some exchanges have already disabled withdrawals, but to test the credibility of those who haven’t, are joining forces to pull off the liquidity:

Monero’s obfuscated ledger has enabled a number of exchanges to misrepresent their reserves and sell XMR that they don’t actually have, knowing that all too many of us will never withdraw, and no one can see onchain the evidence of their misdeeds.

‘The Monerun’, Reddit

Not a Good Recent Run For Monero

Two months ago, the dominance of Monero’s largest mining pool, MineXMR, dropped dramatically amid concerns of 51 percent attacks, raising criticism over its security aspects.

On December 8 of last year, XMR took a hit when it was alerted that the Monero multi-sig wallet code was compromised, not exactly affecting the temporary supporting multisigs but rather affecting the current wallet code implementing them.

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Coinbase Crypto News Ethereum Scams Tokens

Suspicions Raised as ETH Trader Buys $400,000 in Tokens Before Coinbase Listing

An Ethereum trader bought US$400,000 worth of tokens before being listed on Coinbase, raising suspicions of possible insider trading.

The ETH address, flagged by renowned crypto trader Cobie, was able to buy tokens due to be listed on Coinbase 24 hours before the Coinbase listing announcement. The wallet was created on April 11 and the tokens were transferred to different exchanges:

It seems the trader focused on six tokens – NDX, KROM, RADAR, RAC, DFX, and PAPER – which were under consideration for listing on the exchange, suggesting (s)he had prior knowledge before the list was made public.

After the list was published, the tokens increased dramatically in price, as usually happens with tokens listed on Coinbase. The address now has a balance of more than US$500,000, a return of over 40 percent in less than 24 hours.

Coinbase is yet to respond to any of the insider trading accusations.

Not the First Frontrunning Scandal on Coinbase

This is not the first time that Coinbase has been accused of frontrunning. In February, a trader created a fresh wallet and bought millions worth of $UPI and $AVT before Coinbase announced the listing:

Sometimes you have to take these events with a grain of humour, and that’s exactly what the crypto community has done:

Frontrunning is not uncommon in crypto companies. We’ve heard before of unethical employees buying digital assets shortly after being listed. Such was the case with Nate Chastain, a former employee at NFT marketplace OpenSea who got caught snapping some NFTs for himself in September last year:

In response to OpenSea’s centralised model and NFT frontrunning, renowned DeFi developer Andre Cronje created Artion, a decentralised and open-source marketplace built on Fantom Network.

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Crypto Exchange Crypto Staking Cryptocurrencies Insurance Tokens Zipmex

Zipmex’s Crypto Staking Program Offers Australians Up to 10% APY Interest with No Lock-in Period

Zipmex, one of the major established and regulated Australian digital asset exchanges, has recently launched a new product offering in Australia called ZipUp which offers attractive crypto yield returns.

Along with your regular cryptocurrency buying and selling, with Zipmex you can now use a “ZipUp” crypto staking account that gives daily rewards on your crypto. One of the attractive features of this account is having the flexibility of being able to withdraw and deposit any amount, anytime – with no lock-in period.

Zipmex’s Crypto Staking Rewards

Following December’s successful launch of its “ZLaunch” token reward program, Zipmex is now offering users interest rates of up to 10 percent on some digital assets on its ZipUp+ program.

ZipUp+ allows users to enjoy daily crypto bonuses on Bitcoin (BTC), Zipmex Token (ZMT), Ethereum (ETH), US Dollar Coin (USDC), Tether Coin (USDT), and Litecoin (LTC). The rewards are calculated based on the user’s VIP level, and higher rates are on offer for those who lock up their Zipmex Tokens (ZMT).

The full rewards table is outlined below and available on Zipmex’s website.

Zipmex earning schedules by VIP Levels. Source: Zipmex

Given that banks are currently offering little interest on savings accounts, the demand for interest on crypto is high, despite some crypto exchanges dropping interest rates.

What makes Zipmex+ attractive to users in search of a yield is that there is no minimum deposit amount and no lock-in period. Through Zipmex’s easy-to-use app interface, users can withdraw, trade or deposit anytime while enjoying daily crypto rewards.

Read our guide on how to stake your crypto with Zipmex.

How to Participate

Users interested in earning daily rewards on their crypto can sign up and get A$20 free in ZMT and then start staking their crypto to earn daily rewards.

About Zipmex

Zipmex is a trusted AUSTRAC-registered exchange with millions of users across Australia and Asia who enjoy 24/7 customer support, and instant trades, withdrawals and deposits.

With transaction fees as low as 0.1 percent per transaction, the platform is well suited for traders and HODLers alike.

The company is also duly registered with Blockchain Australia and backed by subsidiaries of the Mitsubishi Financial Group, a leading global financial services group and one of the largest banking institutions in Japan.

Read our full review on Zipmex here.

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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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Bored Ape Yacht Club Hackers Illegal NFTs Scams Tokens

$APE Drops 20% Following Bored Ape Yacht Club Discord Hack

ApeCoin has dropped 8 percent after the Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) Discord servers suffered a phishing scam. The governance token behind the world’s largest NFT collection has plunged after news of the phishing attack was confirmed.

APE Witnesses Massive Fluctuations

APE fell from roughly US$14 on March 31 and at some point reached US$12.8, according to CoinMarketCap. The tokens were airdropped to Bored Ape and Mutant Ape NFT holders on March 16 and will serve as the governance token for the project’s newly launched decentralised autonomous organisation (DAO). APE will allow its holders to vote on the project’s roadmap and upcoming proposals.

Since the token launched, the price action has been rather volatile with APE going as high as US$39.4, before settling at a range between US$14 and $16.  

An unknown hacker gained access to the official Discord meant to host members of BAYC, Mutant Ape Yacht Club, and Mutant Ape Kennel Club, three NFTs from Yuga Labs. The attackers posted a phishing link in the Mutant Ape Kennel channel disguised as a “stealth NFT mint”, which was used to steal Mutant Ape Yacht Club #8662 from one user:

No ‘April Fools Stealth Mints’

The team at BAYC indicated in a tweet that it had “caught” the issue immediately but cautioned users not to mint any NFT using a link posted on its Discord, and indicated to users that it had no April Fools stealth mints. According to several reports, clicking on the link would result in losing the respective holders’ NFTs. It has been reported that the hacker may have carried out the attacker via Ticket Tool, a popular Discord bot that automatically generates support tickets:

Twitter users have also warned of a similar exploit on the Discord server of Doodles, another NFT collection, but at the time of writing this had not yet been confirmed:

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Airdrop Metaverse NFTs Tokens

Controversial Pudgy Penguins NFT Collection Sold for 750 ETH

The Pudgy Penguins NFT collection has sold for 750 ETH (US$2.6 million), separating its inherent cuteness from its controversial roots. LA-based entrepreneur Luca Netz, of Netz Capital, is now leading the project and plans to use it to “spread love across the Meta”:  

Pudgy Penguins Eye the Future

Netz has purchased full control of the collection – totalling 8,888 Pudgy Penguins – from the four original co-founders, alongside future royalties. Full ownership of the project means that Pudgy Penguins can now release its own token, $PENGU, and investigate the option of potential airdrops to existing penguin holders:

This follows the ousting of the founders via a January Discord vote over their failure to meet project goals. Co-founder ColeThereum had promised a game, an educational book, and a token, all of which the project failed to deliver. With turmoil behind the scenes and threats issued regarding the project, controversy had been rife within the community.

The sale of Pudgy Penguins will offer a fresh start for the collection. While the originators will no longer be a part of the project, they acknowledge that Netz has the connections and experience to level up the collection in the future.

NFT Controversies and Acquisitions

Pudgy Penguins isn’t the only collection with a controversial history. In February, YouTube ‘Internet Detective’ CoffeeZilla helped to expose a US$20 million crypto scam. Thanks to the joint efforts of CoffeeZilla and the NFT community, the ‘Squiggles’ project was foiled before it came to pass.

In other big acquisition news, last month the creators behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) purchased CryptoPunks – another highly successful NFT collection. Yuga Labs now owns the IP and commercial rights to BAYC, and the company’s first move after doing so was to give full commercial rights to NFT holders.