Category: Tokens

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Blockchain Crypto News Markets Tokens Waves

WAVES Protocol is Making Waves, Surging 70% Amid News of US Launch

The price of the Waves blockchain’s token (WAVES) has surged over 70 percent following the March 28 launch of Waves Labs, a US-based organisation tasked with supercharging Waves ecosystem’s growth globally.

According to CoinGecko, WAVES’ value jumped from US$31.80 to US$54 in the 24 hours following the announcement. Since then it’s continued to increase, at the time of writing sitting at US$57.14 – a new all-time high.

Waves Labs to Boost Awareness and Adoption

Waves Labs, which will be headquartered in Miami, US, will spearhead expansion of the Waves ecosystem by pursuing aggressive marketing and hiring strategies and by supporting Waves-based projects with mentoring and funding grants.

Waves founder Sasha Ivanov was optimistic that Waves Labs would further boost the ecosystem despite the network having recently seen record growth, stating:

Waves Labs is a key component of the Waves plan to grow exponentially in 2022. Despite a period of record growth of our ecosystem, Waves remains relatively unknown in the US crypto space. With the founding of Waves Labs, the ecosystem fund, and the extremely talented team in place, I do not doubt that Waves will reach mass adoption in 2022 and beyond. 

Sasha Ivanov, founder, Waves

New Team Brings Crypto Experience

Waves Labs also announced its newly hired senior leadership team, which includes:

  • Aleks Rubin as head of US Operations;
  • Coleman Maher, who previously led business development at Origin Protocol, as head of Ecosystem;
  • Jack Booth, former product marketing lead at Oasis Protocol, as Marketing Lead; and
  • Tiffany Phan as VP of Finance and Operations. 

US head Rubin said: “I am excited to lead this dynamic team as we expand visibility and enhance the utilisation of Waves protocol in the North American market.”

US Launch Follows Bullish Period 

The launch of Waves Labs follows a recent run of bullish news for the network, starting in February of this year: the migration to Waves 2.0; the launch of a US$150 million fund to support Waves-based dApps; and its partnership with Allbridge to facilitate cross-chain interoperability. 

In addition, the total value locked in the Waves ecosystem has boomed recently. In particular, Neutrino – a Waves-based multi-assetisation protocol – has exploded, seeing its total value locked increase over 300 percent in the past month to a new all-time high of US$4.36 billion, including inflows of almost US$450 million in a single day.

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Coinbase Crypto News DeFi Tokens

Web3 Token Mina Soars 75% Amid Coinbase Listing and $92 Million Investment

A new Web3 token, MINA, has soared over 75 percent this week following a US$92 million investment and a recent listing on one of the world’s largest crypto exchanges, Coinbase.

World’s ‘Lightest Blockchain’ Survives Massive Sell-Off

Self-described as the world’s lightest blockchain with a fixed size of 22 KB, the Mina Protocol is a fast-growing platform for zero-knowledge smart contract development.

The protocol’s native token, MINA, has been recovering from a sharp price drop of over 70 percent from its all-time high of US$6.71 in November 2021. The cryptocurrency now hovers at $2.49 per coin, boosted by bullish sentiment after the protocol sold $92 million worth of MINA tokens to Three Arrow Capital and FTX Ventures.

MINA daily chart. Source: TradingView

The Coinbase Effect

What further boosted MINA’s price was Coinbase’s support for the token, as per an announcement on March 23. Trading will be paired with Tether (USDT), once liquidity conditions are met.

As Coinbase is one of the largest crypto exchanges internationally by trading volume, a listing surely adds massive value to any cryptocurrency project. In January this year, real estate smart contract token Propy soared 227 percent after being listed on the exchange.

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DeFi Illegal NFTs Scams Tokens

Crypto Venture Capitalist Loses $1.7 Million in NFT Hot Wallet Phishing Attack

Arthur Cheong, founder of DeFi and Web3-focused crypto venture capitalist firm Defiance Capital, tweeted this week that a hacker had stolen over US$1.7 million worth of NFTs from his crypto wallet.

Pieces stolen include five CloneXs, 17 Azukis, 33 Second Selfs, two Hedgies and two Tsubasa NFTs, according to security firm PeckShield. A total of 59 NFTs were stolen.

Cheong said the unknown hacker compromised his device using a technique known as ‘spear phishing’:

Earlier this month, an unknown hacker began draining NFTs from an Ethereum wallet owned by Cheong, which he later confirmed on Twitter. The hacker then proceeded to sell the stolen NFTs on OpenSea and also transferred other tokens such as wETH, Lido DAO, LooksRare and DYDX to their wallet.

As it stands, the perpetrator’s wallet currently contains about 585 ETH, or around US$1.7 million, that can all be traced back to Cheong’s wallet. This figure may increase as the hacker appears to be still moving funds out of Cheong’s account:

Spear Phishing Email Likely Suspect

Cheong said the hacker used what is called a ‘spear phishing’ email to deploy malware on his device, which then proceeded to extract the seed phrase to his crypto wallet:

Phishing Attacks on the Rise

This is sadly not a unique incident, with the incidence of phishing scams rising dramatically this year. In January, OpenSea lost US$3 million in stolen NFTs. In a similar fashion, US$790,000 worth of Rare Bear NFTs were stolen in a brazen phishing attack just last week.

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Blockchain Cardano Hydra Tokens

Cardano Exploring Token Burning Mechanism Similar to Ethereum

The latest roadmap status update from Cardano suggests the blockchain may be investigating adding some form of token burning functionality, a feature that was added to Ethereum last year as part of the London hard fork update.

The Cardano update, released on its website on March 18, was vague about what is planned in terms of token burning, simply saying it was an option under consideration by the Hydra Team:

Finally, they inspected the options of token minting and burning within a Hydra Head along with scenarios of using tokens instead of datums.

Cardano status update

Confusion About Token Burning

The mention of token burning in this update was taken by some in the crypto industry to signal that Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson had dropped his known, long-standing opposition to token burning on the blockchain:

However, close followers of Cardano emphasised that the update stated token minting and burning may be coming to the Cardano layer-2 scaling solution Hydra, not the main Cardano blockchain itself:

Hydra is a layer-2 scaling solution for Cardano currently under development. Matthias Benkort, a Cardano software engineer, describes it as “an off-chain mini-ledger between a restricted set of participants, which works similarly (albeit significantly quicker) to the on-chain main ledger”.

Token burning being restricted to Hydra implies that the overall supply of ADA, Cardano’s native token, won’t be reduced and therefore won’t cause upward price pressure for ADA investors.

Hoskinson Attempts to Clarify

Hoskinson himself weighed in on the debate, retweeting a suggestion that Cardano is exploring token burning on its main blockchain and adding a GIF of an exasperated-looking Jackie Chan to express his frustration with the confusion:

Across the broader crypto market, token burning functionality has been implemented on many blockchains as a deflationary mechanism in order to increase token price. Last year, Binance burnt over 1.3 million BNB, at the time valued at almost US$400 million, in one of its quarterly token burns.

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Crypto News DAO Ethereum NFTs Tokens

Time Magazine Releases First Ever NFT Magazine Issue, Featuring Vitalik Buterin

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.

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Crypto News Scams Tokens

New York State Attorney Convicts ‘Saint Clair’ for Promoting ‘IGObit’ Crypto Scam

In the world of cryptocurrency, we’ve come to expect a fair degree of chicanery, ranging from modernised romance scams to blatant social media celebrity pump-n-dump schemes. The ‘IGObit’ scam, however, stands alone for sheer creativity and audaciousness.

IGObit promotional material. Source: Innercitypress

‘Guaranteed Returns’

According to a US Department of Justice report, the president of a fictitious United Nations (UN) affiliate has been convicted of defrauding investors in a cryptocurrency public offering.

After a week-long trial, Asa Saint Clair, a resident of Washington, DC, was convicted of wire fraud for devising an investment scheme that scammed more than 60 victims into providing loans to a fictitious organisation known as the “World Sports Alliance”.

Saint Clair claimed he was an affiliate of the UN and sought to “promote the values of sport” through its digital coin, IGObit, which provided a “guaranteed return on investment”.

The scheme was said to run from late 2017 until September 2019, after which Saint Clair’s yarns starting unravelling. It then became obvious that “World Sports Alliance” had absolutely no affiliation with the UN, despite him posing with the former UN secretary general, Khofi Annan.

Asa Saint Clair (left) with former UN secretary general Khofi Annan. Source: Presswire

According to the Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Saint Clair was “in reality promoting only the balance of his bank accounts”. It turns that Saint Clair managed to defraud more than 60 victims of “hundreds of thousands of dollars”. Wire fraud carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and the sentencing hearing is scheduled for July 19.

At face value, one might be tempted to suggest that prospective investors were naïve for failing to conduct a basic due diligence. However, it seems as if Saint Clair was quite the promoter, given that his press release is still available online:

Screenshot of WSA press release. Source: PR Newswire

Lessons Learnt

Before investing in any cryptocurrency project, it may be prudent for any prospective investor to consider the following:

  • Who is behind it?
  • Is the person or group credible?
  • Can you verify any associations with credible third parties?
  • Does it promise “guaranteed returns”?
  • Do you have to “act now to avoid missing out”?

Remember that in the world of crypto, it is wise not to be blinded by buzzwords and, of course, it is vital to DYOR (do your own research) to avoid getting REKT (no need to explain that one).

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Bitcoin Coinbase Crypto News Cryptocurrencies Cryptocurrency Law Tokens

Coinbase Dragged into a Class Action Lawsuit for Selling 79 ‘Unregistered Securities’

One of the world’s leading digital asset exchanges has once again landed itself in hot water. This time it has been hit with a class action lawsuit which, among other things, claims that it sold 79 different digital assets that constituted “unregistered securities”:

‘Howey Test’ is Back

Legal proceedings have been launched by three users who accuse Coinbase of selling unlicensed securities and are seeking damages amounting to at least US$5 million on behalf of themselves, in addition to others who have purchased Dogecoin, Solana, Cardano, and more than 70 other tokens listed in the claim.

The suit argues that although some digital assets such as Bitcoin closely resemble commodities, in that they are decentralised, others are more akin to traditional securities (or shares).

The plaintiffs argue that the manner in which some tokens were offered to the public was in fact modelled on an IPO (initial public offering), which necessarily requires a significant amount of disclosures. In the case of the tokens in question, it was argued that disclosures were extremely limited, typically in the form of a “whitepaper” supplemented with adverts and social media posts.

In short, the argument is that the tokens constitute “securities” as defined by the “Howey test”, which requires that all four elements be met on the following criteria:

  1. It involves an investment of money;
  2. It has a common enterprise;
  3. It was made with a reasonable expectation of profits; and
  4. It is derived from the entrepreneurial or managerial efforts of others.

This test, originating from a 1946 Supreme Court decision, is all too familiar for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which recently began looking into the question as to whether some NFT drops pass this test.

Case ‘Not Much of a Surprise’

Philip Moustakis, counsel at Seward & Kissel for Coinbase, suggested that “the case is not much of a surprise. After all, the SEC has signalled that it intends to pursue investigations or actions against crypto-exchanges.”

He added that the court would need to do the painstaking one-by-one examination of each of the tokens, highlighting the need for greater regulatory clarity:

Unless and until the SEC provides further guidance and a path to compliance for token issuers, crypto lending products, exchanges, and other market participants, the question of whether any particular crypto-asset or transaction is a security will be litigated one at a time.

Philip Moustakis, senior counsel, Seward & Kissel

Having felt the heat of regulatory scrutiny over its lending product, this latest lawsuit comes as another blow to Coinbase. The lawsuit may well have far-reaching consequences given that it aims to cover all persons and entities who transacted in any of the 79 tokens between October 8, 2019, and the present.

From an outsider’s perspective, this case may just be what is needed to finally put the question to rest as to whether some tokens are “unregistered securities”. Michael Saylor, the unofficial King of Bitcoin, clearly believes that most will:

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Airdrop APENFT Bored Ape Yacht Club Crypto News Cryptocurrencies DAO NFTs Tokens

ApeCoin Surges and Then Dives 80% On Its Debut Trading Day

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:

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.

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Bored Ape Yacht Club Metaverse NFTs Tokens

Bored Ape Start-up Plans Metaverse Project Including Virtual Land NFTs and APECoin Token

Yuga Labs, the company behind Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC), has announced its intentions to sell a large quantity of virtual land. The goal of the sales is to broaden the community and raise approximately US$178 million toward the progress of Yuga’s gaming-focused metaverse project, MetaRPG:

Big Plans for Bored Apes

Yuga Labs is predicted to generate net revenues of US$455 million in 2022, with the profits from virtual land sales likely to form a large part of this sum. In phase one of its metaverse initiative, Yuga intends to sell 200,000 plots over two sales, to take place this month and in August.

Moving into the metaverse will help Yuga Labs diversify its revenue streams and move away from BAYC NFTs. Yet not everyone in the Twitter community is convinced:

Despite the scepticism of its plans, Yuga has supplied onlookers with a name for the metaverse initiative alongside some basic information. The project is called MetaRPG and will be gaming-focused and compatible with a range of NFTs. An in-game app store will allow players to create characters via NFTs and use them in games.

It’s also worth noting that APECoin is the proposed token for Yuga Labs’ metaverse. The currency will be usable in the in-game store and will encourage bartering and trading among players.

At this very early stage, there are little to no details of how exactly users may be able to participate in Yuga Labs’ latest venture.

Bored Apes: Rights and Partnerships

The Bored Ape Yacht Club has always been a notable presence within the NFT and crypto community. However, the creative minds behind BAYC have been busy over the past year expanding its horizons. In late 2021, the project announced a partnership with Adidas to enter the metaverse after the sports apparel brand paid US$156,000 for a single Ape.

More recently, Yuga Labs acquired the rights to two other hit NFT collections – CryptoPunks and Meebits. The company purchased both the commercial rights and intellectual property rights and has plans to award full commercial rights to NFT holders.

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Crypto News DeFi Hackers Tokens

Lending Protocols ‘Agave’ and ‘Hundred Finance’ Exploited for $11 Million

Two lending DeFi (decentralised finance) protocols, Agave and Hundred Finance, have been exploited for approximately US$11 million, both companies confirmed on Twitter this week:

Reentrancy Bug Responsible

Looking at the transaction data on Tenderly, it seems both protocols were hacked using reentrancy attacks, which is a vulnerability in Solidity, the programming language in which Ethereum is written.

Reentrancy is when an attacker manages to trick a function on the Solidity smart contract, called “callAfterTransfer” – the function then makes an external call to another untrusted contract.

Once the hacker has access to the untrusted contract, they can make recursive calls using the protocols’ funds without having to put up additional collateral.

Blockchain and security researcher Mudit Gupta shed some technical light on the hacks, stating that the attacker introduced code after the callAfterTransfer function to run a flash loan exploit, allowing them to borrow funds before the protocols were able to calculate the debt and prevent further borrowing.

Both protocols were hacked on the Gnosis chain, which is an EVM-compatible blockchain. Gupta added that what allowed reentrancy attacks was the fact that “the official bridged tokens on Gnosis are non-standard and have a hook that calls the token receiver on every transfer”:

Agave is a fork of DeFi lending protocol Aave, while Hundred Finance is a fork of Compound. Compound, on one hand, doesn’t follow the check-effects-interaction patterns, which is a recommended practice while making external calls in Solidity.

Aave does follow that practice, but according to Gupta there is a “path via liquidations using which the attacker broke the pattern”.

Tokens Wear the Fallout

Unsurprisingly, the native tokens of both protocols took a blow, both dropping by double digits, according to data from CoinMarketCap. But it seems they have recovered by at least 15 percent from their previous price.

After draining both protocols’ funds, the attacker went on to launder the money using Tornado Cash. Etherscan hasn’t labelled the attacker’s address with a DeFi exploit.

The event comes a week after Fantasm Finance was hacked for US$2.6 million through a flash loan attack, also using Tornado Cash to launder the funds.