Crypto Lender Exactly Hit by $12M Bridge Exploit

Despite efforts by Solana developers to discourage spammy transactions, a majority of the network's compute is still being wasted on failed trades, according to an analysis by crypto infrastructure company Jito Labs. In one recent epoch, arbitrage transactions took up 60% of overall compute space, with 98% of attempts failing. The result is wasted blockspace and capital burnt on losing trades. The issue is attributed to Solana's infrastructure, which prioritizes the first submitted transaction, creating an incentive for arbitrage bots to submit multiple duplicate transactions. Recent changes to Solana's backend, including the introduction of priority fees and local fee markets, have not effectively addressed the issue. MEV (maximal extractable value) opportunities remain, and spam transactions will persist as long as they do. Jito Foundation is building a specialty client for the Solana network that optimizes for MEV.Meme coins have outperformed the broader crypto markets in recent days, but some say profit-taking could reverse the rally. Tokens fashioned after the Shiba Inu dog breed may see imminent selling ahead after days of outperforming the broader crypto market. On Monday, Twitter, a social-media company owned by billionaire and crypto proponent Elon Musk, replaced its popular blue bird logo with that of Dogecoin’s Shiba Inu mascot. Dogecoin (DOGE) prices surged almost immediately – with its futures markets setting a record – as some bet on the increased use of dogecoin on Twitter's platform. That rise caused several other Shiba Inu-themed meme coins to jump multifold, with the sector rising 14% on average. Tokens with larger market caps such as shiba inu (SHIB) rose up to 10%, while smaller-cap coins such as floki (FLOKI), kishu inu (KISHU) and baby dogecoin (BABYDOGE) surged as much as 25%. Meme coins on newer blockchains had their moment, as well. Some dog-themed tokens, such as zkDoge and zkShib on the zkSync blockchain, which went live in March, registered gains of as much as 100%. However, some traders warn that such moves don't indicate a broader trend. 'We do not believe that it is indicative of a long-term bull run. Quite the opposite', Guilhem Chaumont, CEO of crypto trading firm Flowdesk, said in a Telegram message. 'There is a regular pattern of crypto market uptrends with first, bitcoin going through a bull run, then major altcoins pumping, and finally, tokens with small market caps.' Since bitcoin has been experiencing a relatively stable upward trend, meme coins’ rise would indicate the third phase, the end of the cycle. But there is no need to over-interpret such momentary price changes. The sentiment for meme coins is not a new one, and this means there is a high potential that the growth will fade off as usual in a few days, Bonnie Cheung, head of strategy at crypto developer Sending Labs, said. However, there could still be long-term growth for these tokens if fundamental features strengthen in the coming months. Shiba Inu, for instance, is gaining additional traction through the launch of Shibarium, its layer-2 protocol built on the Ethereum blockchain. Dogecoin’s recognition by Twitter and the payment world is also growing, and these trends can help record more sustained growth over the long term. A testnet for Shiba Inu’s upcoming Shibarium platform has seen brisk adoption. Elsewhere, projects like Floki are actively developing games and decentralized-finance tools to cut free from the 'meme coin' tag – at least as far as developer efforts go. Meanwhile, some opine that Twitter’s move could pave the way for mainstream crypto adoption. 'Musk’s supportive tweets and the recent decision to add the Dogecoin logo to Twitter help keep both DOGE and SHIB in the public conversation', Kadan Stadelmann, the chief technology officer of blockchain network Komodo, said in an email to CoinDesk. 'Regardless of whether or not one supports meme coins, it's impossible to deny that Musk is driving mainstream adoption of crypto and creating media attention that wouldn't otherwise exist. This is certainly a net positive for the crypto space as a whole.'ApeCoin DAO has passed a community proposal that would see the launch of an Accelerator to support projects utilizing apecoin tokens (APE) and bolster the Bored Ape Yacht Club and ApeCoin ecosystems. The new AIP-209 will incubate and launch community-approved projects that focus on improving the value of the BAYC NFT collection and other projects that use ApeCoin. The 'Ape Accelerator' aims to engage the ApeCoin community as initiators, voters, and participants. Initiators can submit proposals for projects to be incubated, while voters can use their APE tokens to vote on whether the proposed projects should be launched. Participants will be able to support approved projects by purchasing NFTs and other yet-unspecified tokens. Projects which finally launch on the Accelerator will utilize apecoin, which may ultimately accrue value as they generate revenue and returns for holders. ApeCoin was initially issued as a governance token by creator Yuga Labs to holders of the popular BAYC NFT collection, which is composed of 10,000 unique images of cartoon apes that sell at $83,000 apiece as of Thursday. These tokens find use in other Yuga Labs projects, such as Otherside, Mutant Ape Yacht Club (MAYC), CryptoPunks, MeeBits, and Bored Ape Kennel Club (BAKC) – all popular and influential NFT collections. The launchpad within Ape Accelerator will initially operate on the Ethereum network and feature a tiered structure for participation, based on users' APE stakes and qualifying NFT holdings.

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Long-Term Bitcoin Holders Add to Their Holdings, Despite Price Retracement

After a week of bickering, cooler heads began to prevail in the Aragon Association's governance crisis. The market responded with gusto, with the ANT token rallying to its highest levels for May. Luis Cuende, co-founder of Aragon, proposed $30 million in ANT buybacks using a smart contract to buy all tokens trading higher than the 30-day moving average. He also called for Aragon's $200 million treasury to gradually transfer to the Aragon DAO over a period of five years. The proposal extended a banner rally for the ANT token, which climbed from its Wednesday low of $2.75 to $2.98 immediately prior to his post and shot up to $3.25 and higher afterwards. The proposal seemed to cool a volatile situation that exploded with the Aragon Association's decision to throw its DAO into lockdown to protect against a “51% attack.” The barbarians at its gates were the so-called RFV Raiders, a loose collective of activist crypto traders including the crypto hedge fund Arca who had called for buybacks of the ANT token to bring its value in line with the treasury. The Aragon Association reversed a community-approved plan to move its $200 million treasury to ANT holders’ control, out of fear that the RFV Raiders would plunder it. One member of the activist collective told CoinDesk that between all of them they have enough voting power to win any vote over the team’s objections, including the ability to block grant allocations. There was no guarantee that Cuende’s proposal would be implemented, and the Aragon Association did not immediately respond to CoinDesk. However, there were signs Wednesday that after days of bickering, banning, conspiratorial allegations, open letters, and accusations of “decentralization theater,” cooler heads were prevailing. Three activist investors that CoinDesk spoke to said the proposal was a good start.Trader Joe, a decentralized crypto exchange (DEX) on the Arbitrum network, has seen a surge in trader and depositor activity in the past week, with total value locked (TVL) rising by over 300% to reach $30 million on Wednesday. The jump in activity comes as the price of Trader Joe's governance token, JOE, booms, with a 11% increase in the past 24 hours and a 58% increase over the past week. The recent success on Arbitrum has nearly eclipsed Trader Joe's trading volume on Avalanche, its original home. The increase in activity is attributed to a liquidity incentives program launched by Trader Joe to boost deposits of popular tokens, particularly Arbitrum's newly airdropped ARB. Users who loaned ARB, ETH, and USDC to Trader Joe's pools received a share of 300,000 JOE tokens. The incentives program ends on April 6. The article also mentions that Bitcoin supply inactive for a year has dropped to an 18-month low, according to Glassnode, and that VanEck CEO does not think the SEC will approve Ether ETFs in May. Additionally, Eisenberg's $110M fraud trial has opened, and FSI is calling for consistency in stablecoin regulation. The article concludes by asking if Bitcoin momentum will continue after the halving.Arbitrum-based asset management protocol FactorDAO has released its much-awaited staking service, days after ending a token sale on the decentralized exchange Camelot. The move comes as the project faces rumors on Crypto Twitter alleging that part of its code was 'copied' from other crypto projects. nnFactorDAO's pseudonymous founder Kurapika has hit back on the claims, telling CoinDesk that the allegations were started by an anonymous Crypto Twitter user referring to minor documentation mistakes accidentally left in Factor's technical documents. The project's code is brand-new, and the team is not sure what 'copied code' means in an open-source environment. nnDespite the tremors, Factor has focused on releasing its staking and vaults services for users in the past week. Staking refers to locking up one's tokens to participate and help maintain the security of that network's blockchain in turn for rewards. Factor will take a percentage of the deposit, withdrawal, transaction, vault management, and performance fees and redistributes 50% to FCTR stakers, and 50% to its decentralized autonomous organization (DAO). nnFCTR stakers will, therefore, earn yields on staking their tokens as liquidity to the platform while the platform will use the increased liquidity to offer even more products to potential users. Users who lock tokens for up to four years will receive the highest yields, the highest percentage of governance rights, and a higher amount of vested factor (veFCTR) – a token issued to users who lock their FCTR on the staking platform. nnFCTR sees volatile trading last week, with the token launch on Camelot prompting several Arbitrum users to criticize the initial high market capitalization and overall issuance mechanism. Factor ended up raising $7.5 million from 4,000 unique wallets, but the final pool of money raised was equally distributed with the total number of issued tokens to determine the initial price of FCTR in the open market. However, these tokens were almost immediately dumped on the open market on Sunday, falling to as low as 44 cents, DEXTools data shows. Buying pressure after the initial dump saw tokens regain the pre-sale price of 75 cents on Monday morning, but have since seen a gradual sell-off to just over 58 cents at writing time on Tuesday. nnUPDATE (Feb.28, 12:11 UTC): Adds comments from Factor founder and clarifies the rumors.

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Bitcoin Liquidity on the Brink as Market Makers Pare Back in Crypto Markets

Crypto traders are using the Stargate bridge in the hope of being eligible for a rumored LayerZero airdrop. Volume on the Stargate cross-chain bridge has surged by 30% in the past 24 hours, with investors attempting to meet the criteria for the airdrop. The protocol recently surpassed $1 billion in monthly volume for the first time, and the STG token has jumped by 95% in the past 24 hours. Although LayerZero hasn't announced a token, the protocol's code mentions a native token, leading to speculation of an upcoming airdrop. A number of high-profile airdrops in the past 12 months have yielded significant returns for minimal effort, and airdrop hunters are hopping on Stargate governance proposals in the hope of receiving a larger allocation of LayerZero's rumored token. More than 6.4 million STG tokens were staked for a recent proposal on whether to make decentralized exchange Velodrome an STG hub on the Optimism blockchain. LayerZero didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.Chainlink's LINK token has seen a significant surge in value this week, with wealthy investors swapping ether for link following the release of the company's Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP). On-chain data shows that some whales have added upward of $6 million to their link holdings, lifting prices as much as 6%. The increased demand has helped extend weekly gains to over 25%. CCIP is designed to help build cross-chain applications and services, and is now available to all developers across five testnets. Prices of other oracle protocols, such as Band Protocol and Uma, have also risen in the past 24 hours. Oracles are blockchain-based services that fetch data from outside a blockchain, and Chainlink's CCIP is a significant development in the space. The article is well-written and provides a clear overview of the current state of the market and the impact of Chainlink's release.In hindsight, the selling pressure of ether (ETH), Ethereum’s native token, turned out to be a “non-event” following the Shanghai upgrade, which enabled staking redemptions for the first time, according to a report from blockchain analytics firm Nansen. Over a month has passed since the Shanghai upgrade that marked Ethereum’s full transition to a proof-of-stake blockchain, and ETH staking deposits have surpassed withdrawals, making the number of staked ETH climb to 19.55 million at presstime, a new all-time high. As a result, the May 8 report stated “that the elimination of unstaking risks has thus far offset selling pressure from withdrawals.” In the weeks building up to Shanghai, crypto bulls and bears debated extensively about the market’s potential response following the upgrade. The price of ETH has decreased about 8% to $1,851, since April 13 when Shanghai went live, per CoinDesk data. The CoinDesk Market Index, designed to measure the broad performance of the digital asset market, has dropped nearly 10% in the same time period. “Ultimately, withdrawals have been minimal and have thus far been matched with inflows, signaling strong overall confidence from investors in the network and the asset itself,” according to the Nansen report. Crypto exchange Kraken, which complied with regulation from the Securities and Exchanges Commission to end its crypto staking-as-a-service platform for U.S customers in February, had the most withdrawals at over 646,000 ETH, with Coinbase, a rival crypto exchange, trailing behind with more than 376,000 ETH. (Nansen Research) While roughly 73% of the ETH withdrawn from staking has been sent to centralized exchanges (CEXs) like Kraken and Coinbase, the majority of withdrawn ETH is CEXs withdrawing ETH to themselves. “This means that the majority ETH being sent to CEXs is not primarily for selling, but for the exchange’s internal operations,” according to Nansen. Edited by Bradley Keoun.

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Aventus Slides 4.2% on Low Volume as Token Split Plans Shelved

Cross-chain router protocol Multichain has been exploited for nearly $130 million after an attacker siphoned capital out of numerous token bridges. The lockup assets on the Multichain MPC address have been moved to an unknown address abnormally, with the team not sure what happened and currently investigating. It is recommended that all users suspend the use of Multichain services and revoke all contract approvals related to Multichain. The unexpected outflows stripped Multichain’s Fantom bridge of nearly its entire holdings in wBTC, USDC, USDT and a handful of altcoins, worth over $130 million. On-chain sleuths described the activity as highly unusual, with Fantom Foundation CEO Michael Kong looking into it. Multichain has been under pressure for over a month due to failing tech and its AWOL CEO. The trio of unexplained outflows from Multichain’s Fantom, Moonriver and Dogecoin bridge contracts sparked fears on crypto Twitter that a hack could be afoot. Binance CEO Changpeng 'CZ' Zhao said that the exploit does not affect users on Binance itself, with assets swapped out and deposits closed a while back. Assets transferred out of the Multichain Fantom bridge include at least $20 million of altcoins going to 0x9d57, with other transfers seeing outbound moves of 1,023 wBTC ($30.9 million), 7,214 wETH ($13.6 million), and $57 million USDC between two separate addresses. Multichain’s Moonriver bridge contract has seen $6.8 million in token outflows with nearly all its wBTC, USDT, USDC and DAI going to 0x48BeAD. An address identified as Mulitchain’s Dogecoin bridge has seen over $600,000 in outflows of USDC. UPDATE (July 7, 2023, 09:17 UTC): Updates headline and adds context on the exploit throughout.Despite efforts by Solana developers to discourage spammy transactions, a majority of the network's compute is still being wasted on failed trades, according to an analysis by crypto infrastructure company Jito Labs. In one recent epoch, arbitrage transactions took up 60% of overall compute space, with 98% of attempts failing. The result is wasted blockspace and capital burnt on losing trades. The issue is attributed to Solana's infrastructure, which prioritizes the first submitted transaction, creating an incentive for arbitrage bots to submit multiple duplicate transactions. Recent changes to Solana's backend, including the introduction of priority fees and local fee markets, have not effectively addressed the issue. MEV (maximal extractable value) opportunities remain, and spam transactions will persist as long as they do. Jito Foundation is building a specialty client for the Solana network that optimizes for MEV.An unidentified attacker has taken over the DAO of Tornado Cash, a privacy-focused crypto mixer, with a malicious proposal that granted them fake votes. The attacker has withdrawn 10,000 votes as TORN tokens and sold them, causing a 40% slump in token prices. The attack does not impact the actual Tornado Cash protocol, but the community is working on proposals to revert the changes made to the code. Some have suggested creating a new contract and airdropping new tokens to holders. The attack highlights the potential vulnerabilities of DAOs and the need for robust security measures to prevent such incidents.

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Bitcoin Whales Spook Crypto Twitter With Sudden Wallet Movements

Centralized business structures are continuing their creep into decentralized finance (DeFi), with the builders of tokens Magic Internet Money (MIM) and SPELL on Wednesday pitching a traditional legal structure to supplant the DAO overseeing the stablecoin with a nearly $700 million market cap. In a forum post, a project leader called on Abracadabra DAO to support a “transition of power” to a centralized entity complete with lawyers, jurisdictions and trustees. Those trappings of a traditional corporation are seemingly antithetical to the notion of a DAO, the form of crypto-based business governance in which token holders directly call the shots. Despite our commitment to decentralization, we’ve recognized the importance of introducing a certain degree of centralized legal structure, the AbracadabraTeam account wrote. The purpose here is not to disrupt the decentralized nature of Abracadabra; in fact, it’s to protect it. Abracadabra DAO is the latest crypto project swapping the lofty idealism of decentralized governance for some degree of centralization, alongside SushiSwap and other projects. The reasons for these transitions range from heightened regulatory scrutiny to more mundane business concerns. For Abracadabra DAO, the publicly-shared reasons seem to tilt toward vanilla. AbracadabraTeam said the centralized entity would manage the DAO’s intellectual property as well as server expenses “while still keeping control in the hands of SPELL token holders.” Holders of SPELL (Abracadabra DAO’s governance token) will vote the project through three phases of transition, starting with picking a jurisdiction for the new entity. Four countries are on the table: Switzerland, Singapore, Malta and Bermuda. Phases two and three will define what the new entity’s roles are and how it will operate, according to the post. At press time, the SPELL token was trading 2.8% lower over the past 24 hours.Decentralized-finance protocol 0VIX has lost roughly $2 million in a flash-loan exploit, according to on-chain data on Polygon's block explorer. A total of 1.45 million USDC, along with other tokens, was stolen before being bridged to the Ethereum mainnet on Stargate Finance, where it was eventually swapped for ether (ETH). The protocol had $6.4 million in total value locked before the exploit, which has now slumped to $1.7 million as investors rapidly withdrew their capital. This is the latest in a series of crypto exploits, with ZkSync-based decentralized exchange Merlin suffering a $2 million rug pull on Wednesday. 0VIX confirmed the attack on Twitter, stating that it is 'working with its security partners to look into the current situation.' Only POS has been currently affected, but zkEVM has been paused as a precaution and will likely be enabled shortly again. Read more: DEX Merlin and CertiK Plan to Compensate $2M to Users Impacted in Rug Pull.Crypto traders are using the Stargate bridge in the hope of being eligible for a rumored LayerZero airdrop. Volume on the Stargate cross-chain bridge has surged by 30% in the past 24 hours, with investors attempting to meet the criteria for the airdrop. The protocol recently surpassed $1 billion in monthly volume for the first time, and the STG token has jumped by 95% in the past 24 hours. Although LayerZero hasn't announced a token, the protocol's code mentions a native token, leading to speculation of an upcoming airdrop. A number of high-profile airdrops in the past 12 months have yielded significant returns for minimal effort, and airdrop hunters are hopping on Stargate governance proposals in the hope of receiving a larger allocation of LayerZero's rumored token. More than 6.4 million STG tokens were staked for a recent proposal on whether to make decentralized exchange Velodrome an STG hub on the Optimism blockchain. LayerZero didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.

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Coco Casino Makes a Splash with $36M in Volume and Soaring Token Prices

BNB Chain, a popular blockchain network, is set to undergo a significant upgrade on June 11 at 21:30 UTC. The upgrade, dubbed 'Luban,' will incorporate three distinct enhancements aimed at improving the network's speed and security. nnThe Luban hard fork will introduce several new features, including the 'Fast Finality' mechanism, which ensures that once a block is finalized, it cannot be reversed. This reduces the risk of chain reorganizations by malicious actors. Additionally, the upgrade will introduce 'Cross Chain Relayer Management,' which aims to mitigate potential security issues in the BSC Bridge. Finally, the 'CometBFT Light Block Validation' system will be implemented to verify specific blocks from other CometBFT-compatible blockchains and enable data transfer between them. nnThe upgrade is expected to attract investors and users to the BNB Chain ecosystem, as it will provide developers with even better features and tools to build on the network. The bnb token (BNB) will also benefit from the upgrade, as it will contribute to the value proposition for the token in the future. nnThe Luban hard fork is a significant milestone for the BNB Chain, and it demonstrates the network's commitment to improving its speed and security. The upgrade is expected to be a major boost for the blockchain ecosystem and will help to drive the adoption of the bnb token. nnIn conclusion, the Luban upgrade is a significant development for the BNB Chain, and it is expected to have a positive impact on the network's speed, security, and adoption. The upgrade will provide developers with new features and tools to build on the network, and it will contribute to the value proposition for the bnb token. The BNB Chain is set to become an even more robust and secure blockchain ecosystem with the implementation of the Luban hard fork.Sandwich bots are front-running punters of newly issued tokens such as pepe (PEPE) and chad (CHAD) – meme coins with no intrinsic value that caught wind of Crypto Twitter degens almost overnight as the tokens zooted over 10,000%. A sandwich attack, traps a user's transaction between two transactions, which is then further manipulated to gain profits. This is done by front-running the victim's trade by buying the same asset, and then selling tokens to the victim in the same trade for a slightly higher price. Sandwich attackers aren’t typically a form of exploit but are looked upon in crypto circles as a type of predatory behavior, which skims value from users, leads to a spike in gas fees and doesn’t benefit either the network or the user. The victim might not notice it, but for sandwich bots the gains can run into millions of dollars as they target thousands of wallets and skim a few dollars each time. A wallet named “Jaredfromsubway.eth,” a likely nod to the popular sandwich chain, has spent over $2 million in the past week on Ethereum network fees trying to sandwich traders punting on predominantly low-cap tokens. That has driven up fees of the entire network, data from Dune Analytics shows. Each transaction on the Ethereum network costs over $10 as of Asian morning hours on Wednesday – ten times more than last week’s $1 level. Gas fees have spiked. (Dune) The actions of Jaredfromsubway.eth mean they spent 7% of all fees on Ethereum in the past 24 hours, the data shows, becoming the top spender on the network. That is ahead of fees spent by Arbitrum, a layer 2 blockchain that batches transactions on the Ethereum network, and Uniswap, the most-used decentralized exchange. It is unclear how much Jaredfromsubway.eth made from their front-running actions, but given they spent a significant amount – and continue to do so – the gains likely exceed costs by a significant amount. As such, research firm Sealaunch has estimated Jaredfromsubway.eth's gains at over $1.4 million since Tuesday, as per a tweet. Meanwhile, the pepe frenzy is on in full force. Pepe tokens nearly doubled in value in the past 24 hours as Crypto Twitter traders moved over their DOGE-themed token obsession to bet on the internet meme instead, as CoinDesk reported. Scores of pepe wannabes have popped up as well, as have chad, wojak, and babypepe – each a nod to internet memes. Most of these are unlikely to last beyond a few weeks. But unlike then, entities like Jaredlikesubway.eth is eating the gains while fresh.A bug in a token issued by decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Yearn Finance was exploited this morning, leading to millions of dollars in losses. The exploit occurred on Aave version 1, and the losses could total over $11 million, with the stolen assets being spread over U.S. dollar-pegged stablecoins dai (DAI), tether (USDT), USD coin (USDC), Binance USD (BUSD), and tru USD (TUSD).nnAccording to security firm PeckShield, the exploit was caused by a misconfigured yUSDT token, which allowed the attacker to mint over 1.2 quadrillion yUSDT using a $10,000 initial deposit. This was then used to trick the Yearn Finance protocol into cashing out millions in stablecoins. nnAave developers have clarified that the protocol was not directly impacted and that the exploit was mainly due to the misconfigured yUSDT token. The current size of v1 is $18 million, and the current size of the Aave safety module is $382.50M. Version 2 and version 3 of Aave were not impacted at writing time. nnThe exploit is the latest in a series of high-profile hacks and exploits in the cryptocurrency space, with over $67 million in crypto lost to hacks and exploits in February alone, according to a report by Immunefi. nnThe incident highlights the risks associated with decentralized finance and the importance of proper security measures to protect against exploits and hacks. It also underscores the need for ongoing monitoring and updates to ensure the security of DeFi protocols and their users.

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