DeFi Protocol Yearn Finance Impacted in Nearly $11M Exploit

The highly anticipated release of the SUI token, the native token of layer1 blockchain Sui, will take place once the mainnet goes live on May 3 following token sales on crypto exchanges Bybit, OKX, and Kucoin. Each exchange offered 225 million tokens with a maximum allocation of 10,000 per user. Tokens were sold for $0.10 each and U.S. residents were forbidden from taking part. Despite consistently telling its community that Sui had no plans to issue an airdrop, users expressed their disappointment on Twitter after token distribution plans were released. One of the first projects that will go live on the Sui mainnet will be Suiswap, a decentralized exchange and liquidity staking protocol that acts in a similar way to Uniswap on Ethereum. Sui Network developer Mysten Labs signed an agreement with Alibaba Cloud last month in a deal under which Alibaba Group will offer its node services and cloud infrastructure to improve user experience for Sui blockchain validators. Mysten labs also entered into an agreement with FTX's bankruptcy estate to buy back the failed exchange's equity and token warrants worth $96.3 million in cash after FTX Ventures led Mysten Labs' $300 million Series B raise last August.Exactly Protocol, a decentralized credit market on the Optimism network, has been targeted by a bridge exploit worth as much as $12 million. The hacker used an exploiter contract on Ethereum that transferred deposits to Optimism before ultimately bridging stolen funds back to Ethereum, blockchain security firm De.Fi said in a tweet. The protocol's native governance token (EXA) slumped by more than 12% following the exploit as it currently trades at $5.51, per CoinMarketCap. The hack coincides with a significant downturn across the wider cryptocurrency market, with several assets including XRP, LTC and BCH leading double-digit declines as roughly $1 billion in positions were liquidated in a 24-hour period. Cross-chain bridges have become a common attack vector for hackers due to the relatively novel technology. Last year it was estimated that over $2 billion was lost to bridge hacks, according to Chainalysis.The attacker behind Euler Finance's $200 million exploit has apologized and returned more funds to the protocol, seemingly in a series of messages sent on the blockchain. The hacker, who now identifies as Jacob, sent over 7,000 ether and $10 million worth of dai stablecoins to the protocol in the past 12 hours, bringing the total amount returned to over $120 million. The attacker had previously sent over 51,000 ether to Euler over the weekend. In a message encoded in a transaction, the hacker apologized for their actions, saying 'I f**d up' and 'I didn't mean all that.' The lending protocol suffered an exploit earlier this month that resulted in almost $200 million being lost over four transactions in dai, wrapped bitcoin, staked ether, and USD coin. The attacker used a flash loan to conduct the attack by temporarily tricking the protocol into falsely assuming it held varying amounts of eToken and dToken. Euler had earlier threatened legal action and offered a $1 million bounty to the hacker in return for the funds.

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On-Chain Data Reveals How Trading Firms Worked the USDC Stablecoin Repeg

More than 410,000 eligible airdrop participants did not claim their TIA tokens worth almost $1 million. Celestia, the modular blockchain that claims to scale with more users, has struggled to wrangle much of a market share in its first week, with less than 350,000 transactions registered in the four days following its release. Data from Mintscan shows that current transactions per second (TPS) on Celestia is 0.19. This doesn't necessarily translate to a lack of technical function, but it does mean a lack of activity on the blockchain. UnmuteDegen Chain Racks up Millions in Volumes; Latest in Custodia Bank's Legal Battle Against the Fed. Around 190,000 users claimed Celestia's airdrops on Tuesday despite more than 600,000 being eligible to do so, leaving slightly less than $1 million in unclaimed value. The token currently trades at $2.33 with a market cap of $329 million. Daily trading volume peaked at $475 million on Wednesday. It has since dropped to around $170 million, according to CoinMarketCap. Despite a slow start in terms of activity, Celestia network validators can currently receive around 23.39% APR as a yield for staking the native TIA token, considerably higher than Ethereum's rate of 3.8%. The performance of the TIA token has also been impressive compared to the likes of sui (SUI) and aptos (APT), both of which were airdropped to early adopters over the past year, and both endured bitter downturns after being issued. The stability of TIA can be attributed to a low level of inflation, as early investors and core developers have their token allocation locked up until October 2024.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.The highly anticipated release of the SUI token, the native token of layer1 blockchain Sui, will take place once the mainnet goes live on May 3 following token sales on crypto exchanges Bybit, OKX, and Kucoin. Each exchange offered 225 million tokens with a maximum allocation of 10,000 per user. Tokens were sold for $0.10 each and U.S. residents were forbidden from taking part. Despite consistently telling its community that Sui had no plans to issue an airdrop, users expressed their disappointment on Twitter after token distribution plans were released. One of the first projects that will go live on the Sui mainnet will be Suiswap, a decentralized exchange and liquidity staking protocol that acts in a similar way to Uniswap on Ethereum. Sui Network developer Mysten Labs signed an agreement with Alibaba Cloud last month in a deal under which Alibaba Group will offer its node services and cloud infrastructure to improve user experience for Sui blockchain validators. Mysten labs also entered into an agreement with FTX's bankruptcy estate to buy back the failed exchange's equity and token warrants worth $96.3 million in cash after FTX Ventures led Mysten Labs' $300 million Series B raise last August.

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Arbitrum-Based FactorDAO Releases Staking Service, Addresses Crypto Twitter Rumors

Aave token holders have started voting on two governance proposals in response to the systemic liquidation risk posed by Curve founder Michael Egorov's large borrowing position on the lending protocol. The proposals, authored by on-chain risk management platform Chaos Labs, aim to disable the borrowing of CRV on Ethereum and Polygon V3, as well as reduce the liquidation threshold of CRV. The votes, which end on August 12, are direct responses to the averted liquidation threat posed by Egorov's lending positions on Aave, in which he deposited 34% of CRV's total market cap to borrow upwards of $63 million. The proposals have been motivated by the recent Curve exploit, which saw the price of CRV plummet and put Egorov's assets under liquidation pressure. Despite Egorov's efforts to pay off portions of his debt through OTC deals, the potential liquidation has prompted Aave token-holders to take action to prevent further risk. The proposals aim to disable the ability to short CRV via the Aave protocol and reduce the liquidation threshold for CRV, which would prevent crypto users from borrowing CRV to dump and further impact its price. Aave is currently trading at $67.78, while the price of CRV is 61 cents, per CoinDesk market data. Chaos Labs CEO Omer Goldberg indicated in the governance vote that the motivation behind one of the proposals is to disable the ability to short CRV via the Aave protocol. The votes have been prompted by the recent Curve exploit, which exposed serious risks in the DeFi ecosystem. The outcome of the votes could have significant implications for the future of Curve and the broader DeFi market.A rise in open interest shows more participation from crypto traders and a bullish market sentiment, a trading firm said.Open interest in bitcoin (BTC) across crypto derivatives exchanges has surged to $10 billion, a five-month high after leverage subsided in the wake of FTX's collapse in November, according to data from Coinalyze.A rise in open interest, which is a metric that assesses the value of all unsettled derivatives positions, alongside an increase in price is often used to confirm the legitimacy of a move. At the time of writing, bitcoin was trading at around $30,000 after it surged to a 10-month high of $30,540 on Tuesday.Zahreddine Touag, head of trading at Woorton, a crypto trading firm and liquidity provider, said that bitcoin broke out in a 'global risk-on environment,' with the Nasdaq also rising by 10% in the last 30 days.'We think this move is driven by technicals, BTC broke a major resistance at $28.5k and rebounded on its 2023 bullish trendline,' Touag said.'We noticed futures open interest has been moving up vertically which shows more participation from crypto traders and a bullish market sentiment,' he added.'For now, we do not see signs of extreme exuberance; indeed, the fear and greed index is at 61, funding rates are still negative on many exchanges for BTC while short-sellers did not capitulate yet. We will monitor these metrics to predict a potential trend reversal.'It's worth noting that an increase in open interest means that whilst short-sellers have added to their shorts in this region, traders betting on long trades are doing so with leverage that may unwind if price begins to reverse.A total of $98 million in crypto derivatives positions have been liquidated in the past 24 hours as bitcoin momentarily slipped below $30,000, according to CoinGlass.UPDATE (April 10, 2023, 20:03 UTC): Updates quote attribution.Edited by Parikshit Mishra.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.

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Ethereum Fees Spike as Bots Front-Run Punters of PEPE, CHAD

The attackers behind the recent $35 million exploit of crypto wallet Atomic Wallet are moving stolen funds via OFAC-sanctioned exchange Garantex, according to blockchain security firm Elliptic. The infamous North Korean hacking group Lazarus is believed to be responsible for the hack, and the stolen funds have been laundered through a bitcoin mixer service called Sinbad. Nearly $35 million worth of various tokens were stolen from Atomic Wallet on June 3, including bitcoin, ether, tether, dogecoin, litecoin, BNB coin, and Polygon's MATIC. Garantex, which was sanctioned by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) last year for its lax anti-money laundering measures, continues to operate and has allowed the hackers to freely move the stolen funds. Several crypto exchanges have already frozen addresses related to the Atomic Wallet hack, but some funds have found their way to Garantex. The bitcoin was then laundered through Sinbad, a bitcoin mixer service allegedly used by North Korean hacking groups. The incident highlights the ongoing risks of hacking and money laundering in the cryptocurrency space.Decentralized crypto exchange Trader Joe is set to launch an upgraded version of its Liquidity Book, which will make it more efficient for depositors to add tokens to its liquidity pools. The upgrade, scheduled for release next week, will also introduce 'auto-pools' that will automatically manage depositors' active positions in high-yield liquidity pools to mitigate risk. Additionally, a new rewards program will be introduced to distribute tokens to participants in Trader Joe's concentrated liquidity. Trader Joe has $131.78 million in total value locked and has done over $520 million in trading volume since March 26, according to DefiLlama. The price of JOE was trading at 60 cents at press time. nnThe upgrade is intended to improve the on-chain trading experience and make it easier for depositors to contribute to Trader Joe's liquidity pools. The exchange currently has three implementations on Arbitrum, BNB Chain, and Avalanche, with the largest being on Avalanche. nnThe news comes as a report by Kaiko Data found that crypto liquidity is heavily concentrated on a handful of exchanges, with Uniswap and SushiSwap accounting for the majority of liquidity. However, Trader Joe's upgrade is aimed at improving the liquidity experience for depositors and mitigating risk through the use of auto-pools. nnThe Fed's next sharp pivot could come from a liquidity crunch, according to an economist, as the central bank's balance sheet shrinks and liquidity dries up. Bitcoin holds steady above $17,000, while Celsius is 'deeply insolvent,' according to the Vermont Department of Financial Regulation. nnOverall, Trader Joe's upgrade is a positive development for the decentralized exchange space and could attract more depositors and traders to the platform. The introduction of auto-pools and a new rewards program could also help to mitigate risk and improve the overall liquidity experience for users.The last bull market saw the launch of a raft of on-chain structured products, and the next bull-run will see more liquidity going into these projects, says Jordan Tonani from The Index Coop. Globally, asset management is a huge industry, with a large percentage of assets in each nation being held in ETFs, index funds, and other passive vehicles. In Europe, €28.4 trillion of assets are managed by the industry, of which 20% are held in passive strategies, about half in exchange-traded products and half in index funds. All told, passively-held assets under management have doubled since 2015, with around one fifth of European retail investors holding such products. Analysts predict that by 2027 ETFs will account for 24% of total assets in Europe, up from 12% in 2022. In the world of decentralized finance and digital assets, some commentators see the on-chain structured product market as analogous, but this sector has yet to capture much market share. On-chain structured products make up 0.07% of the crypto market overall currently, with a combined TVL of $2.46 billion across protocols. In comparison, the DeFi market is $48.29 billion, and the total crypto market is $1.18 trillion. Nevertheless, over the last several years, on-chain structured products have shown the kind of promise that led to these types of products' dominance in traditional markets. In 2020, the on-chain structured product market saw 20 projects launching, including nine projects that launched during what would come to be known as DeFi Summer. Yearn, Compound, and the Index Coop all started offering such products during this period. At the height of the 2021 bull market, Index Coop's on-chain structured products captured over $550 million in TVL. In total, 47 projects have launched in the on-chain structured product space since 2016, with the majority of projects offering index or yield-earning products. Of those, 37 are still operational. At the Index Coop, we're bullish on the long-term promise of on-chain structured products because of their advantages in transparency, security, accessibility, automation, and liquidity. Regrettably, the sector has been hampered by regulatory ambiguity, as well as nascent technology and market infrastructure. That said, some encouraging signs have emerged recently. If, as seems likely, BlackRock's spot Bitcoin ETF and Grayscale's spot Ethereum ETFs are approved in the U.S., that would represent a major step forward for the on-chain structured product sector. As digital asset markets mature, we expect to see more growth in the on-chain structured product market, especially as correlations reduce across digital assets. Currently, high correlation across digital assets means that different assets move together, reducing the value of a diversification strategy. As digital assets become less correlated, diversification will become a more attractive proposition. Additionally, improvements in UX and cross-chain infrastructure could contribute to growth in our space. Long-term, we expect on-chain products to prevail because of their unique advantages, enabling underlying tokens to reach wider audiences. You can learn more about the on-chain structured product space in our annual report on the state of the industry.

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Trader Joe Upgrades Liquidity Book for Efficient Token Addition

The highly anticipated release of the SUI token, the native token of layer1 blockchain Sui, will take place once the mainnet goes live on May 3 following token sales on crypto exchanges Bybit, OKX, and Kucoin. Each exchange offered 225 million tokens with a maximum allocation of 10,000 per user. Tokens were sold for $0.10 each and U.S. residents were forbidden from taking part. Despite consistently telling its community that Sui had no plans to issue an airdrop, users expressed their disappointment on Twitter after token distribution plans were released. One of the first projects that will go live on the Sui mainnet will be Suiswap, a decentralized exchange and liquidity staking protocol that acts in a similar way to Uniswap on Ethereum. Sui Network developer Mysten Labs signed an agreement with Alibaba Cloud last month in a deal under which Alibaba Group will offer its node services and cloud infrastructure to improve user experience for Sui blockchain validators. Mysten labs also entered into an agreement with FTX's bankruptcy estate to buy back the failed exchange's equity and token warrants worth $96.3 million in cash after FTX Ventures led Mysten Labs' $300 million Series B raise last August.The total value of all assets locked on decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols has surged to a three-month high of $42 billion after being at its lowest point since February 2021 just two weeks ago, according to DefiLlama data. The resurgence of the DeFi market is based on two factors: rising asset prices and fresh inflows from participants that aim to generate a yield through staking and lending. nnEther (ETH), the asset that underpins the majority of the DeFi market, has rallied from $1,590 to $1,810 over the past two weeks, while the likes of lido (LDO) and aave (AAVE) have posted 25% and 34% moves to the upside respectively. Transactional volume across DeFi protocols rose to its highest point since March, with $4.4 billion recorded on Oct. 24, according to DefiLlama. nnSolana's most extensive lending protocol, Marinade, experienced a 120% jump in total value locked (TVL) this month following the release of its native staking product, which offers yields of 8.15% APY to complement its 7.7% rate on liquid staking. Marinade's rival protocol, Jito, has risen by 190% to $168 million in TVL in the same period. On Ethereum, meanwhile, the amount of capital on Enzyme Finance, Spark and Stader have all risen by between 37% and 55%, outpacing the rise in asset prices to illustrate fresh inflows. nnRecently released layer one blockchains Sui and Aptos have also experienced positive growth this month, TVL on Sui has jumped from $34 million to $75 million. Aptos has been spurred by increased activity on lending platform Thala, with its overall TVL also hitting the $75 million mark this month. nnDespite a fruitful month, risks remain across the DeFi sector, as even the slightest slide in the price of ETH would trigger notable on-chain liquidations. Currently, there is a $76.2 million position on Aave that will be liquidated if ETH crosses $1,777, with over $100 million set to be liquidated if the price falls by 20%.The application has zoomed to becoming the second-largest revenue maker among crypto protocols in just over two weeks. The newest crypto “killer app” seems to be social tokenization protocol Friend.tech, and it has proven to be an absolute money printer for developers so far. Friend.tech, which lets X (formerly Twitter) personalities issue shares on its app for access to a closed group chat, has made over $1.04 million in fees, set at 5% of the value of each transaction over the past 24 hours. That’s banked the platform some $709,000 worth of ether in revenue (what the platform takes after paying out gas fees and other costs), data from DefiLlama shows. Such growth has come in a very short time, even for crypto’s fast-moving standards. Friend.tech’s invite-only beta launched on August 10 and racked up some 4,400 ETH (about $8.1 million) in trading volume on the first day. The app is built on Base, crypto exchange Coinbase’s new layer-2 network. Shares of some crypto X personalities, such as Cobie and Hsaka, jumped to as much as three ether, or nearly $5,000 at current prices, in a few days. Friend.tech is also taking the scam-riddled Base by storm. Last week, the network reached 136,000 daily active users – overtaking layer 2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism – much of which is attributed to the app’s users. These group chats are quickly evolving into intimate community experiences for share buyers. Trading personality @RookieXBT is dangling revenue shares and X premium subscriptions to holders, while @DeFiMaestro is sharing token picks for a trading challenge. Meanwhile, the hype could just be getting started. A slew of personalities outside of crypto circles on X joined Friend.tech over the weekend – opening the floodgates to possible crypto adoption among the general populace, some opine. Richard “FaZe Banks” Bengtson II, co-founder of the influential esports community FaZe Clan, joined the platform late Sunday and saw his share prices quickly become among the costliest. Elsewhere, NBA player Grayson Allen saw shares surge quickly in mere hours after joining. “I’ve always thought the idea of betting on the success of especially YouTubers/ streamers success would be cool,” FaZe Banks tweeted. “Outside of just time and resources. I’ve discovered so many talented people, a product like this is perfect for that.”

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GoldenTree Moves $5M of SUSHI, Sparking Fear It's Exiting

Investors in the Hector Network, a stablecoin project, are demanding that the group's leaders kill it faster after the project suffered major losses from the Multichain bridge's collapse. The community is angry over the timeline for liquidation, which could take six to twelve months, and the fact that the project's remaining $16 million treasury may be whittled away by legal fees and other expenses. The situation highlights the messiness of operating a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) and the complexity of unwinding such a project. The article also mentions that the DAO never approved the creation of a corporation, and that the project's leaders plan to proceed with liquidation in the British Virgin Islands. The community is crying foul over the lack of transparency and the fact that they were bamboozled. The article quotes a former employee of the group and a prominent figure in the Hector community, who say that the project's ambitions were too broad and that infighting and delays drained the treasury. The article also mentions that investors had identified Hector as a risk-free value trade and that some had already been pushing for a rage quit before the announcement of liquidation.Ethereum scaling blockchain Arbitrum has distributed over $120 million worth of its arb (ARB) tokens to projects built on the network, with some projects selling their allocation immediately, while others plan to use it to strengthen their development and user engagement. The airdrop, which was based on network activity and number of wallets, was sent to over 131 decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs), with NFT marketplace TreasureDAO and gaming-focused TridentDAO receiving the largest allocations. Some projects, like Vesta Finance, plan to use their airdrop to bolster their development, while others, like PlutusDAO, will use their allocation in multiple ways to make their project stronger. The airdrop has spurred both excitement and criticism from the community, with some projects selling their tokens immediately, while others are holding onto their allocation in anticipation of future growth.ZkSync-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Merlin plans to compensate users impacted in a nearly $2 million rug pull with blockchain audit firm CertiK. A representative for CertiK told CoinDesk that the company is actively investigating the recent Merlin DEX exit scam, where rogue developers are suspected of causing the loss of around $2 million in user funds. Working closely with the remaining Merlin team, CertiK will initiate a compensation plan to cover the lost funds for affected users. Initial investigations indicate that the rogue developers are based in Europe, and CertiK will collaborate with law enforcement authorities to track them down if direct negotiation is unsuccessful. The rogue developer is urged to return 80% of the stolen funds and accept a 20% white-hat bounty. Merlin was seemingly exploited for over $1.8 million on Wednesday morning during a public sale of its mage (MAGE) tokens. The attack occurred despite Merlin touting an audit conducted by blockchain security firm CertiK. Further analysis by firms and analysts alleged the attack was conducted by a rogue developer who held private keys to Merlin's smart contracts - allowing them to withdraw all liquidity from the protocol.

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