Smart Contracts Financial News

DeFi is supposed to be the great recalibrator of finance. It is supposed to offer people a better alternative to traditional centralized financial tools and services. Recently, we've all seen how centralized services can result in catastrophic losses for users due to lack of transparency.

A cross-chain bridge between BitBTC and the Ethereum layer-2 network Optimism has been able to avoid a potentially costly exploit thanks to the work of an eagle-eyed Twitter user.

A bug in the smart contract code for the Ethereum Alarm Clock service has reportedly been exploited, with nearly $260,000 said to have been swiped from the protocol so far.

Web3 developers don’t appear to be fazed by the crypto bear market, with one Web3 platform suggesting they’re “more active than ever” — particularly on the Ethereum (ETH) network.

There’s more to crypto than just assets, Bank of England deputy governor Sir Jon Cunliffe reminded the Association for Financial Markets in Europe Conference in London on Sept. 28. The distributed ledger technology (DLT) behind crypto assets has far-reaching implications for traditional markets and interoperability. 

Cross-chain messaging ensures blockchains can talk to one another, reducing fragmentation in this fast-moving industry.

A self-described white hat hacker has uncovered a “multi-million dollar vulnerability” in the bridge linking Ethereum and Arbitrum Nitro and received a 400 Ether (ETH) bounty for their find.

Decentralized lending platform Compound has been plagued by a code bug in a recent governance proposal to update its price feeds. 

Pavel Durov, the founder of encrypted messaging app Telegram, has floated the idea of a marketplace that could utilize “NFT-like smart contracts” to auction highly-sought after usernames. 

Systems built on blockchain are enhanced by the security and efficiency afforded by distributed ledger technology. Transactions and events are immutably encrypted into successive blocks enabling perpetual validation thereafter. These are also inherently protected from tampering due to the distributed nature of the networks.

According to a Tuesday notice from U.K. law firm Giambrone & Partners, a case brought by Fabrizio D’Aloia against Binance Holdings, Poloniex, gate.io, OKX, and Bitkub over allegations someone was operating a fraudulent clone online brokerage has resulted in a legal precedent offering a digital solution to serving someone. On June 24, the judge in the case allowed parties to be served by airdropping NFTs into wallets originally held by D’Aloia but stolen by unnamed individuals.

DappRadar and omnichain interoperability protocol LayerZero have launched a new token to enable cross-chain staking across multiple blockchains and Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible networks — a move designed to minimize fees and increase access to staking opportunities.

Git open-source repositories are a popular method for storing code. Unfortunately, a high degree of centralization means there's a single point of control — sparking fears about the prospect of censorship resistance and security. And as more code is written, it can become less secure.

A mismatch in the reported price of underlying assets on synthetic assets DeFi platform Mirror Protocol has caused an ongoing exploit that has the potential to drain all of its funds.

As the acceptance of crypto investment rises in India, crypto funds are getting mainstream. Tykhe Block Ventures is an emerging homegrown crypto firm which aims to manage $30 million by the end of the year. «A delay in adoption of crypto in India may just increase brain drain from the country,» said Prashant Malik, Founder and General Partner at Tykhe Block Ventures. After a stint in Meta (formerly Facebook), Prashant Malik co-founded the e-commerce platform Limeroad. He has been among the early investor/advisors in the crypto companies such as CoinSwitch, Neo Banj Juno and Bluzelle. Edited excerpts from an interview:What kind of work does Tykhe Block Ventures do? Do you invest for yourself or manage funds for other investors as well? How big is your fund and how much return, in percentage terms, have you been able to reap so far?We are a crypto-asset investment firm. We invest in ventures and hold liquid investments within the blockchain sector with a focus on decentralisation technologies, digital assets and their key enabling infrastructure. We started private, we were only managing our own money, me and my partners pooled in the initial capital and we went with our idea of investing in frontier tech related to blockchain and Web3. After a full year of operation, we currently have roughly about 7 times in AUM over our initial capital. With this proven success behind us, we are now in the process of launching a $30 million fund, where we are inviting investors to take part in this journey with us.

Digital asset manager Grayscale Investments has unveiled a new cryptocurrency fund dedicated to smart contract platforms excluding Ethereum, underscoring growing investor appetite for alternative blockchain networks. 

Cointelegraph is following the development of an entirely new blockchain from inception to mainnet and beyond through its series, Inside the Blockchain Developer’s Mind, written by Andrew Levine of Koinos Group.

Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 solution Polygon (MATIC) is integrating the Simba Chain to scale and build new infrastructure for Web3, according to a new announcemen.

Late Monday, popular nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, platform OpenSea once again delisted the CryptoPunks v1 collection, which spiraled into existence along with the iconic CryptoPunks v2 collection due to a smart contract bug. This was allegedly due to a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice issued by CryptoPunks v2 developers Larva Labs to OpenSea. As the company is also the creator of the CryptoPunks v1 collection, this move has struck some as strange.

Scalping is a massive problem in the event ticketing industry. From touts and bots buying out events the second they go live to reselling tickets on the secondary market at exorbitant prices, both artists and fans are suffering from those taking advantage of the ticket markets for profit.

The Internet Computer has released a roadmap for 2022 and beyond, indicating plans to roll out integrations with Bitcoin and Ethereum by the end of the year.