DeFi

ERROR In a move that demonstrates how digital assets are being targeted in legal cases, British authorities have seized three NFTs linked to a criminal fraud investigation, according to a Feb. 14 report in the BBC.  Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC), the equivalent of the IRS in Britain, seized three NFTs and roughly £5,000 […]

ERROR The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) alleges that crypto lender BlockFi inaccurately described the level of risk its depositors were exposed to, in an order explaining a $100M settlement between BlockFi and federal and state securities regulators.  “BlockFi made a material misrepresentation to BIA [BlockFi Interest Account] investors concerning the level of risk […]

ERROR There are over 4,000 words in the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s rule describing all the documentation that a registered investment advisor needs to maintain. And more and more venture capital firms investing in the blockchain industry are getting large enough that they have to become registered investment advisors (RIAs), and this dramatically increases […]

ERROR Demand for NFT avatars is showing no signs of slowing down. Collectors seeking to mint Cool Pets, the latest drop from the Cool Cats development team Cooltopia, paid extreme fees to secure a token from the project’s public drop yesterday. In its documentation, Cooltopia said it had “put measures in place to deter a […]

ERROR In a move that could change the structure of one of the most important pieces of DeFi infrastructure, the community behind Gnosis is voting on whether to spin out Gnosis Safe, its popular multi-signature digital asset management platform. Gnosis Safe supports the Ethereum and Web3 ecosystems. Many leading crypto protocols, including Curve, Aave, and […]

ERROR Smooth Love Potion, a token earned by playing Axie Infinity, has been a white knuckle ride in recent months.  In its latest turn, the token has soared almost 70%,  to $0.034 in mid-morning trading U.K. time. The momentum pushed Smooth Love Potion’s (SLP) market cap to $1.1B.  SLP’s 14-day chart. Source: CoinGecko The token […]

ERROR For years, crypto has floated along in its own bubble, replete with risque anime characters, profane observations, and lots of provocative opinions about politics and society.   There was little concern about offending others and definitely no worry about crypto leaders being jettisoned from projects because of something they said.  That appears to be […]

ERROR A token most people in crypto haven’t thought about since it launched in 2019 just rocketed up in value and the moves actually make sense once you dig in. Bitfinex’s UNUS SED LEO token (LEO) went from trading at $4.97 at 11:34 AM ET to as high as $8.04 at 12:39 PM, according to […]

ERROR Nomad, a protocol allowing users to move digital assets between different blockchains, is being actively hacked on Monday evening. As of 7:15 p.m. New York time, attacker(s) have drained $45M in wrapped Bitcoin, Ether and various stablecoins from the protocol, and more than $100M in cryptocurrency remains at risk. The Nomad team is looking […]

ERROR Total value locked (TVL) in Bancor, one of DeFi’s first decentralized exchanges, has plummeted 30.2% since the protocol paused impermanent loss protection on June 19, according to data from The Defiant’s newly released chart feature.   In contrast, each of the top four Ethereum DEXs in terms of TVL has seen the value of assets […]

ERROR Uniswap is diving deep down the NFT rabbit hole.  The automated market maker is integrating decentralized NFT marketplace Sudoswap to allow for efficient NFT swaps when it launches its NFT platform. The news was shared by Scott Gray, head of NFT product at Uniswap Labs. The integration will allow users to purchase NFTs using […]

ERROR The U.S. Justice Department’s crackdown on crypto just ratcheted up a notch. On Thursday, Federal prosecutors accused a former employee of Coinbase, the leading crypto exchange, and two others in the first-ever case of insider trading involving cryptocurrencies.  In a 22-page indictment, prosecutors in New York allege former Coinbase product manager Ishan Wahi, his […]

ERROR A stablecoin from leading automated market maker (AMM) Curve Finance may be around the corner. The news comes right after DeFi lender Aave announced plans for its GHO stablecoin earlier this month.  Information is limited so far, but a post from Twitter user mrblocktw, who lists Curve Finance in his bio and also holds […]

ERROR When will Uniswap, DeFi’s leading decentralized exchange in terms of trading volume, start to make money for itself? It’s a question that people have asked since Uniswap V2, the second iteration of the protocol, was launched in May 2020. V2 included code to capture .05% of trading volume, but that function, also known as […]

ERROR On Wednesday, a trio of unaffiliated companies said they have made progress toward building zero-knowledge protocols capable of scaling Ethereum. Ethereum sidechain Polygon released the source code for its Polygon zkEVM, short for zero-knowledge Ethereum virtual machine. Matter Labs, the company behind zkSync, unveiled a roadmap for zkSync 2.0 and plans to launch “the […]

ERROR Crypto investor Balaji Srinivasan’s book The Network State was released on July 10 and centers around creating startup societies that are founded in the cloud, use an integrated cryptocurrency, and crowdfunded physical territories. In a July 12 blog post, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin shared his thoughts on the book.  Although Vitalik disagrees with Balaji […]

ERROR Lido, the largest liquid staking protocol, plans to bring its stETH token to Ethereum’s layer 2 (L2) networks. “For Ethereum stakers, this means staking with lower fees and access to a new suite of DeFi applications to amplify yields,” Lido said Monday in a blog post detailing the expansion.  No timeline was given for […]

ERROR Ethereum developers have doubled down on a mid-September target for the Merge during a conference call held on Thursday.  The Merge is Ethereum’s highly anticipated transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. It’s expected to slash the blockchain’s energy use and, therefore, carbon emissions, by as much as 99%, addressing one of […]

ERROR StarkWare, the company behind Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution StarkNet, plans to launch a native token designed to decentralize control and maintenance of the network. The token is also intended to reward developers and investors, and its unveiling comes a day after Su Zhu, the enigmatic founder of failed crypto hedge fund Three Arrows Capital, […]

ERROR Multi-signature wallet protocol Gnosis Safe has raised $100M in a funding round led by venture capital firm 1kx and will rebrand as “Safe”. Gnosis Safe users – a group that includes Bitfinex, BitDAO and Vitalik Buterin – manage more than $38B in assets, according to data from Dune analytics (that figure was just over […]

ERROR To go mainstream, Web3 needs to go mobile —  at least that’s how the argument goes.   Like phones and laptops going mobile before it, web3 teams are making serious bets that mobile is the future of the industry. Solana is going forward with a Solana-native smartphone called Saga while HTC has released a phone […]

ERROR “Our threat intel detected a potential exploit on Uniswap V3 on the ETH blockchain…” tweeted Binance founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) on Monday evening. The news spread like wildfire across Twitter and Discord. For a few tense minutes, observers questioned what an exploit of one of DeFi’s backbones could mean for this tender market. A […]

ERROR Embattled crypto lender Celsius Network is aggressively paying down its DeFi debts as user withdrawals remain suspended. Since July 1, Celsius has repaid Aave 146M USDC and more than 53M DAI, while withdrawing almost 6,000 wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC), nearly 55,000 ETH and millions of dollars worth of other tokens posted as collateral, according to […]

ERROR Using data compression techniques called zero-knowledge rollups, privacy-focused startup Aztec aims to allow Ethereum applications to offer users improved privacy and lower costs on transactions.   With Aztec’s revamped zk.money DeFi aggregator, DeFi apps like Lido and Curve can be used privately.   “Imagine if everyone could see all of your credit card transactions–that’s Ethereum today,” […]

ERROR The crisis engulfing Celsius, the embattled centralized crypto lending platform, took a strange turn on July 7 when a former partner that helped manage assets for the firm accused it of running a “Ponzi scheme.” In a lawsuit filed in New York Supreme Court, KeyFi Inc., a New York-based asset management firm, pulled back […]

ERROR While Terra’s collapse may have cast a shadow over stablecoins, one big DeFi player doesn’t appear to be deterred. Aave Companies, the centralized entity that stewards the Aave lending protocol, proposed a new dollar-pegged stablecoin to the protocol’s DAO on July 7. The GHO stablecoin would be minted by borrowing against assets locked as […]

ERROR Embattled crypto lender Celsius Network has paid off its debt to MakerDAO, a sign the platform is recovering from its recent near-death experience.  On July 7, Celsius repaid the remaining $41.2 million in DAI it had borrowed from the collateralized debt protocol, according to data on DeFi Explore, an analytics platform. It then proceeded […]