Bitfinity Weekly: Power Systems
Welcome to Issue #82 of Bitfinity Weekly for our #BITFINIANS community. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, sign up here.
What's in Today's Email?
- Global Crypto News
- This Week in our Blog
- NFT Market Bytes
- Tweet of the Week
- Meme Time
- A Matter of Opinion
Global Crypto News
🔥 Rest In Pieces: Inferno Drainer, a wallet-draining service popular with crypto hackers, announced that it is shutting down. Inferno specialized in multi-chain scams and offered to "help" steal funds in exchange for a 20% cut. During its lifetime Inferno stole over $70 million dollars. Inferno's method of draining was to target and clone legitimate project websites, phishing unsuspecting targets.
🐜 Not A Refund for Ants: Good news for the anonymous Bitcoin user who accidentally paid a record high $3.1 million (83.65 $BTC) transaction fee last week. AntPool, the Bitcoin mining pool that mined the transaction fee, has offered a refund to the user, pending owner verification. This is the second time AntPool has reversed a record-breaking transaction fee; the last incident was in September when crypto service provider Paxos accidentally paid a transaction fee of $500k.
⚔️ Hostile Takeover: Kyber Network, a DeFi protocol that aggregates liquidity cross-chain, is currently undergoing a dramatic one-man coup d'etat by the hacker who stole $46 million from KyberSwap's pools. The hacker, who is calling himself Kyber Director, sent an on-chain message demanding all executive and governance DAO control be passed to him by December 10th. Among his unusual demands was a promise to double the pay of any employees who decide to stay under his leadership, causing some to joke that they support Kyber Director.
💔 Heart-less: The SEC is having difficulty locating Richard Heart, the controversial founder of HEX. Heart, who is well-known for his public antics as well as flamboyant luxury wardrobe, was charged earlier this year for orchestrating an illegal $1 billion securities scheme. However it seems the SEC has not even been able to serve Heart his papers, which is the first step to initiate legal proceedings.
This Week in our Blog
The video game market is expected to surpass $200 billion dollars next year, and as crypto disrupts a myriad of traditional systems, the web3 gaming sector looks primed to explode. We break down the challenges and potentials of its future:
Fred
Crypto is a rapidly changing environment, which has meant that Venture Capital (VC) firms have had to adapt with the times. Some have seen massive success while other have gone bankrupt and riddled with lawsuits. In this article we take an in-depth look at the characteristics and challenges of crypto-centric VCs.
Fred
NFT Market Bytes
👛 NFT Paradise: Magic Eden, a multi-chain NFT marketplace best known for their prominence in the Solana and Ordinals ecosystem, launched a cross-chain browser wallet that focuses on interoperability on the four blockchains that Magic Eden currently supports on its marketplace: Bitcoin, Ethereum, Solana and Polygon. The Magic Eden Wallet is currently in closed beta. Interested users can sign up now for the official waiting list to try the wallet for themselves.
⚽ Yellow Card: Football megastar Cristiano Ronaldo is being charged with a class-action lawsuit regarding his promotion of Binance and the crypto exchange's NFT offerings. The lawsuit is seeking at least $1 billion in damages, alleging that Ronaldo's endorsements led fans to believe that crypto investments were safe.
🐧 Cyber Huddle: Pudgy Penguins extends its distribution relationship with Walmart, by releasing an exclusive "influencer box bundle" for Cyber Monday. The Pudgy Penguins White Celebrity Box comes with a variety of Pudgy Penguin merchandise, inclduing a plushie and a certificate to redeem a free NFT. Speculators are hopeful that this is a sign that web3 brands have market appeal for 'normies'--people who are not yet exposed to crypto and NFTs.
Tweet of the Week
X-Chain is all about leveraging the advantages of multiple chains in a single app. @bitfinitynet is a pioneer in this space with their #bitcoin EVM.
— DFINITY (@dfinity) November 28, 2023
Plus, hear an update on ckETH from @manudrijvers. https://t.co/S6pR7GiQS2
Don't miss this space!
Meme Time
A Matter of Opinion
Crypto hacks and governance drama is nothing new to web3, however the Kyber hack will undoubtedly go down in history as one of the strangest and most dramatic heists of all time. The timeline is as follows:
November 22nd: KyberSwap, a decentralized exchange that first launched in 2017, was exploited in a highly sophisticated hack. A total of $47 million dollars were stolen as the hacker gave a real time, play-by-play account of what he was doing. After stealing the funds, the hacker sent a public message to the KyberSwap team, saying: "Negotions will start in a few hours when I am fully rested".
November 24th: KyberSwap sent reply to the hacker, acknowledging that he had pulled off "one of the most sophisticated hacks". Kyber offered a whitehat bounty, attempting to persuade the hacker to return the stolen funds by November 25th.
November 27th: KyberSwap recovered $4.7 million of the stolen funds by negotiating with operators of front-running bots, who extracted roughly $5.7 million worth of crypto from KyberSwap pools during the hack.
November 30th: The hacker, now calling himself Kyber Director, sends a message to the KyberSwap team, demanding that all executives step down and reliquish all company data and assets to him. He also wants complete (but temporary) control of the DAO that partially governs the Kyber network, seemingly to restructure the company and the platform. Kyber Director says that the KyberSwap team have until December 10th to comply with his "treaty".
This incident is remarkable not only because of the Hollywood movie-esq antics but also because it raises some very interesting questions about the future of governance. What Kyber Director did was illegal and unfair to the victims of the exploit, of course. However his intentions seem to be aligned with bettering the protocol for all users, even going so far as to promise the current 100 KyberSwap employees an increased salary if they choose to stay onboard after his takeover.
In an increasingly digital world, one where anarchy and winning via brute power struggles are possible with just an internet connection and the veil of anonymity, the Kyber coup could be a taste of what's to come.
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*Important Disclaimer: While every effort is made on this website to provide accurate information, any opinions expressed or information disseminated do not necessarily reflect the views of Bitfinity itself. The information provided here is for general informational purposes only and should not be considered as financial advice.
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