The latest attack relied on user permissions granted to the protocol
The latest “evil contract” exploit has netted an attacker over $14 million in stolen funds.
Furucombo, a tool designed to help users “batch” transactions and interactions with multiple protocols at once, fell victim to the attack which centered on token approvals from users.
The attacker’s address currently has $14 million is various cryptocurrencies, but the attack appears to be larger as they have been transferring ETH to privacy mixer Tornado Cash in batches over the last hour.
This attack is conceptually similar to the $20 million “evil jar” attack that struck Pickle Finance last year, as well as the $37 million “evil spell” exploit that hit Alpha Finance earlier this month. In these “evil contract” exploits, an attacker creates a contract that fools a protocol into believing it belongs there, giving them access to protocol funds.
So what happened to Furuсombo
An attacker using a fake contract made Furuсombo think that Aave v2 has a new implementation.
Because of this, all interactions with ‘Aave v2’ allowed transfers approved tokens to an arbitrary address. pic.twitter.com/gQVxJqiAmL
In this case, the attacker ‘tricked’ the Furucombo protocol into thinking that their contract was a new verison of Aave. From there, instead of draining funds from the protocol as in previous evil contract exploits, they instead leveraged the ability to take the funds of every user who had given the protocol token permissions.
“Infinite permissions means you can wipe everyone who interacted with Furucombo,” said whitehat hacker and co-founder of DeFi Italy Emiliano Bonassi in a statement to Cointelegraph.
This exploit type appears to be growing increasingly popular, now accounting for over $70 million in user funds lost in just a few months.
The team confirmed the attack in a Tweet, saying that they “believed” they’d mitigated the exploit but recommended revoking permissions “out of an abundance of caution:”
Today at 4:47 PM UTC the Furucombo proxy was compromised by an attacker. We have deauthorized the relevant components and believe the vulnerability to be patched but we recommend users remove approvals out of an abundance of caution.
Users can leverage tools like revoke.cash to do so.
The attack comes during a period of wider reflection in the DeFi world on security and the utility of auditing companies. In the last three months, three different auditing and code review services have emerged, each with a different incentive model designed to encourage more thorough and dynamic security practices.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/2PkSDGP
Critics of the digital currency have visions of the future every bit as silly as maximalists'.
Not everyone is excited about hyperbitcoinization.
According to a popular copy/paste meme, Bitcoin holders are set to become a neo-aristocracy as Bitcoin becomes the dominant world currency:
Only $BTC holders will be permitted to the upper echelons of society. Nocoiners will be shunned, socially and financially. At best forced to become servants to the new upper class. At worst executed for crimes against the #Bitcoin empire.
The meme is part of a larger vision for Bitcoin’s future, a semi-serious but mostly tongue-in-cheek narrative that can be lumped under the “Bitcoin Citadels” umbrella: a vision of the future in which Bitcoin becomes so valuable that hodlers become lords quite literally defending their coins in castles.
Originating from a Reddit post written by someone claiming to be a time traveler (they called for a $1 million price target in 2021, if you’re curious), the Citadel meme has taken on a life of its own, even inspiring a short film.
But despite the self-evident farce and fantasy behind the meme, one economist is now warning that it might not be far off from reality should Bitcoin succeed in its mission to achieve monetary supremacy.
On the think tank Center for Economic Policy and Research’s website, academic Jon Danielsson of the London School of Economics wrote an article yesterday in which he envisions a future where “Bitcoin aristocrats” will “fuel social division and populism” through extreme wealth inequality:
“To begin with, the current owners of bitcoin will become the wealthiest people in the world, rivalling the kings and emperors that ruled over empires in centuries past. They literally will own all the money. They can buy anything they want. There aren't that many of them. Compared to the multitudes that own assets today via all the pension funds and mutual funds and the rest, it is a tiny group of people.”
The government would be forced to “protect or attack” this new class of overlords, ones who attained their “rank just by buying early. They will make no contribution to society.”
Gloom and grumpiness aside, Danielsson ultimately concludes that such a future “cannot” come to pass because Bitcoin is unsuitable as a unit of account due to its price instability. Because of these “internal contradictions,” Danielsson writes, “the price of Bitcoin will head to zero.”
Economic analysis that comes to the same conclusions as time-traveling Redditors aside, not everyone is as grim about a hyperbitcoinized world. In fact, in many cases it has proven to be a boon for countries struggling under inflation.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3bL3cdN
We ask the buidlers in the blockchain and cryptocurrency sector for their thoughts on the industry… and we throw in a few random zingers to keep them on their toes!
This week, our 6 Questions go to Kain Warwick, the founder of Synthetix.
Kain Warwickis the founder of Synthetix, a derivatives liquidity protocol on Ethereum. Synthetix has processed billions of dollars in trading volume. Warwick previously founded Blueshyft, Australia’s largest cryptocurrency payment gateway.
1 Whats a problem you think blockchain has a chance to solve but that hasnt been attempted yet?
I might just still be a 2017 idiot here, but I still feel equity settlement, having a decentralized ledger for equity settlement, is a sensible thing that will happen. But it can’t happen until regulators are comfortable with it happening, etc. The efficiencies it will add are just too obvious to be avoided. There are certain things that come with that, that mean it’s gonna take a while before we see that. There have been weird little experiments, but I think a large-scale transition to something like that is still a ways away. But it will be hugely impactful when it happens.
2Which is sillier: $500,000 Bitcoin or $0 Bitcoin? Why?
$0 Bitcoin. There is just zero chance it’s literally impossible for Bitcoin to go to zero. There is not a market where someone would not have a buy price for every Bitcoin above zero. It’s just functionally impossible. Whatever the canonical Bitcoin is, even if it’s not the one that it is right now that specific chain or whatever it has a price above zero. There’s always a market for something, there’s always a buyer of last resort for something, and Bitcoin has way more buyers of last resort it’s never going to zero.
3What should we be teaching our kids?
I think we should teach our children to not blindly accept authority, which is a hard thing to do because there are so many things in children’s lives that are structured and controlled that they don’t have control over. And so, to teach them to be respectful of certain things while also being mindful that they should be questioned is a delicate balance to strike.
4What’s the silliest conspiracy theory out there… and which one makes you pause for a moment?
Probably the silliest conspiracy theory is the Bill Gates microchip vaccine theory, and probably the one that gives me pause for a moment is the Elon Musk microchip conspiracy theory.
5Which people do you find most inspiring, most interesting and most fun in this space?
I feel like Andre Cronje is an easy and obvious one. You never know what the fuck he’s going to be doing. Larry Cermak’s good, Anthony Sassano is good, Mariano Conti is good, he’s always high value. Obviously, G (DegenSpartan) is always good.
6What talent do you lack and wish you had? How would you use it if you had it?
I lack the talent to draw things, and I would be starting my own NFT project if I had the ability to draw.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/2PeeyiN
These DEX tokens are quietly accruing triple-digit gains as the total value locked in DeFi reaches new highs each week.
DeFi has steadily grown in prominence over the past year thanks in large part to the strong foundations established by decentralized exchanges (DEX) that enable easy access to the latest tokens and projects.
While there have been previous iterations of DEX user interfaces, such as IDEX or Etherdelta, it wasn’t until Uniswap launched that trading in the DeFi network really took off and facilitated the launch of the finance tokens.
Here are six of the top-performing tokens in the decentralized finance sector.
UNI/USDT
Uniswap has risen from the humble beginnings of a simple user interface that allowed for a token swap between two ERC-20 tokens, to a rapidly evolving DeFi centerpiece that now sees an average daily trading volume of $1 billion and $3.95 billion worth of liquidity locked on the protocol.
Uniswap liquidity and 24-hour volume. Source:Uniswap
Originally the Uniswap platform operated without a native token and fees that were collected went into a liquidity reserve, but the project performed a surprise airdrop to platform users and liquidity providers following the launch of the rival SushiSwap (SUSHI) platform which offered the same interface as Uniswap at the time but also included the SUSHI governance token.
Following its release and subsequent listing on several top exchanges, UNI quickly spiked above $7.00 before correcting as low as $1.93 on Nov.4.
Since that time the price of UNI has continued to climb to a new all-time high of $32.50 on Feb.20.
Excitement over the release of Uniswap v3 and the ability for token holders to stake their UNI and collect a portion of the fees continues to help drive demand and token price higher.
SUSHI/USDT
SushiSwap has a controversial origin story, from starting off as a clone of Uniswap to having the lead developer dump their tokens on the market and subsequently donating all funds towards project development, but has since emerged as a top DEX in terms of community involvement and token price.
Governance and staking were early features that SUSHI holders benefited from, as well as increased incentives for early liquidity providers that some called a “vampire attack” on Uniswap.
After listing, SUSHI price rallied from $1.16 on Aug. 29 to $8.84 on Sep.1, but lead developer ‘Chef Nomi’s’ token dump on the open market caused SUSHI to drop as low as $0.475 on Nov.4.
Since that time SUSHI price has grown by more than 4,080% to a high of $19.77 on Feb.20 and SushiS has become the sixth-ranked DeFi platform in terms of total value locked (TVL) with $3.56 billion currently providing liquidity for the protocol.
Skyrocketing fees on the Ethereum (ETH) network have opened the door for the BSC to drain liquidity and users from its top Ethereum-based competitors, and CAKE has stepped up to facilitate that process.
The protocol offers an expanding list of staking pools, yield farming opportunities, a collectibles section and a built-in lottery, hitting many of the “hot topic” trends in cryptocurrencies on top of being a DeFi platform.
Prior to late January 2021, CAKE generally traded below $0.70 with its all-time low of $0.194 on Nov. 3, 2020. Price action for the token began to pick up around the last week of January, around the same time as traders from r/Wallstreetbets were causing havoc in the traditional markets.
Since its low of $0.194, CAKE has exploded 11,000% to an all-time high of $20.33 on Feb. 19 as the Binance Smart Chain emerged as the top competitor to the Ethereum network thanks to the significant resources of the Binance ecosystem.
SRM/USDT
Serum (SRM) is a decentralized derivatives exchange that operates on the Solana blockchain network. The DEX is a result of the collaboration between the Solana team and the operators of the FTX crypto derivatives exchange.
Solana was chosen to host the DEX due to its potential to react 710,000 transactions per second (tps) with a current capacity tested to 50,000 tps. With the Ethereum network currently offering 15 tps and high fees due to network congestion, Solana and the Serum DEX could soon see increased usage from traders seeking a lower fee environment.
SRM offers token holders the ability to stake their tokens to earn a yield as well as use them to reduce trading fees on the exchange by up to 50%. The exchange offers cross-chain support allowing for the trustless exchange of assets on different blockchains through a network comprised of more than 100 validators.
Following a price breakout after launching during the summer of DeFi in 2020, SRM price reached a low of $0.78 on Nov.04 before finding support and heading higher. It has since increased by more than 944% to a new high of $8.13 on Feb. 25 as options outside of Ethereum begin to gain traction.
LINA/USDT
Linear Finance (LINA) is a new arrival to the DeFi scene which recently launched on the Binance Smart Chain after originally releasing as an ERC-20 token.
Along with the ability to lock up tokens to mint Linear’s synthetic asset tokens, known as “Liquids,” the protocol allows users to access traditional assets like forex and commodities by utilizing dynamic price feeds and trading them in the decentralized finance setting.
Linear’s cross-chain approach allows users to benefit from reduced fees and the built-in oracle solution helps combat the problem of oracle frontrunning currently experienced in protocols built on Ethereum.
Future plans for LINA also include the rollout of governance capabilities and allowing community members to vote on the future direction of the project. This will include deciding the cost of transaction fees and how much to allocate to the insurance fund.
Following its release in September 2020, LINA price dropped to a low of $0.0047 on Nov.19 before skyrocketing 3300% to a high of $0.112 on Feb.12 following its migration to the Binance Smart Chain and several partnerships and exchange listing announcements.
Waves Exchange and a growing suite of DeFi apps
Waves (WAVES) is a multi-purpose blockchain that is capable of supporting a variety of dapps and smart contracts including decentralized exchanges.
One of the integral pieces of the Waves ecosystem is the Waves Exchange, which was initially launched as the Waves DEX in 2017 and offered fast, secure, and low-cost trading and staking for major cryptocurrency assets as well as tokens minted on the Waves protocol.
While the Waves Exchange currently experiences an average 24-hour trading volume of $10 million, recent price gains in WAVES alongside an expanding suite of DeFi apps like Swop.fi could lead to an influx of activity for the Waves ecosystem as fees on the Ethereum network look to remain elevated until the full release of Eth2.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3aW3XkZ
Bitcoin in, and Bitcoin out: major players are deploying different strategies as BTC consolidates well under $58,400 highs.
After a violent price reversal last week that saw Bitcoin retreat from all-time highs, traders and analysts are now eyeing major players and investors to gauge BTC’s next move — and so far the reaction is decidedly mixed.
Data from on-chain analytics firm Glassnode indicates that the number of Bitcoin whales — a term for wallets that hold between 1,000 and 10,000 BTC — has at least temporarily reversed what was previously a strong uptrend starting in April 2020, a phenomena Glassnode labeled as a potential “end of whale spawning season.”
Chart via Glassnode
The Glassnode blog did make note that a "sizeable portion" of the decline may be attributable to custodial wallets restructuring, however. In fact, if some of the decline is related to custodians moving coins into deep storage, there’s an outside chance it could be a sign of more BTC moving into whale ownership, even the actual number of coins in whale addresses indicates otherwise. As a result, it may be difficult to label the decline in whale wallets to panic selling during crypto and macro market chop.
Miner outflows, meanwhile, paint a more explicitly bullish picture.
In a Tweet on Friday, Moskovski Capital CEO Lex Moskovski noted that Bitcoin miners — a frequent scapegoat for price dumps and boogeyman of cryptoTwitter — have actually begun accumulating coins as opposed to selling:
Miners have stopped selling and started accumulating #Bitcoin
Yesterday was the first day since Dec, 27 when Miners Position change turned positive.
Miners were selling their bitcoins for two months.
Likewise, there appears to be good news in regards to institutional accumulation. Ki Young Ju, the CEO of CryptoQuant, noted that the quantity of BTC in exchange wallets continues to drop — a sing he believes points to continued institutional demand:
Another significant Coinbase outflows at 48k. US institutional investors are still buying $BTC.
I think the major reason for this drop is the jittering macro environment like the 10-year Treasury note, not whale deposits, miner selling, and lack of institutional demand. https://t.co/wzwkwMhJWxpic.twitter.com/1uEEF8SX5Q
However, some recent research indicates that the institutions hoovering Bitcoin may not have as much an impact on the price as originally thought. What's more, indicators suggest that retail mania has hardly even begun — a sign that the latest pullback may only be temporary, and the next push is where FOMO will really it.
At the time of writing Bitcoin is trading at $46,750, down 2% on the day.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/37SxVEO
Bitcoin is showing signs of weakness as February draws to a close.
Bitcoin (BTC) has seen a corrective week as the price dropped from $58,000 to $44,000 in a matter of days. This dropdown caused a panic reaction across the markets as the euphoria was immediately halted.
For instance, the Crypto Fear and Greed Index plunged to monthly lows of 56 after being above 90, or "extreme greed" for an entire month.
Crypto Fear & Greed Index. Source: Alternative.me
However, such a panic reaction is unwarranted because corrections appear frequently in a bull market as a "reset" before continuation. This is organic and healthy and offers a good opportunity for traders and investors to buy the dip.
The 4-hour chart shows an apparent downtrend since the previous high at $58,000. This high could be the top for the coming months, a period that may see a more prolonged correction.
However, the price action since this top at $58,000 indicates weakness as every support level flips into resistance, indicating further weakness.
The chart shows these flips, where the $55,000 level was the first one. After that, the price of Bitcoin dropped significantly to the support zone around $45,000. This support zone held and resulted in a strong bounce toward $52,000.
But, unfortunately for the bulls, this level wasn't broken and instead saw a rejection, confirming further weakness across the market and more downside for BTC price.
This now paints a clear picture of the critical levels to watch. Ideally, the support zone between $42,500-$44,000 has to hold for further upward momentum. If it fails, further weakness can be expected toward the $37,500-$39,000 level.
But if the $42,500-44,000 support zone holds, higher prices can be expected once Bitcoin breaks above the resistance between $50,000 and $51,000.
While the lower timeframes indicate weakness for BTC/USD, the higher timeframes suggest a healthy correction. The market construction is still very bullish, as the chart above shows.
The previous top was at $42,000, after which the new support was established at $30,000. This last top was easily broken as Bitcoin’s price accelerated to the $58,000 high. Hence, a correction to even $37,000 could be classified as healthy and organic in this type of bull market.
Simply put, as long as BTC holds above the $30,000 low of January 2021, the market can be classified as bullish.
March is often a corrective month
XBT/USD 1-week candle chart. Source: Tradingview
History shows that March isn’t the most bullish month for the cryptocurrency market. In recent years, corrections have been seen in March. Specifically, corrections of 15%-60% happened in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020.
The latest crash was caused by the Covid-19 pandemic and could be classified as a "black swan." Nevertheless, corrections tend to happen in March and this year could also see another pullback.
Therefore, corrections can last for several weeks and are frequently not completed in just one drop. Hence, a correction toward the $35,000-$40,000 is still on the table.
The primary indicator to watch for this is the 21-Week MA. Often, corrections tend to move toward this line as a key point for a potential reversal. Therefore, in the coming weeks, this 21-Week MA could provide support in the correction.
Currently, the 21-Week MA is around $28,000, though this should climb up in the coming weeks toward $33,000-35,000.
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of theauthorand do not necessarily reflect the views of Cointelegraph. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3dW8827
Over the last decade, crypto has weathered what feels like crisis after crisis. It’s time to think about what comes next.
Everyone knows the story. When the first block of Bitcoin (BTC) was mined, the protocol itself entered a world of grave economic uncertainty. Not long before the market would hit its lowest point of the 2009 recession, Bitcoin was quietly created, dropped like a life raft alongside a then-sinking economy. The now infamous phrase “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks” was cribbed from the headlines, immortalized in code in the origin story of one of the most compelling, innovative, best-performing assets of the last decade.
But Bitcoin did not immediately take root beyond a small community of true believers. Bitcoin and digital assets, in general, have been a lot of things in their relatively short histories, from purely speculative investments and “magical internet money” to a crisis-time safe haven and an attractive hedge against “the great monetary inflation.”
In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, an associated market meltdown and huge amounts of central bank stimulus, cryptocurrencies have proved themselves to be remarkably resilient.
But as we watch vaccines being distributed around the country, cautiously optimistic that the end of the pandemic is within reach, where will crypto fit in a post-pandemic world? If its history of resilience shows us anything, we expect crypto to adapt to whatever the next few years will bring — crisis or not.
Just three years ago, leaders of some of the largest banks in the world refused to even talk about Bitcoin in interviews, calling the asset itself a “fraud” and referring to those who would buy it as “stupid.”
Today, the general sentiment across banks is markedly different. On the heels of the United States Office of the Comptroller of the Currency’s Interpretive Letter #1170, which made explicitly clear that federally chartered banks can provide banking services to legally operated companies in the digital asset space and custody digital assets on behalf of their clients, banks have been looking for the best way to get their clients the crypto exposure they demand. We anticipate legacy financial players’ interest in crypto to only grow in the coming years, with crypto becoming a mainstream requirement of financial services.
In the short term, banks will almost certainly rely on subcustody relationships with digital asset specialists to safely and effectively get crypto into their clients’ hands. And this is because the complexity is easier to address from the crypto-native side than the other way around.
We also anticipate some number of acquisitions to occur, with some crypto service providers being swallowed up by banks with pockets deep enough to buy them. As demand for crypto services grows, and as regulatory clarity comes, more and more institutions will enter.
Proliferation of decentralized apps
Just as Bitcoin was built in response to the failings of a legacy system, decentralized finance has emerged as crypto’s answer to financial intermediaries. Until recently, though, entire portions of this ecosystem have been unavailable to institutions, mostly for lack of a secure means to participate.
Slowly but surely, institutional-grade DeFi tools are coming to market, and we anticipate this trend to continue. Not only will we see a continued proliferation of DeFi growth, but institutional-grade tools will make institutional participation far more accessible.
Despite its significant growth, the DeFi space is still very much fragmented. Cross-chain interoperability — or lack thereof — is still a problem. Institutions want to be able to put their assets to use across the DeFi ecosystem. We anticipate significant growth in this area, with more and more layer-one protocols being bridged to DeFi and the broader Ethereum ecosystem — a development that also has the potential to improve liquidity along with market stability and efficiency.
Corporate treasuries and lowered barriers to entry
Against a backdrop of seemingly endless monetary stimulus, a significant number of private companies are treating digital assets as an inflation hedge. Some of these, like Square and MicroStrategy, have taken significant positions in recent months. We’ve seen MassMutual buy up $100 million in Bitcoin. And with Tesla’s $1.5-billion dollar Bitcoin purchase this month, the trend shows no signs of slowing. In the coming years, we expect digital assets to become an instrumental part of private-company balance sheets.
Another factor at play is the lowered barrier to entry on the retail front. With tools like Celo’s Valora coming to market, Diem expected to launch in 2021 and firms like PayPal making it easy for their clients to buy crypto, we expect to see more of crypto as a tool for banking the unbanked — for putting financial tools into the hands of the millions without access to traditional banking services.
By virtue of being built in response to one economic crisis, crypto seems to be locked into a crisis narrative. In reality, digital assets have more than proved to be resilient in even the most challenging economic times. Just this past year, crypto proved itself in the grips of a once-in-a-century global emergency, earning a place in the portfolios of institutional and retail investors alike.
As the pandemic (hopefully) fades into the rearview, it’s exciting to think about what crypto can do without being forced into a defensive posture — without being defined against legacy assets like gold. It would be naive to say that crypto will never face another crisis — it almost certainly will. But from here, at what feels like the tail end of the pandemic, it’s exciting to think about what crypto can do in whatever “new normal” comes next.
The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the author’s alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.
Diogo Monica is a co-founder and the president of Anchorage. Before co-founding Anchorage, Diogo was the security lead at Docker — an open platform for building, shipping and running distributed applications. He has a B.Sc., an M.Sc. and a Ph.D. in computer science, has published several papers in peer-reviewed security conferences on the topic of distributed systems and information security, and is the author of several patents in secure communications, encrypted hardware and payment systems.
from Cointelegraph.com News https://ift.tt/3aWPnd5
