Crypto_NFT

2022-09-22 09:53:51 ​​Messari raises $35M from Brevan Howard and other investors

Messari has closed a $35 million Series B funding round led by billionaire Alan Howard's Brevan Howard Digital.

The round also included FTX Ventures, Morgan Creek Digital, Samsung Next, and current investors Point72 Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Uncork Capital, Underscore VC, Galaxy, and Coinbase Ventures.

The funds raised by the Messari team will be used to finance product development and team expansion.

“We are delighted to welcome a remarkable group of investors as partners in the next phase of growth,” said founder and CEO Ryan Selkis.

Sources told The Block earlier that Messari's valuation from this funding round could rise to $300 million. At the time, Selkis said that the company did not need money and "never spent a single cent of investor capital when scaling up to 130 people."

Recall that in the fall of 2019, the company raised $4 million from Uncork Capital, Blockchain Capital, CoinFund, Coinbase Ventures and others.

In August 2021, Messari closed a $21 million Series A funding round. The startup was backed by billionaire Steve Cohen through Point72 Ventures, Alameda Capital, Galaxy Digital, crypto funds CMS Holdings, Nascent, Underscore VC and early stage investors. Open / Comment

2022-09-22 09:46:34 ​​The Fed raised the key rate. Bitcoin falls below $19,000

On Wednesday, September 21, the US Federal Reserve System (FRS) increased the key rate range by 75 basis points at once, to 3-3.25%. The cryptocurrency market reacted with a fall.

“The central bank aims to achieve maximum employment and inflation at 2% in the long term,” the Fed said in a statement.

The department will also continue to reduce the holdings of treasury and mortgage-backed securities, as well as agency debt. The Fed once again noted the global economic difficulties.

Against the backdrop of the news, the price of bitcoin fell below $19,000. At the moment, digital gold quotes dropped to $18,666.

Most of the top 10 cryptocurrencies by capitalization were in the red zone. XRP (-3.1%), Cardano (-0.8%) and Ethereum (-0.7%) lost more than others in the last 24 hours.

According to CoinMarketCap, the total cryptocurrency market capitalization is about $920 billion.

In March, the Fed raised its key rate to 0.25-0.5% for the first time since 2018. The local rally of cryptocurrencies continued until April - Bitcoin and Ethereum reached annual highs.

In May, the Fed raised rates again by 50 bp. On the background of the news, bitcoin crossed the $40,000 mark, but on the same day failed the $36,000 level, which was the beginning of a protracted correction.

In June, the Fed raised its key rate by 75 bp. n. for the first time since 1994. The indicator reached the level of 1.5–1.75%, to which bitcoin reacted with a short-term increase to $22,000, and then collapsed below $18,000. Open / Comment

2022-09-21 09:56:51 ​​Visa, ConsenSys and a16z Support Sardine Platform in $51.5M Round

Fraud detection platform Sardine closed a Series B funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). It is reported by The Block.

Investors include NG Ventures, ConsenSys, Cross River Digital, Visa, Eric Schmidt and Google Ventures. The project raised $51.5 million.

Sardine helps companies achieve regulatory compliance and reduce fraud risks while focusing on growth.

Suds Ranjan, CEO and co-founder of Sardine, who previously worked at Coinbase and Revolut, said the company serves 135 clients. Among them are such large players as FTX, Blockchain.com and Brave.

With the funds raised, the startup team hopes to expand its marketing efforts and increase sales internationally.

The developers are also working on creating a risk analysis platform targeted at traditional finance players.

In February, Sardine raised $19.5 million in a Series A funding round, also led by a16z.

In May, Andreessen Horowitz raised $4.5 billion in a fund with a focus on Web3 and cryptocurrency startups. Open / Comment

2022-09-21 09:54:10 ​​Experts Link $160M Stolen from Wintermute to Vulnerability in Ethereum Address Generator

An attacker who stole $160 million from market maker Wintermute exploited a vulnerability in the Profanity tool. This conclusion was made by the head of information security at Polygon, Mudit Gupta.

The Profanity tool made it possible to generate human-readable Ethereum addresses (vanity addresses) containing words, names, or phrases. Work on the tool was abandoned several years ago, but the wallets created with it are still functioning.

The Wintermute asset theft incident happened on 20 September. The market maker retained solvency.

Platform CEO Evgeny Gaevoy emphasized that the attack was aimed at DeFi operations. The hacker emptied the Ethereum storage based on smart contracts.

According to Gupta, thanks to the vulnerability, the attacker was able to calculate the private keys of the storage administrator's address. It started with the prefix “0x0000000”, which is typical for vanity addresses.

“The vault only allows administrators to perform these transfers, and the Wintermute hot wallet, as expected, filled this role. […] The address was probably compromised,” the specialist explained.

The expert suggested that the firm’s employees transferred all the Ethereum from the wallet with the vanity address before the hack. Perhaps as a precautionary measure in light of the discovery of a discovered vulnerability in the Profanity tool. At the same time, the administrator rights have not been changed in the market maker, he added.

Experts from SlowMist came to similar conclusions.

“$160 million was stolen from Wintermute, probably due to the use of a wallet generated by the Profanity service (starting at 0x0000000),” they emphasized.

Experts discovered that the hacker transferred $114 million of the stolen $160 million to the Curve decentralized exchange.

Speaking to The Block, Gupta suggested that Wintermute was using a vanity address because of its efficiency in making transactions. Gaevoy confirmed this conjecture, pointing to gas savings. Open / Comment

2022-09-21 09:50:27 ​​OpenSea NFT Marketplace to Add Arbitrum Support

Leading NFT marketplace OpenSea has announced support for Arbitrum's second layer scaling solution.

“This is the first step towards our goal of a Web3 future where people can access the NFTs they want on their preferred networks,” the developers wrote.

According to them, the integration will be completed on Wednesday, September 21.

Arbitrum consistently leads in TVL among Tier 2 solutions.

Earlier, OpenSea developers announced the integration of the Immutable X protocol to speed up transactions and commission-free trading. Open / Comment

2022-09-20 16:28:26 ​​Green Blockchain Project GRNGrid Raises $50M Investment

Renewable-focused blockchain project GRNGrid has raised $50 million from Bahamas-based venture capital firm GEM Digital.

Thanks to the funds received, the development team from Switzerland will establish new partnerships, including with exchanges, as well as improve the technologies used.

The L1 blockchain from GRNGrid is positioned as highly scalable and environmentally friendly. According to the press release, users can choose nodes that run only on renewable energy sources to verify transactions.

“GRNGrid will also register validator devices using a smart contract and punish any network member for changing equipment multiple times,” the whitepaper of the project states.

The developers also introduced the Proof-of-Stake V2 (PoS2) algorithm.

“GRNGrid is the first blockchain with a consensus mechanism specifically designed to counter whales, with a more equitable distribution [of rewards]. This method will provide increased security, improved decentralization and financial sustainability,” the project representatives noted.

The price of the GRN Grid (G) token has more than doubled in the last 24 hours, according to CoinGecko.

In July, 5ire raised $100 million to develop an environmentally friendly Proof-of-Benefit blockchain. Open / Comment

2022-09-20 16:19:03 ​​Ethereum supply drops 92.8% after The Merge

In four days after the transition of the Ethereum blockchain to the Proof-of-Stake consensus algorithm, the daily issue of coins decreased by 92.87% - from 48,400 ETH to 3,893 ETH. Such estimates were given by Glassnode analysts.

Immediately after the merger, a surge in demand for the blockchain space led to an increase in the average gas price, which led to deflation over the next 12 hours, according to experts.

Thereafter, there was a decrease in network activity with a reduction in transaction fees and a return to the growth of the supply of ETH, but at a much slower pace compared to the state before The Merge.

The specialists simulated the emission of ETH under various conditions over the time that has passed since the introduction of EIP-1559:

green columns highlight the inflationary period, red columns indicate the deflationary period under the conditions of the commission burning mechanism and the transition from PoW to PoS;
the yellow curve reflected the hypothetical situation of the absence of The Merge and the preservation of rewards to miners of 2 ETH per block;
blue curve - simultaneous with the implementation of EIP-1559 transition to PoS with the rejection of PoW.
“The illustration demonstrates that the PoS model has significantly lower emission rates of ~772 ETH per day compared to ~12,500 ETH for the PoW model . The current growth in supply currently remains positive, which is a consequence of the extremely low network activity,” the specialists explained.

Ethereum has a total of 429.6k active validators at the time of writing, according to experts. They have 14.586 million ETH locked in staking, which is 12.2% of the total supply.

10.07 million ETH or 69.04% of all ethers in staking were placed by specialized providers. Four of them - Coinbase, Kraken, Binance and Lido Finance - accounted for 8.18 million ETH with a share of 56.08%. Open / Comment

2022-09-20 16:10:52 ​​Indian bitcoin exchange Twitter used to fake XRP ads

On September 20, unknown hackers hacked the Twitter account of the Indian cryptocurrency exchange CoinDCX and placed fake Ripple (XRP) ads with phishing links on it.

Attackers are retweeting official messages from Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse to mislead exchange subscribers. They also distribute links under various tweets on cryptocurrency topics.

Currently, over 230,000 people have subscribed to the main Twitter account CoinDCX.

CoinDCX customer support notified users of the compromised account. Account recovery is in progress.

Last week, ahead of the launch of The Merge, there was a wave of scams on Twitter from the person of Vitalik Buterin, who allegedly promoted fraudulent distributions of Ethereum. Open / Comment

2022-09-19 11:51:48 ​​Binance mistakenly paid users 4.8 million HNT worth $19 million

An accounting error by bitcoin exchange Binance led to a payout of 4.8 million Helium tokens (HNT) to users worth about $19 million, CoinDesk reports.

According to the sources of the publication, the error is related to the methods of tracking deposits in Helium. The decentralized network has a native HNT token to reward hotspot owners and a MOBILE coin that is paid out to Helium 5G infrastructure operators.

Binance erroneously merged these assets. So, users who deposited MOBILE received in return an equivalent number of more valuable HNT. According to CoinDesk, many of them quickly sold tokens for profit.

At the time of writing, the error has been fixed. Token holders have been advised to suspend deposits in HNT and MOBILE on Binance until the situation is fully resolved. Open / Comment

2022-09-19 11:48:00 ​​SEC and Ripple propose to put an end to XRP status case

The SEC and Ripple Labs have filed motions for a summary judgment in the case of possible violation of the Securities Act. The plaintiff and the defendant explained that the judge had sufficient information to do so.

The company's lawyers indicated that the Commission had run out of arguments in an attempt to prove that the XRP sales constituted an "investment contract". The SEC noted that this was confirmed.

“The commission is not interested in applying the law. In an unacceptable attempt, they want to expand their jurisdiction far beyond the powers granted to them by Congress, ”reacted Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse.

Ripple General Counsel Stuart Alderothy noted that “after two years of litigation,” the SEC “couldn’t prove XRP met any of the Howey test items.”

Specifically, the petition states that the SEC cannot establish that XRP holders “expected a profit” based on Ripple’s efforts. There were no contractual obligations between the startup and the token holders, the lawyers added.

The SEC officials, in their appeal to the court, indicated that an “investment contract” could exist without a contract, any rights granted to the buyer, and obligations to the issuer.

Ripple believes that without these “essential features”, there is no reason to apply the Howie test. The lawyers also stressed that the Commission “recognized” the startup’s claim that profits depend on “market forces of supply and demand.”

Law firm Hogan & Hogan partner Jeremy Hogan noted that "these concessions are ideal for a summary judgment."

On September 18, against the backdrop of news around the process, the price approached $0.4, which was last observed on July 30. The next day, the asset began to move along with the market. Open / Comment