Crypto Portal

2023-04-21 18:15:00 ​Uniswap [UNI] protocol witnesses high activity, could this be the reason

Uniswap [UNI] has been a prominent player in the decentralized exchange (DEX) sector for the past few months. Recently, there has been a notable increase in its user activity.

A rise in activity
According to data provided by Token Terminal, Uniswap observed a substantial surge in daily active users, with the press time figure hovering close to 85,000, marking a notable high since May 2021.

This upswing in user activity can potentially be attributed to the burgeoning popularity of memecoins, which are now experiencing significant market demand.

Even though the daily activity on Uniswap increased, the median trade size being made on the protocol declined dramatically.

The decline in median trade size could be one reason why fees and revenue collected by the protocol decreased despite the high activity on the network.

Token Terminal’s data further showed that the fees collected by Uniswap fell by 31.9% over the last month. Coupled with that, the revenue generated by Uniswap fell by 0.43% in the same period according to Messari’s data.

Moreover, the liquidity removed from the Uniswap protocol has also increased. When there is less liquidity on Uniswap, it means that there are fewer assets available for trading.

This can result in less trading activity and wider price differences between buy and sell orders. Hence, only a few people might use the platform, and it will be harder to find trading pairs. It can harm the platform’s growth and stability in the long run.

However, these factors haven’t impacted the efforts made by the protocol to make improvements.

According to Uniswap’s 19 April tweet, Uniswap routers have burnt a large amount of ETH. Over the last month, 11,589 ETH were burned by Uniswap routers.

What are UNI holders up to?
Coming to the UNI token, it was observed that the network growth had declined significantly over the past three months. This implied that new addresses have started to lose interest in UNI at the time of writing.

However, the supply held by top exchange addresses continued to increase, showcasing that whale interest in the token remained strong. Despite the high whale interest, the price of UNI continued to fall over the last few days. Open / Comment

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2023-04-18 20:00:03 ​Kyber Network requests immediate withdrawal of funds, here’s why

The developer of the Kyberswap Elastic decentralized crypto exchange, Kyber Network, announced on 17 April that there was a potential vulnerability in the exchange’s contracts. All liquidity providers have been instructed to withdraw their cash as quickly as feasible.

According to the developer, no funds were lost. The developer, however, recommended liquidity providers (LPs) withdraw their cash as a precaution.

Only Kyberswap Elastic money is in jeopardy. According to the researchers, the vulnerability does not exist in Kyberswap Classic smart contracts.

The team announced in a separate post that farming incentives were temporarily paused. This is supposed to continue until a fresh smart contract can be installed. All prizes earned previous to 18 April, 11:59 p.m. (GMT+7) were already distributed and were unaffected by this halt.

The developer also mentioned that it will soon provide an update to the community on when funds can be safely placed back into the protocol.

Investigation underway, KNC token drops and recovers
KyberSwap Elastic, according to its own documentation, is a decentralized exchange (DEX) that allows LPs to provide “concentrated liquidity.”

Rather than requiring them to offer liquidity at any price point, it lets them choose a price cap and floor for the tokens they deposit into the pool.

LPs no longer earn fees if the price falls below the floor or rises over the ceiling. They do, however, receive additional compensation if the price remains within the range they have established. In contrast, the DEX’s previous version, KyberSwap Classic, did not support concentrated liquidity.

In September 2022, the Kyberswap user interface was hacked, and an attacker made off with $265,000 in cryptocurrency, as a result.

The protocol acknowledged that investigations were still underway.

The protocol’s native token, KNC, dropped by 6% following the news. However, later on, its value recovered to the same point as before. Open / Comment

2023-04-15 18:00:05 ​Crypto exchange Bitrue falls victim to another hack, loses millions

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitrue was hit by a hot wallet flaw, allowing attackers to withdraw about $23 million in crypto assets.

Bitrue shared an announcement on 14 April, stating that the exchange temporarily suspended all withdrawals owing to a “brief exploit” of its hot wallet. The exchange was attacked previously in 2019, losing over $5 million in Cardano owing to another hot wallet hack.

Following additional security measures, the company aims to reopen withdrawals on 18 April.

Bitrue added that it was able to address the issue immediately, allowing the platform to avoid additional draining of funds. The exchange stressed that the affected hot wallet accounted for less than 5% of the total cash on the exchange.

The exchange officials also announced reimbursement for all identifiable users who were affected by the incident.

The currencies impacted on the attacked hot wallet included Ether, Shiba Inu, Quant, Gala, Holo, and Polygon, according to the statement.

Bitrue, which was founded in Singapore in 2018, is a significant centralized cryptocurrency exchange that trades about $2 billion in crypto each day on average.

Hackers move from centralized to DeFi exchanges
Over the last few years, hackers have shifted away from traditional centralized exchanges towards decentralized finance (DeFi) exchanges.

According to Chainalysis data, crypto exchange hacks accounted for just 3% of all crypto stolen in Q1 2022. At the same time, DeFi protocols were responsible for 97% of the stolen assets.

Almost 97% of all cryptocurrency stolen in Q1 2022 was taken from DeFi protocols, up from 72% in 2021 and just 30% in 2020. Centralized exchanges, formerly a top destination for stolen funds, fell out of favor, receiving less than 15% of the total.

This is likely due to exchanges’ embrace of AML and KYC processes, which threaten the anonymity of cyber criminals. Open / Comment

2023-04-12 17:00:04 ​Montenegro to develop CBDC pilot in association with Ripple

Montenegro central bank has chosen Ripple to build a pilot program for CBDC.
Notably, over 100 countries are investigating the feasibility of issuing a CBDC.
The Montenegro central bank has inked a deal with Ripple, the blockchain firm based in San Francisco, to build a pilot program for the national central bank digital currency (CBDC).

The central bank will find practical applications for a CBDC and create a design to simulate its circulation.

In a statement, Central Bank of Montenegro Governor Radoje Zugic stated that the project will examine the benefits and risks that CBDCs or national stablecoins may pose in terms of electronic payment availability, security, efficiency, regulatory compliance, and, most importantly, the protection of end users’ rights and privacy.

Despite not being a member of the Eurozone, the country has used the Euro as its currency since its introduction in 2002.

Montenegrin Prime Minister Dritan Abazovic announced the forthcoming cooperation between Ripple and the central bank in January this year at the World Economic Forum Davos.

Over 100 countries are investigating the feasibility of issuing a CBDC. The European Central Bank and the European Union will decide whether to launch a digital euro later this year.

Ripple traversing the CBDC space across countries
Ripple has been discussing CBDCs with approximately 20 central banks over the last few years. Ripple is a technical and research partner in a number of important CBDC programs throughout the world. It has recently begun partnering with several digital Euro, digital Pound, and other initiatives.

Ripple is also supposed to reveal private distributed ledger systems for CBDCs that are based on the XRP Ledger blockchain design.

Earlier this week, it was announced that Ripple became the first platinum partner of the Digital Monetary Institute Symposium 2023.

However, Ripple’s future is uncertain as the crypto firm is still locked in a legal dispute with the SEC over the issuing of XRP currencies.

Following the announcement, the price of XRP, Ripple’s native cryptocurrency, on 11 April, rose sharply by 5% to $0.526. However, it quickly descended again. The coin was trading at $0.507 at press time. Open / Comment

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2023-04-09 18:30:00 ​I asked ChatGPT Ethereum’s price prediction, the answer it gave me was…

The first quarter of the new year brought a stop to the heartbreak investors repeatedly experienced in 2022. However, the balance of the crypto-market has been nothing close to the AI hype of the same period. What has been the sole reason though? ChatGPT!

In fact, the natural language processing tool has accustomed itself to providing human-like conversations.

As luck would have it, ChatGPT has proven to be worthwhile for traders and analysts too. Here, it’s worth noting that these days, almost every sector and individual seems to use it to their advantage.

The good thing is— The broader crypto ecosystem has not been left out of the trend. So, with the Ethereum [ETH] Shanghai upgrade already set for activation, I decided to speak to ChatGPT about the development while touching a bit on ETH’s price.

Understanding what’s Shanghai
So, for this article, I decided to test the AI’s intelligence regarding one of the major upgrades of the crypto space this year – Ethereum’s [ETH] Shanghai Upgrade. Proposed in 2022, the upgrade is the most significant development of the second-largest blockchain after the Merge.

For a while, assets had been allocated to the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The Beacon Chain is the consensus mechanism for the 2022 Proof-of-Stake (PoS) transition. Thereby, making sure that newly created blocks and validators are duly rewarded.

But, in this case, each validator needs 32 ETH deposited into the Ethereum Mainnet to qualify. The idea of the Shanghai upgrade was scheduled for March 2023, but it has already been pushed forward to 12 April. This, to allow these validators to begin withdrawal of their rewards.

ChatGPT, on the other hand, has been existing for some years. However, its recent push by OpenAI has shown that its ability is one that no other AI product may be able to match up with.

Here’s where it gets interesting. I openly admit that ChatGPT could be one of the best innovations of this decade. However, my views on this incredible development won’t allow me to keep my hands to myself. So, I decided to test its knowledge about the Shanghai upgrade. Trust me, you will be amazed at its response.

Looking at its response above, it’s evident it started by correcting me. Some would say it has a point too. However, a further evaluation showed that it acted like it was not yet in 2023. Notably, it made some errors with the definition.

Apologizing for the Merge?
A notable observation is its mention of the PoS switch, popularly called the Merge. This is an event that took place in September 2022. Even so, it still responded like it is a future event. But no, I’m not blaming its capability as it is a learning tool. So, to further assess its knowledge, I educated it or shall I say “jailbreak-ed” it by having a heart-to-heart conversation.

Something I find interesting about ChatGPT is not only its smartness, but its human feel too. As shown below, I tried to educate it on what the upgrade was. And to be honest, I never expected an apology from a bot. But yes, I got it.

However, it again failed to give the correct answer to my inquiry. Although I must applaud it for giving bits and pieces of related information.

While it did not get to the Testnet stages that the blockchain had reached and passed, it is worth noting that the Sepolia and Goerlii Testnets have been forked. However, Ethereum developer Tim Beiko had on 14 March said that several validators have failed to upgrade on the Beacon Chain.

And, this has caused some issues with the nodes on Georli, with Beiko noting that the development team is working on it so it does not affect the Mainnet upgrade.

Now, let’s get back to ChatGPT. As you probably know, developments in the crypto-ecosystem sometime lead to a hike in tokens related to projects. Unfortunately, that was not the case for ETH during the Merge. In fact, the altcoin’s price was shredded after many looked forward to an uptick. Open / Comment

2023-04-06 21:00:02 ​Bitcoin presents a ‘generational investment opportunity,’ but do the whales disagree

Bitcoin’s [BTC] recent rally has brought with it a lot of optimism and speculation about its future. In fact, an analyst has suggested that the electrical costs of Bitcoin could provide some backing to the unbridled optimism surrounding the king coin.

Analyst Charles Edwards, Founder of the Capriole Fund, claimed in a 5 April tweet that historically, whenever the price of Bitcoin matched its energy expenses, it has presented a rare chance for generational investments in Bitcoin.

According to him, this is a very trusted indicator of BTC’s prosperity in the long term.

Many BTC holders’ behavior suggested that they believe in the long-term prospects of Bitcoin as well. In fact, holders from most cohorts were observed to be accumulating Bitcoin, according to Glassnode’s data.

However, it’s worth noting that whale addresses do not share the same optimism towards the cryptocurrency as other holders.

Additionally, according to Glassnode’s data, the number of addresses holding more than 10o BTC have started to decline. Figures for the same hit a 3-month low at press time, further indicating skepticism from the market’s whales.

Traders become bearish
Also, trader sentiments have started to echo whales’ bearish behavior. In fact, Coinglass’s data suggests that the percentage of short positions taken against BTC rose from 49% to 51.2% over the last few days.

Another metric that indicated potential higher selling pressure for BTC is the declining miner revenue. If miner revenue continues to decline in the same fashion as it has over the past few days, many miners will be forced to sell their BTC holdings for a profit in the future.

The increasing MVRV ratio for BTC isn’t of much help either to long-term BTC holders.

The growing MVRV ratio implies that most BTC holders are relatively more profitable. This would make it much more tempting for short-term holders to sell their positions for a profit going forward.

Hence, it appears that the presence of both bullish and bearish factors will make it difficult to predict the future of Bitcoin.

A surprise Easter Egg
Despite the prevailing bearish sentiments towards BTC from traders, it seems that the number of supporters for BTC may continue to rise. This is evident from the recent discovery of a PDF file containing the Bitcoin whitepaper, found concealed on all Mac devices.

It suggests that some Bitcoin advocates may have made their way onto Apple’s team. Open / Comment