ExCryptor

Polygon (MATIC) Beats Network Record Amid Launch of Last Testnet

According to PolygonScan, the number of unique addresses on the Polygon network passed the milestone of 200 million this week, reaching an all-time high of 201,024,643.

The rest of Polygon's network indicators remain in a steady upward trend. For example, the number of daily active addresses on the network is approaching the 500,000 mark. At the same time, the daily number of transactions using MATIC is more than three million.

SO MUCH going on for Polygon :

✅Public testnet live in Oct

✅Audit underway

✅Launched u/0xPolygonZK, the all-things ZK handle

Today, recursion is a reality:

✅Final testnet for an upgraded Polygon zkEVM

What else was upgraded? Read more👇https://t.co/McTfdAlXmX

— Polygon - MATIC 💜 () December 22, 2022

Passing the 200 million mark in the number of unique addresses occurred at the same time as the announcement of the launch of the second and final public test of its zkEVM network. The mainnet itself is expected in early 2023.

Polygon's zkEVM key features

A key feature of Polygon's zero knowledge solution, in addition to the ability to process more transactions at a lower cost, is full Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) equivalence. This means that any contract from the underlying network will run on zkEVM seamlessly.

It is believed that the launch of zkEVM will open up new possibilities for Ethereum scaling and finally solve the blockchain's problems with it.

In addition, the Polygon team published the results of the first testnet, where there were 21,966 transactions and the corresponding number of blocks, deployed 2,264 smart contracts and created 10,508 wallets.

Opera launches Web3 browser with increased security for crypto users

Opera’s new Web3 Guard browser constantly scans threats and phishing keywords to make web browsing safer for crypto users.

According to the recent Chainalysis report, crypto users have been over 125 hacks amounting to over $4.3 billion in 2022. Opera designed the newly launched Web3 Guard browser to address these challenges.

In an opening remark, Danny Yao, the senior product manager at Opera, said that the majority of existing browsers available now are not designed to support Web3, which is why the company built a new one.

The browser is still compatible with web2-based sites. However, the Web3 Guard mitigates the threat by consistently scanning for them. It looks out for suspicious codes and seed phishing attacks without involving users’ privacy or personal data, Opera claims.

Opera also introduced VPN Pro, a premium version of its free VPN. 3,000 servers power it, and users can tune six separate devices to it.

Moreover, the release unveiled integrating Binance p2p connect, MultiversX, and NEAR token support in the Opera Crypto Wallet.

In November, Opera launched DegenKnows, a new NFT analytics tool that includes on- and off-chain analytics that will help users to discover and verify digital collectibles seamlessly.

London court orders six crypto exchanges to release confidential user data

London’s High Court ordered six leading cryptocurrency exchanges — namely Bitflyer, Binance, Payward, Luno PTE, Coinbase Global and Huobi Global — to disclose their client’s information to help trace $10.7 million stolen from a United Kingdom-based exchange.

Rahman Ravelli’s law firm annonced on Nov 30 that a court judgement shows that the anonymous United Kingdom exchange in question was already able to trace $1.7 million of the funds that it lost to a hack in 2020.

The exchange’s funds were spread among 26 accounts on off-shore cryptocurrency exchanges that now are required to hand over user data under new local regulation. Syed Ur Rahman — a partner at law firm Rahman Ravelli that represented the U.K.-based exchange — said:

“The case is a huge step forward for those who are trying to recover assets that have been taken fraudulently and moved across borders. This ruling is concrete proof of the value of the change to Practice Direction 6B and the possibilities that it offers to anyone facing the task of tracing and recovering what is theirs.”

The news follows reports that cryptocurrency exchange Deribit was hacked earlier this month, resulting in the loss of $28 million worth of client funds that were stored in its hot wallet.

Instagram Users Will Soon Be Able to Mint and Sell NFTs

The latest update to the platform's Digital Collectibles feature will first be tested among a small group of creators.

Instagram said that starting this week it will begin allowing a select group of digital creators to mint and sell non-fungible tokens (NFT) directly from the social media platform.

The image-focused app recently launched its Digital Collectibles feature in 100 countries, allowing users to connect to their digital wallets and showcase NFTs that they either created or bought. The connected NFTs can be shown in your feed and include a shimmery effect to indicate authenticity.

The latest update will allow creators to make their own digital collectibles and sell them both on and off Instagram, giving them an "end-to-end toolkit" for creating, displaying and selling NFTs. It will initially launch on the Polygon blockchain and will be tested among a small group of creators in the U.S., including Amber Vittoria, Refik Anadol, Jason Seife, Dave Krugman and several others.

“This move represents a remarkable milestone in the evolution of Instagram’s existing NFT functionality and a natural next step to bring Web3 to the mainstream,” said Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

Instagram will also allow video-based digital collectibles to be shown on its platform and will add support for the Solana blockchain and Phantom wallet. Prior to this, the platform supported Ethereum, Polygon and Flow blockchains, as well as connections to third-party wallets including Rainbow, MetaMask, Trust Wallet, Coinbase Wallet and Dapper Wallet.

Meta noted that it will not charge fees for displaying and sharing a digital collectible on Instagram or Facebook and it will not charge any additional fees for selling digital collectibles until at least 2024. It added, however, that "digital collectible purchases made within the Instagram app on the Android and iOS operating systems are subject to applicable app store fees."

In addition, it pledged that neither creators nor collectors will need to pay gas fees for digital collectibles bought on Instagram at launch.

Binance Presents an Educational Series to Combat Crypto FUD

The world's largest cryptocurrency exchange by trading volume, Binance, is releasing a new informational and educational series called "Exposing the Five Main Halloween crypto-Creepers", dedicated to misinformation, myths, inaccuracies and FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt). in the crypto ecosystem.

We have all witnessed the growing popularity and spread of cryptocurrencies around the world over the past few years, a recent study showed that most people still do not fully understand what this technology is and what its purpose is.

Changpeng Zhao’s Binance exchange recently conducted a survey on social networks and tried to find out what people are most afraid of when it comes to crypto investing, and researchers have made several disturbing discoveries.

For example, about 30 percent of respondents indicated that the lack of adequate information about the work of cryptocurrencies is their main problem. By comparison, 42.8 percent of respondents said that unpredictability, uncertainty and market volatility were their fear.

Demystification of Crypto and Web3

This educational series will cover five main topics that cause FUD for newcomers to cryptocurrency, including volatility, fraud, regulation and utility. This educational series will use the Halloween concept and will include a FAQ where "Winny the Web3 Witch" will answer all the confusing questions in the Web3 sector.

Binance wrote:

“Binance will be exploring a number of questions – bringing together independent research and information from a variety of sources to explain the real facts to counter a number of common myths. A common myth for example is that ‘crypto is used by mostly criminals.’ However, the facts are that crypto is now used by close to 300 million people worldwide.”

It should be noted that Binance has long been one of the most active players driving cryptocurrency adoption through awareness and education. The world's largest exchange has launched many global awareness campaigns and educational initiatives.

Shiba Inu: Pay with SHIB on Amazon and Netflix – Huge step in adoption

Per multiple reports, SHIB token holders can now pay their subscription for Netflix’s streaming service and shop on amazon using any of the tokens from the SHIB ecosystem. In addition, the FCFPay Visa card, which is acceptable on Amazon and Netflix, makes payment with SHIB, bone, and leash tokens possible.

In a recent announcement, Canada-based crypto payment gateway, FCFPay, stated that its crypto card users could subscribe to various award-winning documentaries, TV shows, movies, and animes on Netflix and pay for products and services on amazon. In addition, FCFPay explained that payments would be successful once users have sufficient crypto tokens to cover the payments they want to make.

As previously reported, FCFPay started supporting payments with SHIB, BONE, and LEASH tokens three months ago. Following the listing, over 5 million online stores across 195 nations started accepting these three tokens from the SHIB ecosystem as payment methods.

SHIB’s broader adoption continues to grow daily. Recently, a partnership with a top digital fundraising platform, The Giving Back, made it possible for the Virunga national park (Africa’s oldest national park) to start accepting SHIB tokens as donations. Earlier, BitPay and Germany-based SAP SE (an enterprise app software firm) partnered to enable the latter’s employees to receive part of their salary in SHIB tokens.

Also, BitPay recently partnered with BlueSnap (a global payments company) to enable BlueSnap to start accepting SHIB payments. Earlier in the week, CertiK (a crypto security platform) ranked Shiba Inu as the second safest crypto project, with polygon ranked number one.

Google started displaying balances of Ethereum wallets

The Google search engine has begun to provide data about Ethereum wallets directly. Han Hua, the main investor of Google Ventures, drew attention to this.

When a user pastes an Ethereum address into the search bar, Google will display their balance. The data is collected from the Etherscan browser. The feature is available to a limited number of users and does not show non-ETH wallet balances.

Crypto Regulation Is Coming. Which Tokens Could Be Affected?

The White House’s recent regulatory framework for crypto and the reports that contributed to it have provided new insight into how the U.S. government intends to legislate on digital assets.

Key Takeaways

The White House's new crypto framework and other developments out of Washington DC show that regulation is coming to the digital assets space.

The Treasury Department recently sanctioned Tornado Cash and could extend its blacklisting to other privacy-focused projects.

The likes of XMR, DAI, and XMR could suffer amid increased regulatory pressure, but many other crypto tokens could also be affected.

Several crypto projects could face enforcement action under recently proposed regulatory guidelines.

U.S. Moves Toward Crypto Regulation

The U.S. government is getting to grips with digital asset regulation.

In recent months, comments from key members of the Biden Administration, enforcement from regulators, and several reports have shed light on how the U.S. government intends to regulate cryptocurrencies. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen has been particularly vocal in calling for digital asset regulation, specifically concerning dollar-pegged assets. After the collapse of the TerraUSD stablecoin in May, Yellen and several members of Congress committed to drafting a comprehensive stablecoin regulatory framework to help protect U.S. investors. A draft of a new bill regulating stablecoins released last week includes a two-year moratorium on “endogenously collateralized stablecoins” and would potentially require all non-bank stablecoin issuers to register with the Federal Reserve.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodities and Futures Trading Commission have also recently stepped up their crypto enforcement efforts. In July, the SEC accused crypto exchange Coinbase of listing “at least nine” tokens that it believes should be classified as securities. The regulator has also revealed it is conducting investigations into all U.S.-based crypto exchanges after chair Gary Gensler indicated that he believed several platforms were breaking securities laws by trading.

$160 Million Wintermute Hack: Allegedly an ‘Inside Job’

The Wintermute crypto fraud analysis has revealed evidence of a possible in-house operation. Recent detailed observation shows that a member of the Wintermute team might have executed the hack.

Analysts Suspect Wintermute Insider on $160M Crypto Hack

Hacks and frauds have recently been a common news feature in the crypto industry. It gets even scarier with team members allegedly hacking their own network.

On the 20th of this month, the news of Wintermute’s loss of about $160 million in crypto made the rounds on all tech news platforms. And just when we were beginning to recover, a viral analysis on Medium made shocking revelations about the crypto fraud.

In the recent Wintermute attack, about 70 different NFTs were eliminated on the network. The hacker was said to have exploited a bug in the organization’s smart contract, which gave them access to 70 tokens, including $29.5 million in Tether (USDT), $61.4 million in USD Coin (USDC), and $13m Wrapped Bitcoin (wBTC).

However, upon extensive analysis of the attack, evidence that an internal party could have executed the hack has surfaced.

First product from Finity Touch's future ecosystem officially launched

PRESS RELEASE. Finity Touch will surprise the crypto community with its unique features and an already large but growing ecosystem.

The team of Finity Touch is happy to present Finity Skills. Finity Skills is the first product of the Finity Touch Ecosystem, which will be available in October 2022. What makes this news even more extraordinary is that the company started the development of the product just in the summer. The amount and quality of the information invested in the product are exceptional. The team understands the value of knowledge about crypto and the Web 3.0 sphere, especially with the oncoming Bitcoin halving.

Finity Skills offers users more than just learning blockchain and the cryptocurrency market from scratch. After completing their education, some students will receive employment opportunities. The educational process is entirely online for their convenience.

This product is suitable not only for crypto entrepreneurs planning to launch their projects during the next bull market cycle but also for crypto enthusiasts and traders. During the first several months, the reduced course price will be available for everyone; however, by the end of 2022, with the development of a platform, prices will rise.

And more products are coming soon!

Stay tuned for some new unique products:

NFT PeopleX is an interactive NFT collection for future access to the Play-to-Earn game Planex Land with the most realistic economic model. By being an owner of such NFT, users automatically enter a Finity Token private sale whitelist.

Finity Pay is an online cryptocurrency exchange that the Finity Touch team will integrate into every ecosystem product. By concluding the strategic partnerships, it will also become a part of other industry-leading crypto projects. For example, users could use Visa and Mastercard to buy or sell cryptocurrencies, and many bonuses and even airdrops of project tokens!

Was the Ethereum Merge a Mistake?

The merge has inflicted chaos upon Ethereum—was it all worth it? Some Ethereum loyalists aren’t so sure

I was, of course, referring to the long-awaited software upgrade which booted Ethereum’s miners and replaced them with a cohort of environmentally friendly stakeholders on September 15.

“You mean Ethereum’s delusion?” de Vogelaere rejoined bitterly.

“Oho!” I thought. This could get juicy. It turned out de Vogelaere was voicing an opinion rarely broadcast in public: that the merge was a mistake. Or, if not an italicized mistake, some kind of irrelevant distraction.

“It didn’t add anything of value really other than the environmental factor,” he fulminated.

In de Vogelaere’s view, the whole enterprise has been a naive capitulation. The influential people fretting about Ethereum’s enormous carbon footprint, he said, were only ever exploiting environmentalist fears for their own cynical ends. “No one actually gives a s**t if something’s green, so long as it works,” he said. “Corporations don’t fu***ng care as long as they can be perceived to care.”

Maronn’! Admittedly, it’s not hard to see why people like de Vogelaere are in a bad mood—since the merge unfolded, the price of ETH has tanked. Bitcoin supporters are ridiculing the change. Dark mutterings about Ethereum now being a “security” have raised the hackles of even the most old-school of Ethereum connoisseurs—and even driven some to the embrace of a long-ago spurned band of fanatical Ethereum militants. (We’ll get to that.)

As de Vogalaere told me, the notion that public opinion of Ethereum would improve in the wake of the merge may have proven to be a canard. The regulators, he said, will hardly change their tune now this one environmental grievance has been eliminated, especially given that newfound willingness to brand it a security.

Santiment data shows 2 addresses controlling over 45% of Ethereum transactions post-merge

Two addresses have processed over 45% of Ethereum (ETH) transactions since the blockchain network completed its transition to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, according to Santiment data.

The market intelligence platform’s post-merge inflation dashboard showed that 46.15% of the “nodes for storing data, processing transactions, and adding new blockchain blocks can be attributed to just two addresses.”

According to the data, the first address validated 188 blocks representing 28.97%, while the second validated 105 blocks representing 16.18% of the nodes. The third address validated 54 blocks representing 8.32%.

Santiment stated that the dominance of the two addresses responsible for over 45% of the validated blocks is “something to watch.”

Centralizations concerns
Members of the crypto community have begun to raise concerns about Ethereum’s decentralization based on Santiment’s data.

Meanwhile, a user criticized Santiment’s comments stating that the addresses are flashbot relays made up of thousands of validators using one relayer. Thus, it’s possible that these addresses are just relayer addresses and not sole validators.

Before the merge, several stakeholders in the industry repeatedly addressed centralization concerns within the space. Five entities control over 64% of staked Ethereum, and three of them are centralized exchanges. The decentralized staking platform, Lido (LDO) DAO alone, controls 31%.

The wallets belong to Coinbase and Lido
In a separate tweet, Gnosis co-founder Martin Köppelmann revealed that the two wallets belonged to Lido and Coinbase.

Köppelmann further tweeted that the top 7 entities control two-thirds of the stake.

Should the industry be concerned?
Nodes play an integral role in Ethereum’s staking mechanism as they pledge tokens to get a chance to produce the next transaction blocks.

Though the dominance of the two wallets during the early hours of the merge goes against Ethereum’s decentralization aim, it is not enough to conclude that the PoS network is centralized.

Crypto Exchange FTX Freezes Under Strain of CPI Volatility

More than $110 million was liquidated across crypto exchanges in the hour following the U.S. inflation report.

Cryptocurrency exchange FTX was unusable for some customers Tuesday amid a closely watched economic report on U.S. inflation, prompting a flurry of frustration from traders. FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried confirmed that the exchange faced issues, stating that the "website did wonky auto-refreshing for a lot of people." Traders on Twitter reported that the FTX interface was intermittently freezing at 12:30 UTC, which is when the U.S. consumer price index (CPI) report was released. Bankman-Fried responded and said that the issue had been fixed as of 13:25 UTC. "The resulting CPI volatility caused some users who were accessing the exchange via browser found that their webpage frequently refreshed, which made using it slower and more cumbersome," a FTX spokesperson told CoinDesk in a statement. "There was no downtime as a result of the volatility and the exchange remained running the entire time." "This was the only significant issue with FTX during the time, and only affected the website, not the API," said the person. The price of bitcoin slumped from $22,700 to $21,400 after the CPI report showing inflation rose by 8.3% in August from a year earlier, exceeding expectations of 8.1%. The volatility caused more than $110 million in liquidations in a one-hour period across crypto derivatives exchanges.

Scammers on behalf of Apple launched a presentation on YouTube with ads for Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies

On September 7, during the presentation of the new technology of the American company Apple, attackers launched parallel broadcasts on the YouTube video hosting, promoting Bitcoin and Ethereum cryptocurrencies on behalf of the company. This is reported by The Verge.

According to the publication, during the presentation in one of the videos titled "Apple Event Live. Apple CEO Tim Cook: Apple and Metaverse in 2022." At that moment, the logos of cryptocurrencies were broadcast, and links with the most dubious cryptosites were indicated on the page. The number of observations that watched the presentations was about 70 thousand people.

About 10 thousand people were able to watch another broadcast on the Apple Inc. channel. It was supposed to contain an interview with Cook and Musk about Apple and the metaverse, but instead viewers were shown a fake interview about bitcoins with the head of Tesla and ex-head of Twitter Jack Dorsey. After a while, the videos were deleted for violating YouTube's terms of service.

Earlier, Business Insider reported that hackers broke into the official channel of the South Korean government on YouTube on September 3 and launched a video on the topic of cryptocurrencies on it. After the attack, the scammers renamed the channel "SpaceX Invest", and the broadcast itself included an interview with Elon Musk.

Bolt Payment Firm Rejects Deal to Acquire Wyre Crypto Company

The California-based online payment company Bolt refuses an agreement to purchase the crypto provider Wyre. The news of the cancellation of the deal, which was agreed earlier this year, came amid falling valuations in the crypto and fintech sectors.

Bolt abandons plan to acquire Wyre for $1.5 billion

Bolt Financial, an American technology company headquartered in San Francisco, said on Friday that it had canceled a deal to buy crypto infrastructure provider Wyre Payments. In early April , the e - commerce platform announced a final agreement to acquire Wyre for $ 1.5 billion .

The deal is considered one of the largest acquisitions of the crypto business this year. After a funding round in January, Bolt was last valued at $11 billion. The report, however, notes that since then, high-tech valuations have come under increased pressure, as investor sentiment has been affected by fears of a recession and negative events in stock markets.

Payment processor Stripe and fintech bank Klarna Bank also significantly lowered the estimate. Industry valuations in the crypto sector have also dropped significantly during the market downturn in recent months.

In a published statement, Bolt stressed that he would continue to cooperate with Wyre. The online sales register firm explained that maintaining independence would allow it to focus on its core business areas. The company 's CEO Maju Kuruvilla stated:

“We will continue our existing commercial partnership with Wyre to pave the path of crypto integration into our ecosystem, bringing Wyre’s innovative crypto infrastructure to the world.”

Wire offers payment APIs connected to the blockchain, as well as the possibility of exchanging fiat for cryptocurrency, foreign currency and cryptocurrency liquidity for users of various crypto projects. It was founded in 2013, and like Bolt, founded a year later, its headquarters are in San Francisco.

Seven investors joined the accusations against Musk about creating a cryptopyramide with Dogecoin

The lawsuit against Elon Musk in the United States in the case of the creation of a cryptopyramide with Dogecoin has gathered new participants.

Now he has been joined by seven new investors who have added six new defendants, including Elon Musk's Boring Co., a company engaged in the construction of transport tunnels.

In June, American Keith Johnson filed a lawsuit against Musk and his companies SpaceX and Tesla. He accused them of creating a "cryptopyramide" — a kind of structure whose task is to artificially inflate the value of the Dogecoin cryptocurrency.

Johnson said he was ready to represent the interests of other people who, like him, lost money on this pyramid scheme. The plaintiff demanded compensation for the damage in the amount of $ 258 billion, which he incurred on the purchase and sale of this cryptocurrency since 2019.

According to an amendment to the complaint filed Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court, Elon Musk, Tesla, SpaceX, Boring and others deliberately raised the price of Dogecoin and then allowed it to collapse.

What happened to Bitcoin Satoshi? The new film seeks to find it out

Director and producer Christopher Cannucciari and White Paper Films announce the start of filming for a new documentary «I am not Satoshi».

The "I'm Not Satoshi" sale will take place on the Republic investment platform and will accept Avalanche-based tokens.

Recall that Cannucciari is also the director of the 2016 documentary «Banking on Bitcoin».

Recall that Cannucciari is also the director of the 2016 documentary Banking on Bitcoin.The film «I am not Satoshi» will tell about the search by the entire crypto world for Satoshi, who disappeared immediately after the launch of Bitcoin. It is also planned to talk about the theories of his personality and why many believe that the mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto's identity should remain unsolved.

“The film relies on the words of Bitcoin’s early adopters, journalists, and Satoshi’s mentors to guide us through the mystery,” said Cannucciari, in a release. “Experts and witnesses will help us understand the events leading up to and following Satoshi’s disappearance. Our goal is to tell this story before history becomes a myth.”

Cardano coming to world's biggest DApp Store

The Lithuanian service DappRadar announced support for Cardano.

The world's largest DApp store has called on developers working on Cardano to submit their contracts.

Back in December last year, DappRadar announced its own ERC-20 token called RADAR, which serves to reward existing users for opening new decentralized applications. This token did not have a pre-sale after its launch, unlike most other crypto projects. Recall that 10% of its initial offer was distributed to users and partners.

DappRadar currently tracks more than 10,000 app applications across 30 protocols. The largest app store currently has more than a million users.

After launching smart contracts about a year ago, Cardano has not yet seen its own killer app like Uniswap.

According to the data provided by DefiLlama, the total cost of decentralized financial applications based on Cardano is 88.46 million US dollars. This puts it only in 29th place (after such blockchain projects as EOS, Celo and Thorchain). Mindswap is currently the largest application on Cardano with a blocked total value of $46.44 million.

According to U.Today, billionaire Mark Cuban also expressed the opinion that Cardano has not had any impact since the launch of smart contracts.

Cryptocurrency mining malware masquerading as Microsoft Translator has infected more than 100,000 users

According to a report published by US-Israeli cybersecurity provider Check Point Software Technologies, an active cryptocurrency mining malware campaign has managed to go unnoticed for years, infecting more than 111,000 users in Germany, Israel, Poland, the United States and other countries.

Attackers set traps for victims on websites such as Softpedia, which host free software. They trick them into downloading desktop versions of services like YouTube Music and Microsoft Translator. In fact, these services do not have official desktop versions. The campaign, which has been in the spotlight for years, is reportedly linked to a Turkish software developer called Nitrokod, which claims to offer free software.

He managed to remain undetected for such a long period of time due to the complex multi-stage infection process. Delaying malware ex*****on for several weeks after installation and removal of all traces makes it extremely difficult to associate malware with a particular installation.

Once launched, the malware launches a hidden process to mine the Monero (XMR) cryptocurrency by connecting to its C&C server and receiving XMRig, a CPU-assisted mining tool. To make sure the malware stays active, a scheduled task is set up to run XMRig every day.

Monero remains a firm favorite with cryptojackers due to its anonymity features. A 2019 study found that illegal mining accounts for up to 4% of the total XMR turnover.