Cryptospace Spotlight 2022 #5 (30 Jan 2022)
Solana jammed again, Qubit DeFi got hacked, and Russia pushed forward with crypto!
Technology & Industry
Solana might be driving away users as it experienced high network congestion once again. The team confirmed the outage, which extended from Friday to Saturday, adding that the network suffered from overload due to bots spamming the network. As reported, Solana went down for several hours earlier this year. Prior to this, the blockchain had experienced an 18-hours long network outage in September 2021 as the result of a massive increase in transaction load. All of these issues have resulted in some users arguing that Solana is not worth the risk. [more]
Google’s cloud division has formed a new business unit that will seek to support its new and existing customers developing on the blockchain. [more]
The unit, known as the Digital Assets Team, will focus on the retail and healthcare sectors as Google attempts to expand its offerings beyond advertising.
Facebook killed Libra/Diem stablecoin project. After two years and seven months, Facebook is called Meta, Libra is called Diem, and Diem is reportedly selling off all its assets. The only crypto product Facebook actually shipped was the Novi wallet (formerly Calibra), but it can only store the Paxos stablecoin USDP, since Diem never launched. [more]
OpenSea has now reimbursed 750 Ethereum, about $1.8 million, to users who accidentally sold valuable NFTs at well below their going market rate through an exploit involving “inactive listings.” [more]
Despite volatility in the cryptocurrency markets, the adoption of crypto as a means of payment appears to be rising. Visa indicated that crypto credit card usage reaches USD2.5 billion in Q1. [more]
Crypto-linked cards allow customers to spend crypto anywhere that accepts Visa, without merchants having to be familiar with the asset class at all. They receive transactions in fiat like typical Visa transactions, while the payment processor handles conversions on the back end.
Security
DeFi platform Qubit Finance hacked for USD80 million worth of cryptocurrencies [more] [more-2]
According to an incident report of the hack, Qubit said the attacker was able to steal 206,809 Binance coins (BNB) from its wallet using a vulnerability in one of its Ethereum blockchain contracts, which the company uses to process transactions for its users.
Analysis produced by CertiK, a blockchain auditing and security company, suggests the hacker was able to exploit a security flaw in Qubit’s smart contract code that let them send in a deposit of 0 ETH and withdraw almost USD80 million in Binance Coin in return.
The attacker’s address was identified last night, and the funds are still in the attacker’s possession and haven’t been laundered yet.
Since Qubit can’t recover the funds on its own, the company has sent a message to the attacker offering to pay the hacker a bug bounty reward in the hopes of convincing the hacker to return the stolen funds.
Regulatory
The Russian Finance Ministry has rejected proposals from the Bank of Russia to impose a complete ban on cryptocurrency and has instead suggested introducing regulation that would allow the government to have more robust control over transactions. [more]
Japan may be edging toward regulating non-fungible tokens (NFTs) – after the ruling Liberal Democratic Party launched an NFT policy task force. The party stated that it will be tasked with examining blockchain and NFT-related business operations to work in tandem with “the government’s growth strategy.” And the force will hold “discussions” with a view to creating concrete “policy proposals.” [more]
Thailand's financial authorities plan to regulate the use of digital assets as a means of payment for goods and services, the Bank of Thailand, Ministry of Finance, and the Securities and Exchange Commission of Thailand said in a joint press release. Regulators will consider exercising their power to limit the use of crypto for payments, and will issue new guidelines for certain digital assets that support the financial system and innovation without posing systemic risk, according to the statement on Tuesday. [more]
A state senator in Arizona has introduced a bill that would make bitcoin legal tender in the state — although federal law could complicate things. [more]
The cryptocurrency industry is eager to comply with the Financial Action Task Force's (FATF) so-called Travel Rule, and appears willing to work with regulators to expedite the process, a new survey found. [more]
Currently, the report claims that about 70% of respondents are either practicing the rule or planning to complete their compliance in Q1/Q2 2022.
Coffee-chat
In Singapore, former employees of fintech startup, Lightnet, sued the company after Lightnet allegedly failed to issue cryptocurrency tokens (an aggregate amount of US$1.37 million) promised to them in their employment contracts and consultancy agreements. [more]