Cryptospace Spotlight #52 (25 Dec 2022) - Defrost Finance suffered flash loan attack
Defrost Finance suffered flash loan attack losing $173K, Alameda’s Caroline Ellison and FTX’s Gary Wang had pleaded guilty, and Vitalik shared three “huge” opportunities yet to be realised in crypto!
Security and Risk
24 Dec - Defrost Finance suffered flash loan attack
DeFi Defrost Finance was lost approximately $173k due to flashloan attack. [more][more-DefrostFinance]
Ryadium’s hack
Raydium decentralized exchange (DEX) has announced details as to how the hack of Dec. 16 occurred and offered a proposal to compensate victims. [more]
According to an official forum post from the team, the attacker was able to make off with over $2 million in crypto loot by exploiting a vulnerability in the DEX’s smart contracts that allowed entire liquidity pools to be withdrawn by admins, despite existing protections being to prevent such behavior.
The team will use its own unlocked tokens to compensate victims who lost Raydium tokens, also known as RAY.
Other Crypto Picks
Brazil - The Brazilian Securities and Exchange Commission (CVM) approved the ability for investment funds to include crypto assets among their holdings. [more]
United States - SEC’s acting chief accountant Paul Munter said that investors shouldn't place too much confidence in a company holding up a proof-of-reserves audit. [more]
United Kingdom - Bank of England published a blog on its observation on DLT and pondered over its governance. It noted that “Blockchains do not constitute critical financial infrastructure (yet). But they could conceivably become so in the future if cryptoasset activity and its interconnectedness with the wider financial system continue to develop. So, it is important that relevant authorities find legal mechanisms and means of co-ordinated action to ensure that an equivalent regulatory outcome is delivered.” [more]
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shared three “huge” opportunities yet to be realized in crypto: mass wallet adoption, inflation-resistant stablecoins and Ethereum-powered website logins. [more]
Leading Web3 wallet provider MetaMask’s inbuilt swap feature now supports two Layer-2 blockchains: Arbitrum and Optimism. Swaps are also integrated into its recently launched Portfolio dApp. [more]
Cypherock, a hardware wallet startup , raises $1M. The firm’s new hardware wallet uses encrypted NFC-based cards to reduce risks related to seed phrases, i.e. to skip seed phrases. [more]
The report, titled “Developers of Bitcoin,” found that there are only 40 to 60 active developers. The document sheds light on how Bitcoin has steadily grown from an obscure technological breakthrough, to worldwide domination, and examines the software developers who made it all happen. [more]
FTX event
Caroline Ellison, the former chief executive officer of Alameda Research, said as part of her plea deal that she was aware FTX funds had been made available for the venture capital firm’s investments. [more]
Sam Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas to the U.S. to face charges ranging from wire fraud to campaign finance fraud. At the same time, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York announced that Alameda’s Caroline Ellison and FTX’s Gary Wang had pleaded guilty and were cooperating with prosecutors. [more]
The former FTX CEO was presented in front of a Manhattan court. Here, a federal judge allowed his release where SBF met highly restrictive conditions, such as a $250 million bail and mandatory residency with his parents, Joseph Bankman and Barbara Fried, both law teachers at Stanford. [more]
The United States District Court for the Southern District of New York rescued itself from the FTX case after revealing that a law firm — which employs Abrams’ husband as a partner — had advised the crypto exchange in 2021. [more]