Weekly DeFi/NFT News — June 27, 2022

Weekly DeFi/NFT news is a collection of major weekly events/announcements brought from the most trustworthy data sources, such as The Defiant, Spencer Noon, Week in Ethereum News etc. with comments and extra insight from the Bulldax DeFi labs.

dYdX To Deploy Own Blockchain On Cosmos — The Defiant

• dYdX chain will be built using the Cosmos SDK and Tendermint Proof-of-Stake consensus protocol. These technologies are part of the Cosmos ecosystem, an interconnected system of application-specific blockchains. The new chain will be released to support dYdX’s fourth iteration (V4).

https://dydx.exchange/blog/dydx-chain

• The announcement post cited the protocol’s DYDX token as “the most natural fit for use as the L1 token of dYdX V4.” This means that validators will need to stake the token, which was airdropped last September, to secure the network under a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism. In addition, transaction fees on the new chain would be payable in DYDX tokens.
• The protocol’s previous iterations have been on either Ethereum’s mainnet or more recently on a Starkware-based Layer 2 solution. dYdX is the largest decentralized derivatives trading platform with over $700M in Total Value Locked (TVL), according to Defi Llama.
• The protocol’s announcement comes as a distinct move away from the Ethereum ecosystem considering that Starkware, too, is built on top of Ethereum. Now, dYdX is going a more independent route with its own blockchain.
• dYdX cited performance and centralization concerns about Ethereum L2s as one of the reasons for the move. This undoubtedly comes as a blow to StarkWare, as dYdX is currently the largest protocol utilizing its infrastructure.
• dYdX outlined plans in January to fully decentralize in 2022. The project’s blog post emphasized that using the Cosmos SDK to spin up its own blockchain is what will allow the project to fulfill that goal.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/dydx-chain-cosmos/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Solana is making a crypto phone — The Verge

• Blockchain company Solana announced its own mobile phone, called the Saga, made in collaboration with Osom. It’s priced at $1,000, and preorders open today. A $100 deposit is required, and Solana says the Saga will ship in the first quarter of 2023.

• The phone will have a 6.67-inch 120Hz OLED display, 512GB of storage, and 12GB of RAM. It’ll be powered by Qualcomm’s latest Snapdragon 8 Plus Gen 1 chip and is outfitted with a 50-megapixel primary camera, plus a 12-megapixel ultra-wide shooter.
• But more than the standard hardware specs that most gadget nerds are interested in, the Saga is meant to help crypto continue its quest to “go mobile,” in the words of Solana CEO Anatoly Yakovenko.
• This device is for people entrenched in the universe of crypto wallets, Web3, and NFTs, and it’ll come with a unique feature: support for decentralized apps that rely on the Solana blockchain, which has at least briefly rivaled Ethereum when it comes to NFT sales volume.
• That “past legacy ecosystems” line is perhaps in reference to Solana’s other announcements today: the company introduced the Solana Mobile Stack, an open dApp (short for decentralized applications) Store that will run on the Android-based Saga. The company is envisioning a vast proliferation of crypto-native apps, digital services, and digital goods that will be made possible through its new stack, which will be available to other Android device makers, too.

Source: https://www.theverge.com/2022/6/23/23180421/osom-solana-saga-android-crypto-phone-announced-sms

Synthetix Now Among Top-Earning Crypto Protocols After Atomic Swaps Take Off — The Defiant

• Synthetix’s token SNX, fees generated by the protocol and volume are soaring after Synthetix Improvement Proporsal 120 passed, removing a previous buffer between trades of synthetic assets, called Synths and increasing trading speed.
• Daily fees have jumped by a multiple of over 19 to $491,500 in the last month, making it the sixth-highest earning blockchain protocol tracked by cryptofees.info. The protocol ranked third in terms of fees on June 19, when SNX stakers earned over $1M.

• At $124B, volume is also over 40 times larger than the $3M it was a month ago, according to a Dune Analytics query by Messari.

• The majority of the trading volume is coming from 1inch, a decentralized exchange aggregator, according to data provided by Synthetix. 1inch leads all projects which facilitate Synth trading, having processed $769M of volume in the past week.
• Proposal SIP-120, written by Warwick, Yearn founder Andre Cronje, and two other contributors, does away with what was a ten-minute waiting period when trading between Synths. The new and instant trade functionality is called an atomic exchange.
• Synthetix has also added perpetual futures in March, which the protocol’s Twitter account has cited as another reason for its recent momentum.

Source: https://thedefiant.io/synthetix-soars-after-proposal-passed/?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

$100 million worth of crypto has been stolen in another major hack — CNBC

• Hackers have stolen $100 million in cryptocurrency from Horizon, a so-called blockchain bridge, in the latest major heist in the world of decentralized finance.
• Details of the attack are still slim, but Harmony, the developers behind Horizon, said they identified the theft Wednesday morning.

• In a follow-up tweet, Harmony said it’s working with the Federal Bureau of Investigation and multiple cybersecurity firms to investigate the attack.
• Bridges “maintain large stores of liquidity,” making them a “tempting target for hackers,” according to Jess Symington, research lead at blockchain analysis firm Elliptic.
• “In order for individuals to use bridges to move their funds, assets are locked on one blockchain and unlocked, or minted, on another,” Symington said. “As a result, these services hold large volumes of cryptoassets.”
• The security of the Horizon bridge hinged on a “multisig” wallet that required only two signatures to initiate transactions. Some researchers speculate the breach was the result of a “private key compromise,” where hackers obtained the password, or passwords, required to gain access to a crypto wallet.
• It follows a series of notable attacks on other blockchain bridges. The Ronin Network, which supports crypto game Axie Infinity, lost more than $600 million in a security breach that took place in March. Wormhole, another popular bridge, lost over $320 million in a separate hack a month earlier.
• Harmony is offering $1M bounty for the return of Horizon bridge funds and sharing exploit information.

Source: https://www.cnbc.com/2022/06/24/hackers-steal-100-million-in-crypto-from-harmonys-horizon-bridge.html

Nexo issues a NOTICE TO CEASE AND DESIST to stop rumours spreading on its fund’s mismanagement.

• Nexo issued a notice to cease and desist following rumours that Nexo co-founders stole from a charity.

• The rumours have been not confirmed.

• The notice claims that “As you are very well aware, it is unlawful for an individual to make or refer to deliberate statements that intend to harm the reputation of a business or a person without any factual evidence.”
• “We, therefore, demand that you immediately, delete all your comments, statements, reviews, publications, whatsoever, in the social media websites and any other public media or communication channel”
• “Your failure to comply immediately with the above will undoubtedly result in you being joined as a defendant in the defamation lawsuit with all negative consequences of this as described hereinabove.”

Source: https://nexo.io/blog/notice-to-cease-and-desist