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Crypto exchange Bitso has partnered with the data intelligence firm Mobile Streams to expand its sports NFTs offerings. 

The move augments Bitso’s products for Latin American users. Through the partnership, Bitso will help promote the digital assets of Heroes NFT Club, a web3 project in which users can buy, sell and trade NFTs of officially licensed athletes and athletic clubs.

“This alliance with Mobile Streams represents our commitment to continue offering attractive products adapted to the needs of our community in Mexico,” Bitso’s Mexico CEO Bárbara González Briseño  said in a statement.

Bitso, operating in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia and Mexico, doubled its reach in Latin America at over 1,500 institutional clients and over 6 million clients in 2022. As of July 2023, Bitso has over seven million users. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Aptos Foundation and Pyth Data Association have joined forces to deliver sub-second oracle updates on Aptos.

The partnership introduces an automated price scheduler. The scheduler regularly updates a set of price feeds for Aptos’s Layer 1 blockchain, providing developers with low-latency price oracle infrastructure and sub-second price updates to enhance the efficiency of their DeFi applications, according to a Pyth blog post. 

Developers can access Pyth’s feeds natively on Aptos to leverage real-time asset prices aggregated from external sources like Jane Street, CBOE, Binance, OKX and Bybit. Aptos DeFi projects, including Thala Labs, Tsunami Finance, Aries Markets, ABEL Finance and Aptin Finance already utilize Pyth data.

DeFi protocols require access to real-world price data to interact with off-chain information that’s needed for their applications.

Pyth said the move was part of its commitment to support fairer and more transparent markets. “This partnership is a major step towards empowering Aptos developers and streamlining the adoption and accessibility of real-time, institutional-quality oracle data across the Aptos landscape,” Aptos Foundation ecosystem lead Bashar Lazaar added.

Pull model

Rather than the push model used by most oracles in DeFi — where off-chain processes continuously send transactions to update on-chain prices — Pyth’s permissionless pull oracle model allows applications to access price feeds once per second, paying only for the prices they request or “pull” on-chain. Its pull system offers over 250 price feeds across five major asset classes, with significant gas efficiencies, high-frequency price updates and low-latency access to the latest prices, Pyth said.

“Cultivating strong partnerships is essential to achieving our goal of providing reliable, real-time financial data to the decentralized finance ecosystem,” Pyth Data Association director Mike Cahill added. “This strategic partnership with the Aptos Foundation will allow us to focus on improving and expanding our network while making it even easier for developers and users alike to use Pyth feeds.”

Aptos is a relatively new Layer 1 blockchain based on the Move programming language developed at Meta. It aims to offer a faster and more scalable alternative to other networks. Pyth is an oracle network, securing over $2 billion in value.

Last month, Pyth and Lido launched the Pyth stETH/USD price feed, providing real-time, secure price data for staked ether (stETH) across more than 20 blockchains.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Binance has named Eleanor Hughes as its new general counsel, as the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange continues to grapple with legal challenges in multiple jurisdictions.

Hughes, who joined Binance’s legal team in November 2021, most recently held the role of head of legal for APAC and MENA at the company, Binance said in a statement shared with The Block. 

Hughes will lead Binance’s legal affairs with a team of 85 lawyers, working in concert with the global compliance team to tackle regulatory and legal issues.

“With Eleanor at the helm, I am confident that our industry-leading legal team will continue to excel in its mission to always protect users and manage risks on our platform,” Changpeng Zhao, founder and chief executive officer of Binance, said in the statement.

Hughes has helped the company secure virtual asset service provider licenses in jurisdictions including Bahrain, Dubai and New Zealand.

Legal, regulatory trouble

Binance currently finds itself in the crosshairs of multiple U.S. regulators, with the Commodities Futures Trading Commission first filing a lawsuit against it in March. The Securities and Exchange Commission also sued the exchange and Zhao last month for allegedly violating securities laws.

Furthermore, the U.S. Department of Justice has reportedly been investigating whether Binance was used to let Russians evade U.S. sanctions.

The appointment of Hughes fills the void left by former general counsel Han Ng. Ng departed last week along with a number of other senior executives, including chief strategy officer Patrick Hillmann and SVP for compliance Steven Christie, according to Fortune. Fortune reported that Binance is in full-on turmoil amid a DoJ probe, with a mini-exodus of senior officials adding to the pressure.

Zhao branded the reports surrounding the departures “FUD” in a tweet last week, claiming they are simply part of normal staff turnover. He said the causes of the departures were “dreamed up” by news outlets. FUD is a commonly-used term in the crypto community referring to fear, uncertainty and doubt.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

Safe, previously known as Gnosis Safe, has integrated “ERC-4337,” an Ethereum feature that allows for account abstraction. Safe, one of the largest institutional wallet providers, secures $60 billion in digital assets.

ERC-4337, a key update for Ethereum introduced by core developers in March 2023, enabled account abstraction (AA) on Ethereum for the first time through specialized smart contracts. 

Today, Safe added support for ERC-4337 as a plugin software to its existing AA infrastructure, which is part of the software stack called Safe Core. The update includes a fully audited upgrade that supports ERC-4337 in a modular manner, potentially offering developers more flexibility.

What’s account abstraction?

Account abstraction enables wallets to work as smart contracts and operate a host of sophisticated features like multi-factor authentication, wallet social recovery and the flexibility for users to transact with any token.

“ERC-4337 is an exciting addition to the Safe Smart Account toolkit and gives developers the flexibility to choose the relayer technologies they want to build with,” Richard Meissner, co-founder and technical lead at Safe, said. “ERC-4337, as it matures, will play a key part as a relaying option for developers to build products for millions of users.”

Account abstraction was recently highlighted by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin as among the crucial advancements that the network needed to implement. AA has already attracted the attention of major companies, including Visa, who are testing its capabilities.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

World Mobile, a decentralized internet provider, said it has secured authorization to bring its “affordable” service to parts of the United States.

Utilizing blockchain technology, combined with “aerial and terrestrial infrastructure,” the company said it can provide internet access at a rate considerably lower than traditional providers. It will roll out its service in the U.S. initially in California, New Mexico, Nevada and Utah, World Mobile said in a statement.

“We are signaling our intent to revolutionize the connectivity landscape in the United States,” World Mobile CEO Micky Watkins said in a statement.

World Mobile’s move follows U.S. President Joe Biden’s 2021 infrastructure bill which includes $42 billion to make high-speed broadband universal by 2030. The company said it secured 20MHz of “licensed spectrum” and expects to deploy its service in the U.S. later this year.

The company launched in Tanzania and has held field tests in Kenya, Nigeria and Mozambique, it said in a statement.

On its website World Mobile states that “unlike traditional mobile networks” it is “based on blockchain and the sharing economy” and that users in “unconnected regions can operate affordable nodes” on its network in order to help provide internet access to those that do not currently have it. 

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The percentage of funds with crypto exposure fell to 29% from 37% in the past year, though no traditional hedge funds plan to decrease their exposure in 2023.

With funding from the foundation that oversees development of the Metis layer-2 Ethereum protocol, ZKM is developing a hybrid approach that combines Optmistic and Zero-Knowledge rollups into one.

Staking infrastructure platform Figment and crypto protection provider Nexus Mutual have joined forces to offer Figment customers additional protection against validator slashing risks with the launch of “ETH Slashing Cover.”

The product aims to provide comprehensive coverage against validator double-sign slashing risks, according to a statement from Nexus Mutual. These risks refer to potential penalties Ethereum validators may face for engaging in malicious behavior, specifically the act of signing conflicting blocks or messages. Slashing can result in the loss of a portion or all of the validator’s staked assets and impact their reputation on the network.

“Top-class institutions realize that even with the most reliable set-ups, there is always the risk of something going wrong,” Nexus Mutual founder Hugh Karp said in the statement. “Giving their customers access to first-in-class cover is simply the responsible thing to do.”

Up to 100% coverage

Nexus Mutual said that with ETH Slashing Cover, Figment customers can potentially protect themselves against the risks of double-sign slashing events for up to 1 ETH per validator. By combining Figment’s existing coverage with this new offering, Figment customers can gain an extra layer of protection and achieve up to 100% coverage against slashing risks for their staked ether, according to Nexus Mutual.

Figment claims to manage over $3 billion in total assets staked, with nearly 5% of all staked ether on Figment validators.

“Figment operates some of the industry’s most robust infrastructure, reducing the possibility and magnitude of double-sign slashing risk,” Figment founder and CEO Lorien Gabel added. “Now, Figment and Nexus Mutual can give delegators a way to further hedge against double-sign slashing risks while minimally impacting rewards.”

DeFi cover (as an alternative to traditional insurance services) is a growing sector within the crypto industry, paying out $34.4 million worth of claims in 2022, according to OpenCover.

Nexus Mutual said it has protected over $4.4 billion in crypto assets since 2019, paying out over $17 million in claims.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has filed a lawsuit against bankrupt cryptocurrency lender Celsius and its former CEO Alex Mashinsky in federal court, according to court documents.

The SEC accused Celsius and Mashinsky of raising billions through fraudulent and unregistered sales of “crypto asset securities,” repeatedly lying to investors about Celsius’s financial standing, and manipulating the price of CEL, the company’s native token.

Investigators at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission recently concluded that Celsius and Mashinsky broke U.S. rules before the firm collapsed.

This story is breaking and will be updated.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.

The Ajna Protocol has been deployed on the Ethereum mainnet following more than two years of development.

Ajna’s lending and borrowing DeFi platform offers a non-custodial and permissionless system that eliminates the need for oracles and governance, according to a statement.

The protocol consists of pools for lenders and borrowers, enabling users to borrow against nearly any fungible or non-fungible token and lend any fungible token, Ajna claimed. It also introduces additional features, including perpetual loans, liquidation bonds and permissionless pair creation.

Fungible tokens hold the same value and are interchangeable with each other, like ether. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) have a variable value that cannot be exchanged on a one-to-one basis.

“The mission of the Ajna Protocol is to improve on existing DeFi lending and borrowing protocols by giving users a truly decentralized system with more options and less systemic risk,” Ajna said.

Eliminating governance and oracles

A more unique aspect of the protocol is that it is designed without governance, ensuring that it cannot be altered or updated upon launch. While this provides immutability, the absence of upgrade functionality can leave such protocols open to security vulnerabilities and bugs.

Ajna also eliminates reliance on oracles — systems that provide near real-time price feeds from external sources for decentralized applications. Ajna argues this removes a common point of failure, as they rely on trusted intermediaries and vulnerabilities or compromises of such systems can introduce risks such as price manipulation.

The protocol has undergone six security audits conducted by Sherlock, Trail of Bits, Quantstamp, Prototech Labs and Code4arena to ensure its robustness and resilience against potential vulnerabilities, Ajna said.

Ajna Protocol is live on the Ethereum mainnet and plans to extend support to Layer 2 solutions in the coming months.

© 2023 The Block Crypto, Inc. All Rights Reserved. This article is provided for informational purposes only. It is not offered or intended to be used as legal, tax, investment, financial, or other advice.