FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

Quick Take

• Founded in 2018, Stardust enables game developers to easily create and manage NFTs within their game without the need for any blockchain code
• Stardust products include Core API for game developers, Marketplace API, Stardust Vault (proprietary in-game custodial wallet solution) and Developer Dashboard
• Stardust completed its Seed round ($5 million) in September 2021 and Series A round ($30 million) in October 2022 – both rounds were led by Framework Ventures
• Stardust has a blockchain agnostic approach and is prioritizing multichain integration in the near future to satisfy developer needs (Polygon and Solana supported; Avalanche support planned for Q1 2023)
• Stardust is planning to introduce more sophisticated features in 2023, such as credit card payment functionality for Stardust payment feature
• Currently, +100 clients are using Stardust to build their games – there has been a 46% increase in games created from 2021 to 2022, a 321% increase in games being actively developed from 2021 to 2022

This research piece is available exclusively to
members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

Crypto lender BlockFi has filed for Chapter bankruptcy protection.

The company made the filing in New Jersey, according to a release. BlockFi has US$256.9 million in cash on hand, which is expected to provide sufficient liquidity to support certain operations during the restructuring process. 

“With the collapse of FTX, the BlockFi management team and board of directors immediately took action to protect clients and the Company,” said Mark Renzi of Berkeley Research Group, the company’s financial advisor. “From inception, BlockFi has worked to positively shape the cryptocurrency industry and advance the sector. BlockFi looks forward to a transparent process that achieves the best outcome for all clients and other stakeholders.”

BlockFi announced earlier this month that it had paused withdrawals. Just days before, as Binance weighed buying FTX, BlockFi said its products were “fully functional.” Last week, BlockFi has put client loans into forbearance, according to a customer email viewed by The Block.

© 2022 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.

Crypto exchange Bitfront will shut down its services in a staggered approach up until the end of March 2023.

Bitfront’s shutdown process begins on Nov. 28, with the suspension of new account signups, the platform said in an announcement. Credit card deposits for existing users have already been stopped. The next step of the process takes place in December when the platform will suspend all crypto and U.S. dollar deposits. At that time, Bitfront will also cancel all open trading orders.

The final closure of withdrawals will happen on March 31, 2023, at 05:00 AM UTC. Bitfront advised customers to ensure they remove all of their funds from the platform on or before that date.

Bitfront cited the challenges of the “rapidly evolving” crypto market as part of the reason for shutting down the platform. The crypto exchange stated that it had tried to overcome these challenges to no avail.

For Bitfront, shuttering the platform is a necessary step to protect Line’s blockchain ecosystem. Japanese social media giant Line launched Bitfront in February 2020 as a U.S.-based exchange. At the time, the company had shut down its Singapore-based crypto exchange Bitbox.

Bitfront is the latest crypto exchange to be affected by the current crypto market decline. The year-long bear market has also been further exacerbated by the recent collapse of FTX, formerly one of the biggest crypto exchanges. The FTX collapse reportedly triggered a wave of liquidity outflows from exchanges. This has caused some smaller platforms like AAX to experience solvency issues.

© 2022 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.

Fidelity has opened up retail crypto trading accounts after first announcing a waiting list earlier this month.

“The wait is over,” the investment powerhouse said in an email Monday sent to some users, adding that a Fidelity brokerage account was needed to be able to fund a new Fidelity Crypto account.

Once opened, the account promises commission-free trading of bitcoin and ether. Users trying to open an account were asked to read and accept a number of disclosures, including a risk statement which stated that “investing in, buying, and selling digital assets presents a variety of risks that are not presented by investing in, buying, and selling products in other, more traditional asset classes.”

They were also reminded that “digital assets can fluctuate quickly, and materially.” The service says a spread of 1% will be factored into every trade execution price.

While Fidelity has been quicker to embrace digital assets than most other large investment companies, it has received some pushback. Three U.S. senators last week asked the firm to reconsider a decision to allow retirement plan participants to invest in bitcoin, saying the industry has become increasingly “volatile, tumultuous and chaotic.”

© 2022 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.

Crypto users have left $27 million of funds unclaimed in the Polygon bridge, potentially due to the two-step withdrawal process.

This is the bridge between Ethereum and Polygon, where crypto users can send tokens between the two blockchains. When a user bridges from Ethereum to Polygon, it takes just one transaction. On the reverse side, users have to transfer their funds to Ethereum in an initial transaction, wait an hour or so and then claim their tokens in a second transaction — in order to properly withdraw them.

There are more than 35,000 transfers back to the Ethereum side of the bridge that aren’t matched by subsequent claims, according to crypto wallet ZenGo in a blog post. These transfers represent around $27 million of funds, split among ETH and the stablecoins USDT, USDC and DAI.

ZenGo shared this analysis with the Polygon team, prior to publication. The Polygon team decided to make a claim transaction on behalf of one user who had left $2 million of funds unclaimed on the bridge. This individual had originally sent the tokens back to the Ethereum side of the bridge in May but never finished the withdrawal process. 

Claim transactions can be made by anyone, although the funds go to the person who owns the tokens. Whoever makes the claim transaction has to pay the transaction fee.

“Although it’s hard to imagine how someone can just “forget” about millions of USD, we assume that it might be related to the fact that additional transactions are required and that the funds are not claimable immediately, therefore creating room for such mistakes,” said ZenGo Co-Founder and CTO Tal Be’ery.

Not all of the funds have necessarily been forgotten about. Some may be in the process of being withdrawn to the Ethereum chain as noted by Polygon Chief Information Security Officer Mudit Gupta in a direct message on Twitter. Gupta added that some funds might have been accidentally sent to the Ethereum address.

© 2022 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.

Ben Caselin has resigned from his post as vice president of global marketing and communications at the crypto exchange platform AAX.

Caselin’s departure comes two weeks after the crypto exchange halted operations. AAX reportedly suffered a malicious exploit that saw it unable to verify the account balances of its customers. The Hong Kong-based platform has since liquidated the crypto futures trading positions of all of its customers. AAX said the move was necessary to “protect the rights and interests of users.”

Caselin is critical of the steps being taken by AAX. “The way things are handled is without empathy and overly opaque,” said Caselin in a statement on Monday. The former AAX executive said the crypto exchange had broken its trust with customers and that “the damage is done.”

AAX’s current liquidity issues are linked to the demise of FTX. AAX previously stated that it experienced massive withdrawals following FTX’s bankruptcy and it was facing a capital deficit.

© 2022 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.

This research piece is available exclusively to
members of The Block Research.
You can continue reading
this Research content on The Block Research.

Bitcoin and ether slipped more than 2% at 8:30 a.m. ET, tracking traditional markets lower, spooked by unrest in China over protests against Covid-19 restrictions.

Bitcoin was lower but trading above $16,100, while ether also slipped, down to about $1,170, according to CoinGecko.

People have taken to the streets in a number of Chinese cities to protest against the government after a house fire in Xinjiang killed 10. Citizens are blaming Covid restrictions for a delay in responding to the blaze.

U.S. equity futures are lower on the news. Coinbase dropped more than 2% in pre-market trading alongside Silvergate, which fell nearly 5%, and Block, down 1.5%.

Markets will be watching for indications of future rate increases as St. Louis Fed President James Bullard and New York Fed President John Williams speak later today.

© 2022 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 moved 127,351 bitcoin ($2 billion) to verify to an auditor it has control over the claimed address.

The transfer of such a large amount of bitcoin today from Binance to an unknown wallet led to questions among the crypto community regarding the nature of the transaction. In response, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao clarified that the transfer is part of an ongoing audit at Binance. 

“This is part of the Proof-of-Reserve Audit. The auditor requires us to send a specific amount to ourselves to show we control the wallet. And the rest goes to a Change Address, which is a new address,” Zhao claimed. He added the exchange has rotated the funds to a new address in its control.

Last week, Binance officially introduced its first proof-of-reserves system, a prototype aiming to show that it holds the reserves necessary to cover all customer deposits. It’s currently working on a more complete audit.

The pressure on centralized crypto exchanges to adopt “proof of reserves” has increased dramatically after the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. By publishing both the total amount of assets and liabilities, exchanges can indicate that they have the reserves on hand to meet customer withdrawal requests.  However, these initial reserves don’t necessarily show the full picture, as they don’t provide details on the exchange’s liabilities.

Reserves can be shown in two ways or a combination of both. The first is by having the reserves audited by independent third-parties auditors whereas the second is by providing a list of public addresses that hold different assets, as noted by security firm Halborn. Each has different benefits and drawbacks.

© 2022 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.

Decentralized lending protocol Aave has temporarily frozen lending markets for 17 tokens in an effort to protect itself from taking on bad debt due to future market manipulation attacks. 

Aave is the largest lending protocol on Ethereum with more than $3.65 billion in assets locked across multiple chains. Its decision to temporarily halt lending of several tokens on Aave version 2.0 was passed after governance members approved a proposal from Llama and Chaos Labs asking to pause assets that are considered as “volatile” due to low liquidity profiles on Aave.

The lending markets are yearn.finance, Curve DAO,  0x, Decentraland, 1inch, Basic Attention Token, Ampleforth, DeFi Pulse Index, renFIL and Maker, Enjin, xSUSHI and five stablecoins: sUSD, GUSD, RAI, USDP, and LUSD. 

The protocol will not allow users to deposit these assets or take loans with them on the platform for the sake of risk management.

“In response to recent market events and the continued contraction of liquidity across markets, this proposal seeks to reduce the risk profile across many higher volatile assets,” the proposal said. 

The proposal was passed days after a trader opened a massive short position on the Curve DAO (CRV) market on Aave that resulted in $1.6 million of bad debt for the protocol. 

Last week, a trader borrowed 92 million CRV ($57 million) on Aave and proceeded to sell the tokens continuously, causing a sharp fall in the CRV price. The trader, however, suffered a price squeeze as the CRV token price rallied. While liquidating the short position, Aave accrued a bad debt of $1.6 million. 

Although Aave stated that it had sufficient funds to make up for the bad debt, the project wants to prevent such incidents from happening by way of freezing low-liquidity asset pools.

© 2022 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.