FreeCryptoCurrency.Me

On Monday, an unknown hacker targeted the token swap service offered by BitKeep, a multi-chain crypto wallet.

The exploiter was able to steal $1 million in BNB tokens from users that had approved tokens on the BitKeep’s swap service, also called a swap router, on the BNB Chain. The stolen funds were later routed through crypto mixer Tornado Cash in an effort to obfuscate activity. 

“BitKeep Swap was hacked, and our development team has managed to contain the emergency and stopped the hacker. The attack was directed to the BNB Chain, causing a loss of about $1 million,” the team tweeted.

Igor Igamberdiev, Research Director, Data at The Block, explained that BitKeep’s swap contract had previously contained a logic error that allowed the hacker to make a malicious call and seize users’ funds. The vulnerability stemmed from the BitKeep swap contract’s lack of input validation, allowing the attacker to spoof input values. This means the exploiter was able to make illegitimate swaps from addresses that had approved to spend on BitKeep’s swap router.

BitKeep says it will refund all victims that had funds stolen during the incident.

“BitKeep will launch a compensation portal within 3 working days for all victims to apply for refund,” the project said.

Still, the incident represents another addition to the list of exploits that have plagued the crypto sector this month. So far in October, more than $700 million has been lost across more than a dozen notable exploits, according to Chainalysis estimates.

These include the $2 million exploit of QANplatform, $2.34 million stolen from RabbySwap, $100 million hack of BSC Token Hub and the $114 million attack on Mango Markets.

© 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.

Mark Steward will step down from his role leading crypto compliance at the United Kingdom’s Financial Conduct Authority in spring 2023, according to a statement released on Tuesday.

As the executive director of enforcement and market oversight, Steward paved the way for the UK’s finanicial regulator to take charge of national anti-money laundering compliance for crypto businesses in January 2021. Since then, firms handling crypto must comply with AML to be registered and legally operate in the UK. 

In March 2021, the regulator began keeping tabs on unregistered crypto firms through the ever-growing  “Unregistered Cryptoasset Businesses” list. Currently, there are 245 firms on that list.

Steward also played a central role in the FCA’s “ScamSmart” campaign, which keeps a hawkish eye on crypto. The latest annual review published this week shows that crypto was by far the leading sector for alerts reported to the FCA as potential scams between April 2021 and March 2022. 

“The global search for Mark’s successor will begin shortly,” the FCA press release said. 

© 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.

Layer 1 blockchain Shardeum closed its $18.2 million seed funding round at a $199 million valuation. The Block first reported that the startup was seeking to raise $18 million at a $200 million valuation in August. 

Over 50 investors participated in the seed round, including Spartan Group, Big Brain Holdings, Jane Street and Foresight Ventures, according to a company announcement. 

Co-founded by Indian exchange WazirX’s founder Nischal Shetty and blockchain architect Omar Syed, Shardeum is a proof-of-stake blockchain platform that uses dynamic state sharding technology in pursuit of efficiency gains.  

What is sharding?

Sharding helps split blockchain infrastructure into smaller pieces to try to scale the network. It helps increase block space for more transactions and reduces gas fees. 

Shardeum’s architecture aims to resolve user experience issues faced by both users and developers of exisiting sharded blockchains, according to the announcement. 

“The blockchain trilemma has been a difficult problem to solve, and scalability is the most significant factor that is preventing wider crypto adoption especially in emerging markets like India,” said Shetty in a statement. “The web3 ecosystem has been on a massive growth spree. For web3 to onboard 1 billion users in the next few years, we need a scalable L1 blockchain which ensures 1 cent fees forever while maintaining decentralization. Shardeum aims to make that happen.” 

The Layer 1 wars continue

Shardeum is just one of several new Layer 1 blockchains that have raised funds as of late. Others include Aptos, Sui and Sei Labs. 

The new funds will be used to ramp up Shardeum’s marketing efforts and grow the development team. The team will be hosting hackathons in India and the U.S. to incentivize developers to build on the ecosystem. 

The recent fundraise took place via a private token sale. Shardeum is expected to launch in the first quarter of next year and will later stage a public token sale. 

“I invested in Shardeum as I think they are trying an interesting approach to scaling, which increases TPS as more validation nodes are added,” said Balaji Srinivasan, former chief technology officer of Coinbase, in a statement. 

The $18 million raise is well above the average check size for a seed round in the third quarter of the year, according to data from The Block Research. It’s closer to the average Series A check size, which comes in at $22.8 million.

Third quarter blockchain venture deal size from The Block Research

© 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.

A real estate investor purchased a three-bedroom house in South Carolina via an NFT marketplace over the weekend for $175,000 paid in USDC.

The purchase of 149 Cottage Lake Way, Columbia was made possible via Roofstock onChain, the web3 subsidiary of real estate company Roofstock. The buyer, real estate investor Adam Slipakoff, said he was able to buy a fully title-insured, rent-ready property with one click.

Founded in 2015, Roofstock specialises in single-family rental properties and has facilitated more than $5 billion in investment transactions to date.

This marks the first NFT sale by the company. The company’s chief blockchain officer, Geoff Thompson, called the sale a “major milestone” in providing a simple way for buyers to purchase rental properties.

Each rental property sold on its platform via NFT is owned by an individual single-purpose Limited Liability Company (LLC) registered in Wyoming and the NFT sold is associated with the sole ownership of the LLC, the company told The Block.

As buyers’ names need to be made public due to legal requirements, there is an initial set-up process for would-be buyers joining the site in which they mint a non-transferrable membership token.

This marks the membership token with a “verified buyer” flag, after which buyers can connect to an NFT marketplace and purchase a Home onChain NFT with a single click, resulting in sale and settlement.

“The sale of the NFT results in a change in the ownership of the LLC, and thus the underlying property,” a company spokesperson said.

© 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.

Web3 Builders Inc., a crypto startup focused on end-user security, has emerged from stealth with $7 million in seed funding and the launch of its first product, TrustCheck.

Crypto-focused investment firm Road Capital led Web3 Builders’ seed round, with participation from OpenSea Ventures, Sparkle Ventures, Greylock, Global Founders Capital and others, the firm announced on Tuesday. Web3 Builders was initially looking to raise $5 million for the round but ended up with an oversubscription, it said. 

Founded earlier this year by Riccardo Pellegrini, a former head of product at Amazon Web Services, Web3 Builders aims to make web3 safe for all. “We’ve spoken at this point with hundreds of scam victims, and what became clear to us in doing so is that most folks are getting scammed, not as part of these massive hacks, but as a result of micro scams,” Pellegrini told The Block. “For example, this could be a phishing link that leads them to a wallet drainer site or a dangerous signature request that they accidentally sign.”

To prevent users from falling prey to such techniques, Web3 Builders has launched TrustCheck — a free Chrome browser extension that works in the background to detect scams and notify users so that they can cancel risky transactions.

“TrustCheck automatically warns users when they attempt to go to known phishing sites, or it detects the presence of wallet drainer code,” said Pellegrini. It does so by using machine-learning technology and a variety of on-chain and off-chain data sources to search for suspicious wallets, URLs or activity, including static analysis of website code, said Pellegrini.

With fresh capital in hand, Web3 Builders looks to expand its tools and current team of nine people by hiring for engineering and data science roles, according to Pellegrini. The firm is also planning to cater to crypto businesses — such as decentralized applications, marketplaces and wallets — so that they can integrate TrustCheck and Web3 Builders’ other future products on their platforms. 

Pellegrini said Web3 Builders will continue to develop its machine learning-driven products, which will lead to a variety of businesses in the future. “So as Consensys is to MetaMask, Web3 Builders is to TrustCheck,” explained Pellegrini.

This is not Pellegrini’s first entrepreneurial stint. A Harvard alum, Pellegrini was previously co-founder and CTO of RapidSOS, an emergency response data platform that raised $206 million in funding. He was also the former CTO of weather technology company Tomorrow.io, which raised $184 million in funding, he said.

Pellegrini began raising for Web3 Builders in April and closed the seed round a few months later. It is an equity round with token rights, said Pellegrini — meaning Web3 Builders could launch its native token in the future. 

© 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.

Nuri, a Germany-based neobank that offers crypto investment tools, has shut down after failing to find outside investment. 

The company had previously raised $45 million in funding from investors including Sony Financial Ventures, Coparian and Earlybird Venture Capital, according to Dealroom data. 

After filing for insolvency in August amid the downturn, CEO Kristina Walcker-Mayer said in a statement on Tuesday that Nuri had tried to work out restructuring strategies that would enable it to continue. 

“This year, the challenges have become insuperable due to the tough economical and political environment of the past months, which kept us from raising new funds or finding an acquirer,” said Walcker-Mayer. “On top, the insolvency of one of our main business partners worsened the situation significantly and put us over the edge.” 

This inability to find an acquirer or procure further funding has meant that Nuri has asked its customers to withdraw its funds by Dec. 18 so that the company can be terminated and liquidated. 

Nuri provides users the ability to invest in bitcoin and ether from a German bank account through a partnership with banking-as-a-service firm SolarisBank, along with a non-custodial wallet. Trading on the platform will be permitted until the end of next month, with all assets safe and unaffected by its previous insolvency proceedings, Nuri said. 

Walcker-Mayer ended her statement by thanking Nuri’s customers and employees — according to LinkedIn, the firm has just over 200 employees.

© 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 exchanges Binance and OKX will launch perpetual trading of the newly launched Aptos coin almost immediately after adding spot trading.

Binance is listing spot trading at 1 am UTC on Oct. 19, before adding perpetual contracts an hour later. OKX is adding spot trading on Oct. 18, once it meets set conditions, and then adding perpetual swaps at 1.20 am on Oct. 19.

FTX has said it will list spot trading for Aptos but hasn’t announced any perpetual trading. FTX is one of Aptos’ biggest investors.

Perpetual trading allows traders to bet on the future price direction of the coin, whether that’s up or down. Binance’s offering will allow traders to use up to 25X leverage. OKX will offer up to 75X leverage.

Aptos’ mainnet went live on Oct. 12 but was only announced on Oct. 17. Earlier today, the Aptos Foundation released a summary for its tokenomics, focusing on its distribution to the community, core contributors and investors.

© 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.

Ozzy Osbourne, Soulja Boy and Dylan Francis are among the artists who will play at Decentraland’s second Metaverse Music Festival.

Slated for November 10-13, over 100 global artists are taking part in the event, according to an announcement on Monday. Among them are Universal Music France’s Vladimir Cauchemar, Chinese idol group SNH48, CryptoPunk Rapper Spottie WiFi and Japanese girl group Atarashii Gakko.

The metaverse platform said it is doubling down on music in the metaverse this year and, alongside other new experiences, will showcase some of the latest technology.

“New motion capture technology will also be demonstrated on this global stage from Move.ai which enables motion capture with no suits and Kinetix.tech that aims to empower creators to make emote NFTs using only a phone camera,” it said.

The inaugural event in 2021 claimed over 50,000 unique attendees over its four-day run, but Decentraland has found itself faced with questions about how many people use its platform. Earlier this month, data aggregator DappRadar showed the metaverse had just 38 active users in one 24-hour period based on interactions with its smart contracts.

Decentraland disputed the numbers and claimed just under 56,000 monthly active users for September, an average of 1,890 per day. DappRadar has since agreed to update how it calculates users on the platform but its number still don’t match Decentraland’s claims. It now reports 657 users over the last 24 hour period.

Either way, these numbers still pale in comparison to non-blockchain metaverses, which also regularly host concerts. Ariana Grande’s virtual concert on Fortnite drew 78 million players in August last year, while Lil Was X’s Roblox show garnered 33 million views.

© 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.

Blockchain infrastructure firm ChainSafe has raised $18.8 million in an oversubscribed Series A round led by Canadian venture capital firm Round13. 

Other investors in the round include ConsenSys, HashKey Capital, NGC Ventures and Digital Finance, according to a company release. 

Aidman Hyman and Hatcher Lipton co-founded ChainSafe at an Ethereum meetup in Toronto in 2017, a time when the blockchain industry was still very nascent and needed better developer tools.

“Bitcoin wasn’t necessarily the thing that excited us,” said Hyman in an interview with The Block. They gravitated toward Ethereum because it could empower a new form of digital relationship, he added.

“Specifically, the idea of unstoppable code was something that once we heard, we couldn’t unhear,” Hyman said.

The five-year-old company has since evolved from its Ethereum days and is now a fully-fledged multi-chain research and development studio that specializes in developer tooling.

A multi-chain solution

Most of ChainSafe’s projects operate across multiple chains. Recent projects include Web3.untity, a software development kit (SDK) for connecting Unity games to blockchain technologies, and cross-chain bridging solutions. 

It is still most likely well-known for its role in the Ethereum ecosystem, however. One of the company’s projects is Lodestar, a consensus client for implementing Ethereum’s proof-of-stake algorithm, which played a key role in The Merge. 

The team takes the approach of “technical objectivity” when looking to build developer tools for blockchain technologies, Hyman said. They choose build on technologies that they think will still be here in 20, 50 or even 100 years from now.

“One of the things that’s really important for us is to never forget that we come from the open-source movement and that the primitives that we are creating are aimed to be primitives for a future digital world,” Hyman said. 

From bootstrapping to Series A

The five-year-old company now has 120 employees in 33 countries. It has predominantly bootstrapped till this point, having only raised an undisclosed amount in a seed round in 2020, according to Crunchbase. 

The recent fundraise will accelerate the development of the ChainSafe platform, Lipton said. 

“Why at this point? In these markets?” Hyman said. “Really, it wasn’t a matter of market conditions, but rather this was where we were at in our journey.” 

The startup closed the Series A round in the middle of September, Lipton said. 

Khaled Verjee, a managing partner in Round13’s digital asset fund, will join ChainSafe’s board of directors alongside current board member Joseph Lubin, co-founder of Ethereum and founder of ConsenSys. 

The average amount for a Series A check in the third quarter was $22.8 million, according to data from The Block research. 

Third quarter blockchain venture deal size from The Block Research

© 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.

The Aptos Foundation released the tokenomics outline for the newly launched Aptos blockchain. 

The foundation has put live a summary but said that a more comprehensive explanation of the blockchain’s tokenomics and values are coming at a later date, according to posts on Twitter.

The blockchain will have an initial supply of 1 billion tokens, which will rise to 1.5 billion by the end of 2031. The minimal unit for Aptos — similar to a satoshi, or a wei — will be called an octa.

The blockchain’s tokens will be split between the community (51%), core contributors (19%), the foundation (16.5%) and investors (13.48%).

Here’s how the Aptos circulating supply will increase over time. Image: Aptos Foundation.

The funds allocated to the community will be handed out over the next decade through community grants and other initiatives. Tokens allocated to core contributors and investors are subject to a four-year vesting period.

The foundation also noted that 82% of tokens on the network are already being staked and receiving staking rewards. It appears that those staking their tokens — even if they are subject to vesting periods — will be able to access and sell their staking rewards.

The current maximum annual staking reward is 7% and is set to decline by 1.5% per year until it reaches 3.25% — which is expected to take around 50 years.

In the nick of time

Prior to the tokenomics summary going live, many crypto users had complained that trading of the blockchain’s token was about to begin without this information available.

“It’s not great that FTX/Binance etc are all listing Aptos without any tokenomics transparency at all,” said prominent crypto trader Cobie. “Surely it should be a prerequisite to listing something that users can have the basic information on what they’re buying lol.” 

FTX and Binance are listing Aptos on Oct. 19 at 1am (UTC).

© 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.