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DeFi platform Yearn.Finance said Thursday that one of its pools of funds had been exploited, resulting in the loss of $2.8 million.

“We have noticed the v1 yDAI vault has suffered an exploit. The exploit has been mitigated,” the project’s official Twitter account said. Yearn.Finance is a so-called yield aggregator, through which users can deposit funds in pools — or vaults — which are then deployed to other DeFi protocols in an effort to generate yields for those depositors.

One of Yearn’s core developers later shared details about the exploit on Twitter:

Yearn DAI v1 vault got exploited, the attacker got away with $2.8m, the vault lost $11m. Deposits into strategies disabled for v1 DAI, TUSD, USDC, USDT vaults while we investigate. pic.twitter.com/1RWYyu0d5m

— banteg (@bantg) February 4, 2021

Stani Kulechov, the founder of DeFi platform Aave, later tweeted out the transaction at the heart of the exploit, involving numerous DeFi protocols and more than $5,000 worth of ETH-denominated gas fees.

“Complex exploit with over 160 nested transactions and 8,6 mm gas used (around 75% of the block) resulted to 2.7 mm USD loss,” Kulechov wrote.

This story is developing and will be updated as more information becomes available.

© 2021 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.

January saw a significant jump in adjusted on-chain stablecoin volume, according to data collected by The Block Research.

The monthly figure came in at $308.7 billion, exceeding December’s record-setting $178 billion. As expected, some $199 billion of the January number came from USDT, the stablecoin operated by Tether that functions across a number of different blockchains, including Ethereum and Tron. USDC accounted for $63.1 billion of the monthly figure.

The Block’s Eden Au recently penned a deep-dive into the different types of stablecoins, including those collateralized by fiat currencies or cryptocurrencies. Read his research piece here.

© 2021 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 working group in the Wyoming legislature dedicated to blockchain technology and innovation has put forward a bill that, if approved, would allow decentralized autonomous organizations, or DAOs, to officially incorporate in the state.

The bill was originally submitted in mid-January, though a publicly available draft of the measure appears to have existed online since December. Public records indicate that the bill was sent to the Wyoming Senate’s Joint Corporations, Elections & Political Subdivisions Committee on February 3.

A DAO is an organization that is governed by the terms of a smart contract. Such governance may take the form of token-based preference setting or voting, with decision outcomes based on the degree of participation and the preferences expressed in the vote.

At its heart, the Wyoming bill aims to allow DAOs to be chartered in and recognized by state authorities. They would be enabled to form as limited liability companies or LLCs, with the term DAO, LAO or DAO LLC appearing in their official registry. It appears that existing LLCs in the state can become DAOs under the terms of the measure.

What’s more, the measure covers DAOs that are “member managed” or “algorithmically managed.” For that latter category, “[a]n algorithmically managed decentralized autonomous organization may only form under this chapter if the underlying smart contracts are able to be updated, modified or otherwise upgraded.”

Under the terms of the bill, the articles of organization would define the characteristics of the registered DAO’s organizational structure, including the rights of participants and how the smart contract component would be subject to change. Should a smart contract change be conducted, the articles of organization would need to be amended or updated.

In a sense, the proposed bill serves as a kind of bridge between real-world business operations and the general ethos of DAOs, which strive to decentralize the organs of control and distribute them across participating stakeholders. It’s not entirely clear what demand there is for a Wyoming-registered DAO, but the state, in general, has pursued a positive policy stance toward the crypto space. For example, a growing number of crypto industry firms are setting up banking services in the state.

The full text can be found here.

© 2021 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.

100x Group, the holding company connected to derivatives exchange BitMEX, has backed a new investment fund named Cadenza Capital Management.

The fund is run by managing partners Kumar Dandapani and Max Shapiro, who used to manage BitMEX’s venture capital arm 100x Ventures. Dandapani was head of ventures at 100x Group from 2018 until 2020, while Shapiro served as an investment manager for the same period. 

A 100x Group spokesperson told The Block its own venture arm remains active despite the departures of Dandapani and Shapiro, who appear to have taken up roles at Cadenza at the start of this year. 

“100x Group continues to actively pursue strategic investments and acquisitions within the crypto ecosystem. The group is also an investor in funds, including Cadenza Capital Management,” said 100x’s spokesperson.

While Cadenza is separate to the 100x, its management team continues to provide support to the group, according to a person familiar with the matter.

In October, the U.S. Department of Justice and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission filed charges against BitMEX – which 100x describes as its “cornerstone” – and its owner-operators, including chief executive Arthur Hayes. 

BitMEX’s founders were accused of operating an unregistered trading platform, as well as of violating anti-money laundering and know-your-customer rules. Later in October, a 100x spokesperson called the DoJ’s charges heavy-handed and vowed to fight them.

A LinkedIn profile for Cadenza Capital Management describes it as a San Francisco-based investment firm with a focus on digital finance. Crypto lending business BlockFi and Bahrain-based crypto exchange Rain are listed among its noteworthy investments.

According to their own LinkedIn profiles, both Dandapani and Shapiro took up their posts at Cadenza in 2021, suggesting its formation is recent. The Block contacted both Dandapani and Shapiro by LinkedIn but did not receive responses by the time of publication.

On February 3, crypto security startup Casa announced that Cadenza Ventures had contributed to its $4m Series A round.

© 2021 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.