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Bug bounty security platform Immunefi is launching “The Rekt Test” — a baseline security standard for web3 — in partnership with cybersecurity firm Trails of Bits.

The test guides web3 projects through a set of questions designed to ensure they adhere to a minimum level of security performance. The results enable users and investors to more easily evaluate the quality of a project before engaging with it, according to a statement.

The Rekt Test covers seven security assessments: system documentation and roles, key management and access control, incident response and crisis management, team and personnel security, code security and testing, external audits and vulnerability management and attack mitigation and user protection.

The test is also in collaboration with Polygon Labs, Solana Foundation, Fireblocks, DeFi Education Fund and Ribbit Capital. It was developed by a group of web3 security experts including, Mitchell Amador, founder and CEO at Immunefi, Dan Guido, co-founder and CEO at Trail of Bits, Lee Mount, head of EulerSwap at Euler Finance, Shahar Madar, head of security products at Fireblocks and Ribbit Capital representatives, Immunefi said.

The state of web3 security

“The state of web3 security is still largely immature and of poor quality,” Immunefi added, citing its recent report claiming that over $3.9 billion was lost to hacks and scams in web3 last year. With the large amount of capital in the ecosystem providing an incentive for attackers to exploit web3 projects through code vulnerabilities, private key thefts and social engineering, setting security standards was crucial, Immunefi said.

“The Rekt Test is a crucial standard for ensuring that web3 projects are operating at a minimum baseline of security performance,” Amador said. “We see devastating, unnecessary losses caused by private key thefts and social engineering alone that can be mitigated by having an established and proactive approach to security requirements.”   

Last week, Immunefi said it had been inundated with ChatGPT-generated web3 security reports since OpenAI launched the tool in November.

© 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 BOJ is predicted to soften its grip on the country’s bond markets, potentially influencing global bond markets, exchanges rates and liquidity conditions. Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies, in general, are sensitive to changes in global liquidity conditions.

Products focused on XLM saw nearly 63% higher inflows this year.

The Sui Foundation has ended its relationship with decentralized exchange MovEx following a breach of its contract.

The foundation said it had given MovEx 2.5 million SUI for its work on the network’s native order book, DeepBook — subject to a contractual lockup. However, it found that MovEx made three transactions, moving chunks of the tokens in violation of the agreement.

“Following these events, Sui Foundation has terminated its relationship with the MovEx team. No additional SUI tokens will be distributed to MovEx nor will MovEx remain one of the main contributors to DeepBook,” Sui Foundation said in a blog post.

MovEx’s tokens have been moved to a custodian wallet that will release them according to the schedule. Sui Foundation said all other tokens subject to such lockups are held with custodians.

Sui Foundation made the statement following allegations that unlocked tokens were being sold on the open market.

MovEx did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

© 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.

South Korean authorities will work to support virtual asset service providers’ compliance efforts and combat relevant crime as the country awaits proper legislation amid surging illegal activities in the market, the government said today.

The Korea Financial Intelligence Unit — an agency dedicated to tackling money laundering and terrorist financing — held a consultative body meeting to “strengthen the compliance capacity of virtual asset service providers,” according to a statement published today by the Financial Services Commission.

The meeting occurred just a day after the country launched an interagency investigation unit to fight against crypto-related crime. The interagency unit comprises at least 30 investigators from the prosecution, the Financial Supervisory Service, the National Tax Service and the Korea Customs Service, Yonhap news agency reported.

“Although the KoFIU has been carrying out its oversight functions mainly within the framework of anti-money laundering efforts, we will operate a strategic analysis team on virtual assets to more systematically analyze criminal activities involving virtual assets so that we can provide more meaningful and valuable data to the investigative authorities,” KoFIU Commissioner Rhee Yunsu said at the meeting.

Five domestic crypto services providers attended the meeting and reported their measures for dealing with potential crime. 

Upbit, a South Korean exchange, said it had used artificial intelligence to help with fault transaction detection, according to the statement. Another exchange, Bithumb, said it has developed its exchange app to detect illegally matched orders and automatically shut down related features when it catches a remote control app being deployed.

New crypto legislation in South Korea

In June, South Korean lawmakers passed legislation to better protect crypto investors. The new legislation, comprised of 19 crypto-related bills, gives the FSC and the Bank of Korea the authority to oversee crypto operators and asset custodians. The new bill also allows authorities to enforce penalties in cases of unfair trading of virtual assets.

Earlier this month, the FSC said it would require domestic companies to disclose cryptocurrency holdings from next year as part of new accounting rules. The new rules will also require crypto issuers to disclose information including token details, business models and internal accounting policies.

© 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.

EthStorage, a crypto startup that aims to scale Ethereum storage via a Layer 2 network, reached a $100 million valuation in its seed funding round.

The fundraise of $7 million was led by crypto investment fund dao5, EthStorage said in a tweet Thursday. Other investors in the round included SevenX Ventures, Foresight Ventures, Sky9 Capital, Gate Ventures and Galxe.

The funding round was structured as a simple agreement for future tokens (SAFT), Kevin Yang, managing partner at Gate Ventures, told The Block. EthStorage did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

EthStorage was founded last year by Qi Zhou, who is also the founder of blockchain infrastructure startup QuarkChain, which he founded in 2018 after working for companies like Google and Meta. QuarkChain has its own token, QKC, which currently has a market capitalization of over $66 million, according to CoinGecko data.

What is EthStorage?

Currently under development, EthStorage is a Layer 2 storage rollup built on top of Ethereum. “Through the periodic submission of storage proofs from the EthStorage Layer 2 network to Ethereum L1, the platform aims to capitalize on Ethereum mainnet security features while significantly increasing Ethereum’s storage capacity at a considerably reduced cost,” Gate Ventures said in a blog post today. “Its goal is to achieve Petabytes of storage capacity with storage costs reduced by a factor of 1/1000.”

Gate Ventures compared EthStorage to other blockchain storage projects, including Arweave and Filecoin, and said that EthStorage provides features currently unavailable by those projects. “Ethstorage is paving the way for an innovative, cost-effective, and dynamic storage solution that has the potential to address the limitations faced by existing storage options,” Gate Ventures said.

EthStorage’s seed round comes during a period of reduced venture capital investment in the crypto sector. Global venture capital investment in crypto startups has declined for five consecutive quarters, according to data compiled by The Block Pro Research.

© 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 pivot to the metaverse has cost Meta billions of dollars, but the company’s founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg says the social media isn’t looking to give up anytime soon.

The standard bitcoin futures contract on CME is equivalent to 5 BTC, while the micro contract is sized at one-tenth of 1 BTC.

The U.S. Department of Justice informed a federal judge that it did “not intend to proceed” with a campaign finance charge against FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried after consulting with The Bahamas over whether it was included in an extradition document last year.

Meta’s metaverse-related division Reality Labs posted $3.7 billion in operating losses in the second quarter of this year, but the social media giant said it remains “fully committed” to metaverse development.

The unit recorded $276 million in revenue in the second quarter of this year, down from $452 million in the same period last year, according to Meta’s latest earnings results released Wednesday.

“As our investments in AI continue, we remain fully committed to the metaverse vision as well,” Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in an earnings call. “We’ve been working on both of these two major priorities for many years in parallel now, and in many ways the two areas are overlapping and complementary.”

Susan Li, chief financial officer of Meta, said Reality Labs’ expenses amounted to $4 billion in the second quarter, “up 23% due to lapping a reduction in Reality Labs loss reserves in Q2 of last year as well as growth in employee-related costs.”

The $3.7 billion second-quarter loss came after the division reported a $4 billion loss in the previous quarter and $2.8 billion in the same quarter last year.

Metaverse still a focus

Despite the heavy losses, Zuckerberg said the company to believe in the potential of both the metaverse and AI.

“I’ve said on a number of these calls that the two technological waves that we’re riding are AI in the near term and the metaverse over the longer term,” he said.

Overall, Meta reported $7.79 billion in profits for the quarter, up 16% from the same period last year. Its revenue grew 11% year-on-year to $32 billion in the quarter.

Meta’s stock closed 1.39% higher on Wednesday and was up 6.89% in after-hours trading.

© 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.