𝗦𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗸𝗲 vol. 53

Biweekly update on Proof-of-Stake ecosystem, 8th July — 22nd July

TL;DR
- Vitalik Buterin talks on the future of Ethereum on EthCC
- The Gravity DEX protocol is finally live, marking the biggest stride forward for Cosmos to date
- Learn why auctions are better run on-chain than off-chain and why a candle auction is a central feature of the Kusama network and Polkadot.
- Chainlink price feeds are live on Avalanche mainnet, paving wave for advanced DeFi apps. AVAX staking via delegation is now live on Stake DAO
- Cardano’s Daedalus: from launch to Flight and beyond
- BandChain Laozi mainnet upgrade — post-mortem
- 2 year anniversary of Algorand mainnet
- Tezos Protocol upgrade Granada is in the final stages, contract calls are on track to reach another record high, and the DeFi and NFT landscape are continuing to grow
- The Synthetix exchange will be enabled on Optimism during the week of July 26th with a final deployment date pending Spartan Council approval
- PayU purchases CELO tokens to kickstart stablecoin payment program
- Bluzelle partners with PolkaFoundry to accelerate DeFi adoption through intuitive oracle and NFT solutions
- Polygon Studios has been presented, a brand new Polygon’s arm for the Blockchain Gaming & NFT ecosystem. This will cement Polygon’s existing lead position as the de-facto platform for NFTs & Gaming.
- The UpOnly exchange is live, one of the first Injective relayers to go public and aims to provide a sleek interface for decentralized derivatives trading
- The ICE Blockchain introduced, a new EVM compatible blockchain for the ICON ecosystem
- The Graph Foundation to provide over $2.8M in funding to grants, in addition to $60M Core Dev Grant to StreamingFast
- Terra’s new $150M Ecosystem Fund introduced
- 1inch Foundation launches a $3 million grant program
- Neon, an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) scalability solution built on Solana, introduced
- Hop Protocol released their multichain bridge connecting xDai, Ethereum and Polygon
- 0x + Brave partner to make crypto and DeFi more accessible to everyone
- The Filecoin Techstars Accelerator announced
- Revival NFT Marketplace is officially live on IOST
- Persistence and IRIS Network join forces on multiple fronts
- Learn what the NEAR Foundation does
- And more!

#State_of_Stake https://twitter.com/Paradigm_fund/status/1418251471389446149?s=20

​​TOP 10 Staking Providers by Staked Value 📈

Binance is a leader, followed by Everstake, Kraken and Staked

👉https://cryptorank.io/tag/staking

🌀 Amazon plans to accept Bitcoin payments this year, claims insider 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/amazon-plans-to-accept-bitcoin-payments-this-year-claims-insider--edb954099c

BTC: $34434 ▪️ ETH: $2160 ▪️ XRP: $0.60 ▪️ BCH: $445

​​📈 Market Overview

Bitcoin price sold off below $37,000 shortly after topping $40,500, leading analysts to caution that bears still have a few tricks up their sleeves.

The Top-10 cryptocurrencies are traded in the red zone. Dogecoin -11.5%, Cardano -9.9%, Polkadot -9.3%

Market capitalization: $1.51T (-4.3%)
The BTC dominance: 46.15% (+0.8%)
Fear & Greed Index: 32 (Fear)

https://cryptorank.io/heatmaps

👉 Top Gainers

Wall Street Games (WSG) +140%
Mochi Market (MOMA) +51.3%
Civic (CVC) +30.3%

👉 Top Losers

AnRKey X (ANRX) -33.6%
Ampleforth (AMPL) -33.2%
Konomi Network (KONO) -28.1%

BTC Futures

Aggregated Volume — $94.67B
Aggregated Open Interest — $10.90B

👉 Derivatives Market Analytics

🌀 Amazon denies rumored plans for Bitcoin support 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/amazon-denies-rumored-plans-for-bitcoin-support--40775663c3

BTC: $36217 ▪️ ETH: $2144 ▪️ XRP: $0.61 ▪️ BCH: $467

🌀 Bitcoin attacks $40k: positive sentiment 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/bitcoin-attacks-40k-positive-sentiment--f67c3ee0fe

BTC: $39779 ▪️ ETH: $2303 ▪️ XRP: $0.73 ▪️ BCH: $516

🌀 Digital Euro to Handle ‘Almost Unlimited’ Payments, Estonian Central Bank Says After Test 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/digital-euro-to-handle-almost-unlimited-payments-estonian-central-bank-says-after-test--6b2c389223

BTC: $40781 ▪️ ETH: $2338 ▪️ XRP: $0.73 ▪️ BCH: $516

​​The Latest Breaking News 📣

#1 Binance integrates tax reporting tool —link

#2 ProFunds launches the first U.S. Bitcoin strategy mutual fund — link

#3 Escrow company issues first-ever Bitcoin-backed real estate loan — link

#4 PayPal Q2 transaction revenue rose 17%; earnings top estimates —link

#5 WazirX to launch decentralised exchange next month — link

👉 https://cryptorank.io/news

🌀 Elon Musk Hints Tesla Owns About 42K Bitcoins 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/elon-musk-hints-tesla-owns-about-42k-bitcoins--c1c0768071

BTC: $40117 ▪️ ETH: $2307 ▪️ XRP: $0.71 ▪️ BCH: $507

🌀 Ukraine central bank now officially allowed to issue digital currency 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/ukraine-central-bank-now-officially-allowed-to-issue-digital-currency--0991d2af34

BTC: $38836 ▪️ ETH: $2337 ▪️ XRP: $0.72 ▪️ BCH: $525

Аргент разыгрывает крипто призы https://flash.argent.xyz?kid=1M5JBM

​​The Latest Breaking News 📣

#1 FTX is creating an NFT-focused sports and entertainment marketplace — link

#2 Bakkt has partnered with Quiznos on Bitcoin payments — link

#3 DeFi platform dYdX is launching a governance token — link

#4 ⁠HSBC UK reportedly cuts credit card payments to Binance — link

#5 Google running crypto ads again as new policy goes into effect — link

👉 https://cryptorank.io/news

Poly Network Hack Clarification

📕 WHO DID THE HACK TARGET?

This is a big question to ask. I've seen a couple of comments like "Not your keys, not your Crypto" and likening it to BitConnect or Mt. Gox. It's similar but with a big caveat, these types of attacks don't typically target users crypto in their wallet. Custodial exchange and centralized lending will often target users crypto just sitting in a spot wallet.

When you supply liquidity to a protocol on DeFi it is not your crypto. You're keys should still be able to authorize the withdrawal of that crypto or your wallet will have a receipt of supplying like cETH or LP tokens. You are still ultimately the custodian of your own crypto in DeFi

If you've been interacting with DeFi protocols, it is highly unlikely you will wake up to a drained Metamask after one of these hacks. You are too small of a fish for those types of attacks to target. You are more likely to have to fall for a phishing scam if that is the case.

Typically hacks like this target liquidity pools. Liquidity pools often have immense value in them. You may lose crypto you have deposited in a hacked pool or farm, but often times protocols come up with solutions to reimburse any lost crypto like PancakeBunny earlier this year that suffered a flash loan attack.

Poly Network holds large liquidity pools to facilitate cross chain transfers. Holding a lot of exit liquidity on each chain. The money that was hacked from this event is likely to have been stolen from those who have large amounts of liquidity staked. This is not likely to be you farming CAKE on PCS!

Cross Chain protocols are incredibly hard to code, and they should be treated with caution when supplying liquidity to them.

📗 HOW DID THE ATTACK TAKE PLACE?

I want to keep this part simple for those not technically minded but there are currently two working theories as to how the hack took place. They both involve the private keys for the ownership of the liquidity pools.

🔑 Theory 1: Leaked Key

Poly Network has a big security problem from the outset. They had a single sig key to the pools which means that only one signer would need to authorise any changes to the liquidity pool, including withdrawal of funds. This is like leaving a vault of gold with only one key. If you wanted to access this, there wouldn't be any other parties involved.

Current theories suggest that this key was leaked or hacked via another method off-chain. This is the story from early official post mortem from Poly Network

EDIT: This theory has been disproved by Poly Network, but I wrote it so I thought I'd leave it here as an example of an early working theory

🖋 Theory 2: Hacked Contracts

There are two important contracts. A "manager" contract and a "data" contract. The data contract specifies the address which can submit transactions which can withdraw funds from the pool. If someone was to replace this address in the contract to theirs, they could withdraw as much from the pools as possible.

In solidity there is a concept called ownership. A smart contract can set certain functions to only execute if the owner executed them. Typically, when constructed the owner is the wallet who deployed the contract, which is typically the developer. However, in this case the owner of the "Data" contract was the "Manager" contract.

So now, if you were to call a function which could replace the address in the data contract with theirs from the manager, it would be allowed.

But here's another flaw in the design of Poly Network. The "manager" contract exists to run transactions on different chains. It has a function called verifyHeaderAndExecuteTx which verifies that a transaction exists on one chain, and if it does, runs it on another. This is needed for cross chain interoperability.

But wait... we've now got a way to run arbitrary functions from the "manager". If the attacker devises a specific input they can now freely set the most important address, the one which says who can withdraw from the pools, to theirs.

Confirmed by Poly Network

🌀 Institutions are buying Bitcoin like it's late 2020 🌀

https://blockchair.com/news/institutions-are-buying-bitcoin-like-its-late-2020--0cb7d4c4f0

BTC: $46180 ▪️ ETH: $3214 ▪️ XRP: $0.89 ▪️ BCH: $608