Terraform Labs co-founder Do Kwon reportedly arrested in Montenegro
On March 23, Terra co-founder Do Kwon was arrested in Montenegro. Local news outlets confirmed the arrest, and it was reported that Kwon's aide, Han Mo, was also arrested with him.
Kwon is wanted by South Korean, Singaporean, and American authorities for his alleged role in the collapse of the $40 billion Terra ecosystem.
Montenegro does not have an extradition agreement with South Korea or Singapore. Still, it has an old extradition treaty with the U.S. and has complied with extradition requests for U.S. nationals.
The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Kwon with securities fraud, and the U.S. Department of Justice is probing his role in the collapse of the Terra ecosystem.
Binance and CZ sued by CFTC over US regulatory violations
The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) has filed a lawsuit against Binance Holdings Ltd., the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, for allegedly violating rules designed to prevent illicit financial activity.
The CFTC is seeking a permanent ban for Binance and its CEO, Changpeng Zhao, alleging a long-running pattern of undisclosed conflicts of interest and illegal activity.
Binance has been under investigation by the CFTC and other federal agencies for several years.
The CFTC's lawsuit also alleges that Binance's corporate structure was designed to obfuscate who owns and controls the exchange and that Binance failed to operate an effective program for stopping money laundering.
Binance also allegedly gave Americans access to derivatives such as futures or swaps that must be traded on regulated platforms.
In a March 28 blog post, Zhao responded to the CFTC’s lawsuit calling the allegations “an incomplete recitation of facts.”
Check out our Daily Show wherein we discuss the Binance complaint at length!
Polygon’s ‘holy grail’ Ethereum-scaling zkEVM beta hits mainnet
Polygon has released its open-source zkEVM Ethereum scaling technology to the mainnet, which promises to reduce transaction costs and increase the throughput of smart contract deployments.
ZK-rollups are a type of scaling solution that batch computations and state storage to layer-2 platforms, allowing thousands of transactions to be processed off-chain with a proof posted to the Ethereum mainnet.
Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal described ZK proofs as the "holy grail of Ethereum scaling" and believes that ZK-rollups will make Optimistic Rollups obsolete.
The zkEVM has been launched to mainnet beta and will continue to be optimized with bug bounties and further audits.
Vitalik Buterin was also involved in the launch and carried out the first user transaction, which Nailwal described as symbolic.
Coinbase wants devs to build inflation-pegged ‘flatcoins’ on its new ‘Base’ network
Coinbase recently announced its layer-2 network called Base. In a post published on March 24, Coinbase outlined four areas of focus for the network, which include developing an inflation-pegged flatcoin, an on-chain reputation system, an on-chain limit order book (LOB) exchange, and tools that make the decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem safer.
The flatcoin would track the consumer price index and inflation data to ensure stability in purchasing power and resiliency from the economic uncertainty caused by the legacy financial system.
The on-chain reputation system would establish trust between users and the on-chain limit order book exchange would provide a new trading venue for professional traders and institutions.
Coinbase wants to enable tools that protect against smart contract code vulnerabilities and protocol logic errors, as well as insurance protocols to serve as a backstop for users in the event of a smart contract exploit.
To help fund early-stage projects building on Base, Coinbase launched its Base Ecosystem Fund.
First Citizens snaps up Silicon Valley Bank Assets
First Citizens Bank of North Carolina has acquired all deposits and loans of Silicon Valley Bank, according to the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation.
On March 26, the FDIC purchased $72 billion of Silicon Valley Bank's assets at a discount of $16.5 billion, with $90 billion in securities and other assets remaining in the receivership.
As part of the purchase, 17 former branches of Silicon Valley Bank will open as First Citizens Bank and Trust Company on March 27.
First Citizens Bank is the 30th largest commercial bank in the United States.
Euler Finance Hacker returns Majority of Stolen ETH Back to Protocol
A hacker who stole nearly $200 million from the Euler Finance protocol earlier this month returned most of the stolen funds to the protocol on Saturday.
The return of the funds caused the Euler native token EUL to increase by 25% in the past 24 hours.
The hacker sent back 51,000 ether, worth nearly $90 million USD, to the Euler deployer contract.
However, the hacker also sent tens of millions of DAI stablecoins to another wallet.
Advanced Analysis For Arbitrum Airdrop
An analysis of the Arbitrum airdrop and its rules for sybil address detection has revealed several loopholes, resulting in 279,328 same-person addresses and 148,595 Sybil addresses receiving tokens.
The rules excluded cross-chain bridges, centralized exchanges, and smart contracts while detecting Sybil, and were relatively tolerant for small-scale and same-person addresses.
In this case, ineffective rules enabled Sybils to exploit exchanges, bridges, and contracts, and engage in post-snapshot collection behaviors.