Blockbytes Weekly -- Week 2, 2023
We may have gone on holiday, but the crypto industry sure didn't.
Avalanche
TLDR
Avalanche NFTs are now available for purchase through a new integration with Venly Shopify NFT
Millions of Shopify Merchants Can Now Use Avalanche NFTs Through Venly
Avalanche NFTs are now available to millions of Shopify merchants through the latest integration with the merchant app Venly Shopify NFT. Merchants can design, mint, and sell NFTs in just a few clicks. Shopify is an e-commerce platform that generates $1B+ in total quarterly revenue.
There’s no need for a pre-existing digital wallet to buy an Avalanche NFT. After an NFT purchase from Shopify, buyers get an email with a link to a new wallet. This wallet holds the NFT and can be sent to any other wallet, such as Ava Labs Core.
BNB Chain
TLDR
Trader Joe’s DEX and NFT marketplace will expand to BNB chain
Binance Users can now purchase crypto through Google and Apple Pay
Binance is in the final stages of purchasing South Korean exchange, Gopax, to enter the Korean market
BUSD has seen a significant drop in market capitalization following a rocky end to 2022
Trader Joe's DEX and NFT marketplace to expand to BNB Chain
Trader Joe will expand its Joepegs NFT Marketplace and the decentralized exchange onto the BNB chain. BNB Chain users will be able to discover premium digital collectibles using the NFT marketplace, as well as trade tokens using Trader Joe’s unique automated market maker (AMM).
With over 34,000 users, Joepegs is the most popular NFT marketplace on Avalanche. Trader Joe’s Liquidity Book offers low fees on swaps and concentrated liquidity provisioning for liquidity providers. The deployment of both platforms will be completed before the end of the first quarter of 2023.
Binance Confirms Integration of Apple Pay and Google Pay
Binance users can now purchase cryptocurrencies using both Apple Pay and Google Pay. There are over 25 million Google Pay users and 43.9 million Apple Pay users. Binance will charge a 2% transaction fee for purchases made with digital wallets. The exchange recently announced its membership in the Chamber of Digital Commerce, a lobbying group for the cryptocurrency industry in the US.
Binance reportedly finalizing acquisition Korean crypto exchange Gopax
Binance is completing due diligence and finalizing its acquisition of the Korean crypto exchange Gopax. The deal was originally set to be announced in 2022 but was delayed due to consultations over equity value calculations. Gopax hit a liquidity crisis due to FTX's bankruptcy. Binance has faced regulatory barriers and restrictions while attempting to enter the Korean market. Its acquisition of Gopax will allow it to enter the market indirectly.
Declining Demand for Binance's BUSD Represents New Chapter in Stablecoin Wars
BUSD's market cap fell to an 11-month low of $16.4 billion on January 3, down from $22.1 billion at the start of December. It remains the third-largest stablecoin by market cap. Binance recently endured a wave of user withdrawals due to fears about its reserves. The exchange had to redeem BUSD to Paxos to prop up its USDC and USDT reserves to satisfy withdrawals. Despite its drop in market cap, BUSD still climbed by 20% over the year, while USDC gained 4% and USDT fell by 15%.
Ethereum
TLDR
Liquid Staking protocol tokens have seen a surge in price following Ethereum’s upcoming Shanghai upgrade announcement.
The new upgrade features code allowing for withdrawals of ETH staked in the Beacon chain.
Grayscale’s Ethereum Trust is trading at a 60% discount against the price of Ethereum.
Security firm Dedaub has saved Uniswap from a potential exploit by identifying a vulnerability in the protocol’s code
Ethereum's Upcoming Shanghai Upgrade Powers Top Liquid Staking Tokens Higher
Withdrawals on staked ETH have a tentative release date, leading to increased staking activity. Lido DAO or LDO, the governance token of the Lido decentralized autonomous organization, has jumped 19% in the past seven days, with prices reaching a one-and-a-half-month high of $1.30. Liquid staking protocol StakeWise's SWISE token has surged over 70% in a week, while Rocket Pool's RPL has gained almost 10%.
The rally follows Ethereum developers' Dec. 8 announcement that the network's next hard fork, a backward-incompatible software upgrade, will take place in March. The upgrade, known as Shanghai, will include code allowing withdrawals of ether staked in the Beacon Chain from December 2020, finally giving participants a timeline for reclaiming their ether.
Grayscale Ethereum Trust Trades at Record 60% Low Against Ethereum
The Grayscale Ethereum Trust (ETHE) is trading at a record 59.39% discount relative to the price of Ethereum. It has been trading at a discount compared to market prices since November 2021. ETHE allows investors to gain exposure to Ethereum without investing in it directly. The fund lost 68.37% of its value in the last year. Its sister fund, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust, is currently trading at a 45.17% discount relative to the price of Bitcoin.
How Uniswap Was Saved From Critical Vulnerability By This Security Firm
Security firm Dedaub discovered and disclosed a critical vulnerability on the popular Ethereum decentralized exchange Uniswap. The team behind the protocol fixed the bug, and the affected components were redeployed.
According to the security firm, the vulnerability was unintentionally implemented with the Universal Router. This component allows Uniswap users to trade ERC-20 tokens and non-fungible tokens “into a single swap router.” When the vulnerability was in, a user could send a transaction to a third party, and the latter could have gained access to the sender’s funds.
FTX
TLDR
Regulators in the Bahamas still hold $3.5B in FTX customer assets in custody
Sam Bankman-Fried has pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Manhattan
Regulators in the Bahamas Are Holding $3.5 Billion in FTX Customer Assets
The Securities Commission of the Bahamas took custody of FTX deposits valued at more than $3.5 billion on November 12. It obtained the funds after it was determined that there was a significant risk of FTX's assets being stolen or looted by former employees. The assets will be held until the Bahamas Supreme Court directs the Commission to release them to customers and creditors. The Commission says it didn't direct FTX to prioritize the withdrawals of Bahamas-based customers.
FTX Founder Sam Bankman-Fried’s Not Guilty Plea in Court
Sam Bankman-Fried pleaded not guilty at his arraignment in Manhattan. He was arrested in December in the Bahamas and extradited to the US, where he is out on a $250 million personal recognizance bond. His charges include wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering, and conspiracy to misuse customer funds. The hearing was only the beginning of a long and increasingly complex process.
Polygon
TLDR
Savage, a Polygon-powered streaming app, has partnered with Samsung to give Web3 customers access to high-quality photos and videos
Samsung and Savage empower web3 users with Polygon
Samsung has teamed up with Savage, a streaming service on the Polygon network, to give Web3 customers access to high-quality photos and videos. The Savage Smart TV application, according to the company, can help with the smooth integration of an IRL display. Additionally, Savage allows users to access top-notch uploads from any marketplace. The maximum size for these uploads is 8K. The blockchain-based streaming service will access more than 25 million households through Samsung’s global audience.
Solana
TLDR
Solana has seen a resurgence in network activity as the newly launched meme coin BONK is airdropped to Solana users.
The Magic Eden NFT marketplace has had two separate issues with the platform this week
The first is flooding of fake NFT listings on the platform
The second is an issue with a third-party image hosting provider temporarily displaying stills from The Big Bang Theory and pornographic images
Solana price spikes as newly launched dog coin BONK gains community hype
Bonk, a meme token modeled after Shiba Inu, has launched on the Solana network driving the price of SOL up. According to the project’s website, Bonk is the first dog token on the Solana blockchain. Initially, 50% of the token supply was airdropped to Solana users with a mission to remove toxic Alameda-styled token economics. The airdrop resulted in more than $20 million in trading volume, according to the Solana decentralized exchange Orca.
Fake Solana NFTs Are Being Sold on Magic Eden in a 'Massive' Exploit
Creators and collectors of Solana-based NFTs have fallen victim to a major exploit. Leading marketplace Magic Eden appears to be allowing scammers to pass off and sell fake NFTs as part of verified collections. Magic Eden has stated that it had “added more verification layer per collection to resolve the issue,” while community members claim the problem has not been fixed.
The NFT marketplace was also under criticism following an issue where a third-party image hosting provider was “compromised.” According to Tweets from Magic Eden users, loading a collection’s page would sometimes temporarily flash a pornographic image in place of the NFT thumbnail. Others reported seeing a still from the comedy television series The Big Bang Theory instead.
Magic Eden has stated that each issue should be resolved following a hard reset on the user’s end. At the time of writing, the issues appear to have been rectified, as the reported images have not appeared on the platform upon testing.
Boom or Bust?
TLDR
An indie game developer has created Logan Paul’s failed CryptoZoo game in just a “few hours”
Indie Dev Brings Logan Paul’s CryptoZoo Game to Life in a “Few Hours”
Logan Paul has found himself in a fresh crypto controversy after a three-part series from Youtuber Graham Stephen, better known as Coffeezilla. The videos allege that Paul’s blockchain game Cryptozoo was little more than an elaborate scam. The project has sold NFTs and ZOO tokens to investors and would-be users, but it has yet to come through on the game.
Former CryptoZoo engineer Zach Kelling told Decrypt via direct message that his team of 30 engineers is owed $1 million for their work on CryptoZoo—and only then will they turn over the game they developed to Paul and his team.
However, an indie game developer named Yipy has released a game called RealZoo for free. In a video, Yipy said he managed to develop and release RealZoo in just “a few hours.” RealZoo allows users to log in using a Gmail account and are immediately granted tokens for free to spend on eggs, which hatch into random animals. Those animals can then be bred into hybrid animals or “burned” to make more tokens.
This is not Paul’s first foray into the crypto world after he heavily endorsed a project called “Dink Doink.” At present, Dink Doink has a value of $0.00. Not only that, the official website seems to have disappeared as well. So, there is no way of acquiring the coin. After the project turned sour, Logan Paul and the rest of his friends maintained their distance from it.
Logan Paul has since retracted his controversial response to Stephen’s videos and has committed to “taking accountability, apologizing, and coming forward with a plan in the near future.”