According to a post-mortem analysis provided by CertiK of the $5.8 million Lodestar Finance exploit that occurred on Dec. 10, 5. The hacker burned a little over 3 million in GLP, their profit on this exploit was the stolen funds on Lodestar - minus the GLP they burned. 6. 2.8 Million of the GLP is recoverable, which is worth about $2.4 million. We are going to reach out to the hacker and... — Lodestar Finance (,) (@LodestarFinance) December 10, 2022 In a similar instance, CertiK said that Lodestar Finance hackers "artificially pumped the price of an illiquid collateral asset which …

With decentralized finance (DeFi) being a hub for various hacks and exploits, some may feel discouraged or wary of entering the space. However, professionals within the crypto space are confident that DeFi will have broader adoption in the future. From educating institutional investors to eliminating user experience barriers for retail investors, Web3 executives shared their thoughts on how broader DeFi adoption can be achieved. Speaking to Cointelegraph, Anton Bukov, the co-founder of 1inch Network, believes that recent events in centralized finance (CeFi) have highlighted the importance of DeFi. The executive believes it’s just “a matter of time” before the financial …

The cryptocurrency exchange Bybit joins the parade of exchanges in the industry pushing for transparency post the FTX catastrophe. On Dec. 12, it announced that it has launched a Merkle Tree-based proof of reserve system. The new transparency initiative allows its users to directly verify Bybit’s holdings, along with their personal assets deposited into the exchange. The feature is available to all users with funds in both trading accounts and funding accounts, which also includes crypto holdings in Bybit Earn products. Additionally the new feature enables verification of Bybit’s wallet ownership, that assets are held with a 1:1 ratio. Ben …

Arbitrum-based lending protocol Lodestar Finance was exploited in a flash loan attack on Dec. 10. According to Lodestar, the attacker manipulated the price of the plvGLP token before borrowing all platform liquidity using the inflated token. In a Twitter thread, Lodestar explained the attack flow. The attacker first manipulated the exchange rate of the plvGLP contract to 1.83 GLP per plvGLP, "an exploit that by itself would be unprofitable", said the company. Then, the attacker supplied plvGLP collateral to Lodestar and borrowed all available liquidity, cashing out part of the funds "until the collateralization ratio mechanism prevented a full liquidation …

The Metaverse as a concept exploded last year, especially after social media giant Facebook rebranded to Meta. And while there have been a number of different virtual world projects released, interoperability and integrations are still lacking. Generally, users are provided with a virtual reality that has already been shaped for them. Not only that, limitations regarding protocols, integrations and the use of NFTs are still dominating the Metaverse sector. Yet, in the true spirit of crypto and blockchain tech, innovative projects like Bluemoon are redefining what the Metaverse can be. By bringing the executive, decision-making role to the user, Bluemoon …

Taproot support across the industry is still crawling one year after the Bitcoin soft fork, indicating a strong potential for innovation and broader adoption of Web3 solutions to be unlocked through the world's largest cryptocurrency, sources told Cointelegraph. "Since early on, Satoshi predicted that layers being built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain would enable Bitcoin to move beyond being only sound money by adding programmability, which makes Bitcoin the optimal framework to build out Web3 capabilities," noted Alex Miller, CEO of the Web3 developer platform Hiro. The Taproot upgrade took place in November 2021 and laid the foundation for …

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week. The United States regulators want to take a closer look at money laundering and terror financing laws by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), as it asked banking sector players for feedback on DeFi’s crime risks. Ethereum developers are targeting the last week of March for Ethereum’s Shanghai hard fork and some additional improvement upgrades by June of next year. Ankr protocol has deployed $15 million to buy back the bad debt resulting from …

According to a discussion at the 151st Ethereum Core Developers Meeting on Dec. 8, core programmers set a tentative deadline of March 2023 for the Shanghai hard fork. In addition, developers will aim for May or June 2023 to launch Ethereum Improvement Protocol (EIP) 4844 upgrade that will introduce proto-danksharding to the network. Although the much-anticipated proof-of-stake Merge upgrade was completed on Sept. 15, staked Ether (stETH), are currently locked on the Ethereum Beacon Chain. The token is created by decentralized finance protocol Lido with close to 3.5 million stETH ($4.48 billion) in circulation. After the Shanghai upgrade, stETH users …

Algorithmic stablecoins have had a rough year, starting with UST de-pegging to zero and the subsequent blow-up of Terra’s LUNA token which was used for the asset’s backing. Algorithmic stablecoins are not fully collateralized and rely on different mechanisms to maintain the peg, making them inherently fragile to market conditions. The UST implosion created a domino effect that caused another stablecoin, Magic Internet Money (MIM) to de-peg. Despite the fragility of algorithmic stablecoins, new projects like Djed by Cardano (ADA) are still planning on launching, but that doesn’t mean that the concept has improved since the crises seen earlier in …

The Nomad token bridge announced its relaunch guide after fixing the contract vulnerability that led to a $190 million exploit in August. According to a blog post from Dec. 7, the Nomad protocol will allow users to bridge back madAssets and access a pro-rata share of recovered funds. A redesign for the token bridge was also implemented by the Nomad team, said the company, explaining that without this redesign, the "first people to bridge back their madAssets would receive canonical tokens on a one-to-one basis until there were no canonical tokens left." To avoid this first-come, first-serve approach, the team …

The ongoing FTX saga has injected more uncertainty into an already shaken market. If it was not clear already, even the biggest centralized exchanges can fail. The problem is multi-faceted. On the one hand, just like in traditional finance, centralized institutions are only as good as the people who run them. When investors use services like FTX, they are putting their trust in the people that run the service. Unfortunately, history is rife with examples of powerful people taking advantage of that trust. On the other hand, cryptocurrency is still very new. The vast majority of crypto users are not …

Despite turbulent market conditions over the last year, the metaverse and its potential utility remain steady in the minds of consumers. According to data from a new survey by Capgemini, a business and technology strategy advisor, over three-quarters of consumers expect their interactions with brands and individuals to be impacted by the metaverse. This also goes for organizations, as 7 out of 10 believe that the metaverse and immersive experiences will be a market differentiator in terms of customer experience. The report surveyed 8,000 consumers, along with 1,000 organizations in 12 countries across different sectors to understand metaverse competency, interest …