Crypto scammers have been accessing a “cheap and easy” black market of individuals willing to put their name and face on fraudulent projects — all for the low price of $8, blockchain security firm CertiK has uncovered. These individuals, described by CertiK as “Professional KYC actors” would, in some cases, voluntarily become the verified face of a crypto project, gaining trust in the crypto community prior to an “insider hack or exit scam.” Other uses of these KYC actors include using their identities to open up bank or exchange accounts on behalf of the bad actors. According to a Nov. …

DeFi is rife with great ideas capable of rebalancing financial power dynamics. However, so far, these ideas have proven hard to implement in sustainable and convenient ways. Take the DEX, or decentralized exchange — this is a cornerstone of DeFi and a place where users are able to trade with each other without sacrificing control over their funds or having to pay exorbitant fees. On paper, it sounds ideal. But when you look at the major DEXes, they are not convenient. DEXes have become synonymous with high transaction fees, long wait times, low network interoperability and manipulation issues. Enter Polkadex. …

A week after the fallout from the FTX and Alameda chaos some on-chain data points are interesting to observe. Although record amounts of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ethereum (ETH) volume are leaving the exchanges, not all decentralized applications (DApps) and protocols have shown growth, mainly due to reliance on FTX and Alameda. DeFi earnings highlight positive revenue for some protocols According to Token Terminal’s earnings leaderboard, in the last 7-days, three protocols had revenue above $1 million. Ethereum led the on-chain earnings with over $8.5 million total, a sign of strong post-Merge fundamentals. OpenSea was a distant second place to Ethereum, …

Billionaire venture capitalist and serial blockchain investor Tim Draper is not giving up on his near-term Bitcoin (BTC) prediction despite the recent issues in the cryptocurrency industry. Draper continues to stick with his optimistic prediction that Bitcoin will hit $250,000 in 2023 despite the ongoing crypto crisis fueled by FTX. “No change in the price prediction. Still $250,000 by early next year,” Draper stated in an interview with Cointelegraph on Nov. 15. The collapse of FTX crypto exchange has nothing to do with the success of Bitcoin because Bitcoin is decentralized, and FTX was not, according to Draper. “FTX was …

In an official update sent to clients on Nov 14, BlockFi admitted to having “significant exposure” to FTX and its affiliated companies, but insisted it had “the necessary liquidity to explore all options”. The news came as somewhat of a surprise since on Nov. 8, BlockFi’s founder and chief operating officer, Flori Marquez, assured users in a Twitter thread that all BlockFi products were “fully operational” because it had a $400 million line of credit from FTX US, which is a separate entity from FTX, the global entity affected by the liquidity crunch. Related: FTX owned crypto exchange Liquid halts …

According to 1inch, users' gas costs for swaps will be at least 10% lower than its previous offerings in the DEX segment, thereby, making swapping activity on the Ethereum network more profitable for its users. In the Router v5, 1inch estimated that swaps will be approximately 5% more gas efficient than in the previous version, and 10% more gas efficient, compared to the second best performing player in the DEX segment. New features and improvements made to the Router v5 from previous routers include; a new interaction logic, pre-/post-interactions, and an improved smart contract error processing system. The new edition …

While the GameFi sector has flourished of late, critics have noted that despite the increasing amount of titles being released, when it comes to games offering players unique and captivating gaming experiences, the industry is still lacking. Web3, blockchain-based games often struggle to offer gamers immersive experiences that match up with those put forth by the more traditional gaming industry. Instead, much of the effort is focused on the economic side of things. The result is that players are often given little more than dressed-up staking protocols. Aether Games Inc. is dead set on reversing this trend and injecting some …

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has strongly advised cash-strapped and inexperienced investors to stay away from trading cryptocurrencies amid extreme market volatility and unpredictability. On a Nov. 14 Zhao-led “Ask Me Anything” Twitter space hosted by Binance the CEO suggested that unsophisticated investors wait out the turbulent period instead of risking money needed for living expenses: “You should not invest in crypto if you're using money that you need for next week or next month, you should only be using discretionary cash that you don't need for a long time, like maybe a couple of years.” For those who do …

On-chain data from Glassnode show Bitcoin’s (BTC) movements hit a new record for the largest net decline in aggregate BTC balances on exchanges, reducing by 72,900 BTC in one week. A similar movement occurred in April 2020, November 2020 and June 2022 with the current outflow leaving around 2.25 million BTC on exchanges. Exchange exodus for Ether, but not stablecoins While Ether (ETH) did not see an all-time high outflow from exchanges, 1.1 million Ether were withdrawn from exchanges over the last week. According to Glassnode, this marks the largest 30-day exchange balance decline since September 2020 during the DeFi …

Post Ethereum (ETH) merge, layer-2 blockchains have been catching the eyes of users and investors alike. Research firm Delphi Digital has been tracking Arbitrum since August and recently shared its analysis in a monthly market report. According to data, user behavior and historical analysis show multiple trends of rapid growth in transactions, total value locked (TVL) and daily active users at Arbitrum-based platforms. Arbitrum reaches the top-10 in monthly earnings When projects give away more token incentives than the revenue they incur, they have negative earnings. Token incentives that are higher than fees a protocol receives are typically a sign …

Industry heavyweights have urged crypto investors and traders to self-custody their crypto assets amid the significant market uncertainty brought on by the collapse of FTX. In a Nov. 13 tweet to his 7.6 million followers, Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pushed the crypto community to store their own crypto via self-custody crypto wallets. “Self custody is a fundamental human right. You are free to do it anytime. Just make sure you do do it right,” he said, recommending investors to start with small amounts in order to learn the technology and tooling first: Self custody is a fundamental human right. …

Solana's developers forked the widely used token liquidity hub Serum, after being compromised by a hack on the bankruptcy exchange FTX on Nov. 11 that led to a series of unauthorized transactions. According to pseudonymous developer Mango Max on Twitter, a "verified build of the same version has been made and deployed" on Nov 12. Additionaly, the upgrade authority and fee revenues "have been changed and are now managed by a multi-sig controlled by a team of trusted developers." Serum (SRM) and megaserum (MSRM) tokens, as well as fee discounts were not changed and were working as before. The development …