Welcome back to day three of the Web Summit, one of the world’s leading tech conferences, with over 71,000 attendees on the third day. Stationed in Lisbon, Portugal, Cointelegraph's ground team is ready to bring the most exclusive insights on Web3, crypto and blockchain from the event. The first two days of the summit saw some of the leading Web3 founders share their views on the future of finance, metaverse and gaming. WAX CEO William Quigley told Cointelegraph that traditional firms likely won’t be leading the charge in the next generation of Web3 games. Sandbox co-founder said that the future …

Bug bounty platform Immunefi has released its Whitehat Leaderboard — a scoring system that showcases the top 20 most elite white hats in Web3. The rank will measure a given white hat's skills and status amid Immunefi's security community, said the company at the Web Summit on Nov 4. A white hat hacker is someone who identifies security vulnerabilities by testing an organization's information technology security. In Immunefi's community, the top 10 white hats alone have generated over $42 million in total earnings by disclosing critical vulnerabilities that have led to big bounty payments in the software industry. In the …

Blockchain gaming company Gala Games urged its community for calm after misplaced fears of a multi-billion dollar rug pull or hack caused the GALA token to temporarily crash 25.6%. The initial panic, which Gala Games later implied was unfounded, came after a single wallet address appeared to mint over $2 billion GALA tokens out of thin air — which was flagged by blockchain security firm PeckShield on Nov. 3. Fears that the unusual activity was a sign of an exploit or rug pull caused the GALA token price to drop a dramatic 25.6% from $0.0394 to $0.0293 over a 130-minute …

Third-party data breaches have exploded. The problem? Companies, including cryptocurrency exchanges, don’t know how to protect against them. When exchanges sign new vendors, most just innately expect that their vendors employ the same level of scrutiny as they do. Others don’t consider it at all. In today’s age, it isn’t just a good practice to test for vulnerabilities down the supply chain — it is absolutely necessary. Many exchanges are backed by international financiers and those new to financial technologies. Many are even new to technology altogether, instead backed by venture capitalists looking to get their feet wet in a …

The building of the metaverse is an ongoing process. Sebastien Borget, the co-founder of The Sandbox metaverse, even called the future of the metaverse evolving. Speaking to Cointelegraph's Gareth Jenkinson at the Web Summit tech conference in Portugal on Nov. 3, Borget said that what we see today in the Sandbox is “the natural evolution of things” after almost a decade of work. The evolution of the metaverse, particularly the way brands engage with users, has accelerated at rapid speed. It’s this fast-paced development that has investors pouring billions of dollars into metaverse projects across the space. “We're now seeing …

It would seem that the hackers used an “oracle price manipulation” tactic in the exploit on the Solana-based DeFi network, as indicated by a tweet sent by the official account for the Mango cryptocurrency exchange. In mid-October, traders took advantage of a vulnerability in the decentralized finance (DeFi) trading platform Mango Markets and stole more than $110 million worth of cryptocurrencies off the network. We are currently investigating an incident where a hacker was able to drain funds from Mango via an oracle price manipulation. We are taking steps to have third parties freeze funds in flight. 1/ — Mango …

A new oracle system aims to retrieve the additional fees paid by decentralized application (DApp) users to miners called maximal extractable value (MEV). It is the maximum value a miner can extract from moving-around transactions when producing a block on a blockchain network. MEV can be defined as the maximum value that can be extracted from block production in excess of the standard block reward and gas fees. The MEV comprises arbitrage and liquidation fees, among others, that could amount to millions and are often extracted by block producers. A new oracle system called oracle extractable value (OEV) promises to …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum has seen a massive surge in activity since its Nitro update in August, having just clocked around 62% as many transactions as the Ethereum base layer. In a Nov. 1 report, crypto research firm Delphi Digital noted that as of the week ended Oct. 24, Arbitrum’s number of total transactions has increased by 550% since August, citing data from Dune Analytics. This week, @arbitrum had ~62% as many transactions as Ethereum L1. pic.twitter.com/DyuDNAjRGz — Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) November 3, 2022 In an earlier Tweet, Delphi Digital initially phrased Arbitrum as accounting for 62% of all …

Skyward finance, an IDO platform enabling fair token distribution for projects on the NEAR Protocol, has reportedly been exploited for 1.1M NEAR tokens, worth an estimated $3 million USD at time of publication. The news was shared on Twitter by Aurora Lab's community moderator Sanket Naikwadi, who stated that the exploit was first noticed by a member of the NEAR protocol community, who goes by the handle @Nearscout. The @skywardfinance was just exploited for ~1.1M $NEAR Tokens (Worth ~3M) . Thnx to @NearScout for noticing the treasury drain, he pinged me asking if something is wrong with skyward... then we …

Charles Hoskinson, the founder of Cardano and one of the co-founders of Ethereum, said one of the biggest lessons crypto users could take away from the collapse of Terra and other projects was learning to appreciate those that withstood the test of time. Speaking to Cointelegraph at the Web Summit tech conference in Portugal on Nov. 2, Hoskinson said he had seen many companies in the crypto space collapse, from Silk Road to Mt. Gox. According to Hoskinson, protocols that survived were “resilient under an adversarial load,” capable of weathering both bear and bull markets — something of which many …

According to a new announcement on Wednesday, the Bank of International Settlement, or BIS, along with the central banks of France, Singapore, and Switzerland, will be embarking on a new initiative dubbed "Project Mariana" in its exploration of blockchain technology. Project Mariana intends to use decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols to automate foreign exchange markets and settlement. Project Mariana explores using automated market makers for the cross-border exchange of hypothetical CHF, EUR and S$ wholesale CBDCs. It's a #BISInnovationHub joint venture with the French, Swiss & Singapore #CentralBanks@banquedefrance @MAS_sg @SNB_BNS https://t.co/GsNLpXZlsD pic.twitter.com/2tMitZcNF2 — Bank for International Settlements (@BIS_org) November 2, …

The global decentralized finance (DeFi) market size was valued at $11.78 billion in 2021. This number is expected to increase as DeFi advances, yet it is still in its infancy. Therefore, a number of banks and traditional financial institutions still tend to be unaware of DeFi’s potential. While this may be, industry experts within the crypto sector are predicting that decentralized finance will overtake traditional financial institutions in the coming years. For instance, Mike Belshe, CEO and co-founder of BitGo — a digital asset custody provider — told Cointelegraph that he believes DeFi will replace institutions in the next three …