Play-to-earn (P2E) blockchain-based games gathered investors’ attention in late 2021, with Axie Infinity leading the pack with over 2 million active users. In P2E games, players are awarded tokens or nonfungible token assets (NFTs) as they progress throughout the game. These digital assets can be sold using marketplaces and cryptocurrency exchanges, generating income in a decentralized manner. However, there is a large discrepancy between P2E and traditional PC and console gaming experiences. In that sense, crypto games are a couple of decades behind due to the restrictions imposed by blockchain technology. Yes, most crypto games lack a decent user experience …

Embattled crypto lender Celsius Network is on track to run out of money by October, according to the firm’s latest Chapter 11 documents. Filed on Aug. 14 to the U.S. Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District of New York, Celsius highlighted that it is expected to reach negative liquidity by October 2022 to approximately $34 million. The lending platform, which held the trust of many across the world with life savings and retirement funds, was revealed to be in a much worse financial position than originally suggested in July. Court documents revealed this week that Celsius’ three-month cash flow forecast, …

A new bankruptcy coin report filed on Aug. 14 shows that troubled crypto lender Celsius’ actual debt stands at $2.85 billion against their bankruptcy filing claims of a $1.2 billion deficit. The latest report shows that the company has net liabilities worth $6.6 billion and total assets under management at $3.8 billion. While in their bankruptcy filing, the firm has shown around $4.3 billion in assets against $5.5 billion in liabilities, representing a $1.2 billion deficit. The coin report also noted that of the total 100,669 Bitcoin (BTC) deposited by investors, the company has lost 62,853 BTC and currently holds …

The Acala Network’s aUSD stablecoin depegged by over 99% over the weekend and forced the Acala team to pause a hacker’s wallet, raising concerns about its claim of being decentralized. On Aug. 14, a hacker took advantage of a bug on the iBTC/aUSD liquidity pool which resulted in 1.2 billion aUSD being minted without collateral. This event crashed the USD-pegged stablecoin to a cent, and in response, the Acala team froze the erroneously minted tokens by placing the network in maintenance mode. The move also halted other features such as swaps, xcm (cross-chain communications on Polkadot), and the oracle pallet …

Velodrome Finance, a trading and liquidity marketplace, announced the recovery of $350,000 stolen on Aug. 4. However, the occasion turned bittersweet when internal investigations pointed out the involvement of a prominent team member, who goes by the pseudo name Gabagool. On Aug. 4, one of Velodrome’s high-worth wallets — dedicated for operating funds such as salaries — was drained off $350,000 before it could be transferred to the company’s treasury multisig wallet. A subsequent internal investigation revealed the attacker’s identification, which allowed the company to recover the entire loot. Velodrome’s official statement revealed: “Much to our disappointment, we learned the …

As the global Web3 ecosystem continued to evolve at a staggering pace, so have the various use cases associated with this niche. In a striking new development, a high-ranking Singaporean government minister recently noted that legal marriage proceedings, court case disputes, and government services could one day be conducted using Metaverse platforms. While delivering a keynote address at Singapore’s TechLaw Fest 2022 late last month, the country’s second minister for law, Edwin Tong, was quoted as saying that he would not be surprised if, in the future, intimate events such as the solemnization of marriages as well as legal disputes …

In an article I wrote for Cointelegraph, I commented on how the European Union has moved forward to regulate the crypto-asset market through Markets in Crypto-Assets (MiCA) and Transfer of Funds Regulation (ToFR). With this subject as a background, I had the privilege of interviewing one of the people who knows the most about regulating new technologies: Eva Kaili, vice president of the European Parliament. She has been working hard on promoting innovation as a driving force for the establishment of the European Digital Single Market. Check out the interview below, which covered key points about MiCA, some proposed legislative …

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. This past week, cross-bridge protocols became the center of DeFi discussions as a new report showed RenBridge was used to launder $540 million in stolen funds. Curve Finance, on the other hand, resolved its site exploit and directed users to revoke any recent contracts. Interlay, a London-based blockchain firm, launched a Bitcoin (BTC)-based cross-chain bridge on Polkadot named interBTC (iBTC), DeFi platform Oasis.app says that sanctioned addresses will no longer be able to access …

Crypto exchange Binance has recovered a big part of the funds from the recent hack that targeted the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Curve Finance. In a tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that the exchange has frozen and recovered $450,000 of the stolen assets, which is more than 80 percent of the stolen funds. According to Zhao, the hacker tried to send the funds to the exchange in various ways but was detected by Binance. The exchange is currently working to return the funds to their rightful owners. The Curve Finance team detected the hack on Tuesday and alerted their …

According to a new community Discord post on Thursday, decentralized finance platform Oasis.app says that sanctioned addresses will no longer be able to access the application. As a result of the change to the terms of service, wallets flagged as high risk are prohibited from using Oasis.app to manage positions or withdraw funds. Instead, such category of users must interact directly with the relevant underlying protocol where funds are stored or find another service. In explaining the decision, Oasis.app team member Gabriel said: "We've recently needed to update the Terms of Service of the Oasis.app front-end to comply with the …

Netherlands-based crypto investment firm Maven 11 has launched its third lending pool on Maple Finance, giving borrowers access to liquidity amid the bear market. The $30 million pool financed by institutional lenders will be utilized by trading firms that include Wintermute, Auros and Flow Traders, among others, Maven 11 announced this week. The new pool is designed “specifically for institutions looking for yield opportunities,” the company said. Maple, a decentralized finance credit platform, is filling a void left by the implosion of leading centralized finance (CeFi) companies such as Celsius. Liquidity constraints triggered by the collapse of Terra Luna and …

2022 has been a lucrative year for hackers preying on the nascent Web3 and decentralized finance (DeFi) spaces, with more than $2 billion worth of cryptocurrency fleeced in several high-profile hacks to date. Cross-chain protocols have been particularly hard hit, with Axie Infinity’s $650 million Ronin Bridge hack accounting for a significant portion of stolen funds this year. The pillaging continued into the second half of 2022 as cross-chain platform Nomad saw $190 million drained from wallets. The Solana ecosystem was the next target, with hackers gaining access to private keys of some 8000 wallets that resulted in $5 million …