DappRadar: Dapps industry grew almost 10% in May

According to the latest report from DappRadar, the decentralised apps (dapps) industry is picking up pace.

This May, the industry saw an almost 10 percent increase in daily unique active wallets (dUAW), averaging an impressive 1,967,051 dUAW.

Key sectors, like gaming and decentralised finance (DeFi), continued to exhibit promising signs of growth and stability—further asserting the importance of this thriving industry.

The gaming sector continued its reign as...

Binance, Huobi freeze $1.4m of crypto tied to North Korean hackers

North Korea

Crypto exchanges Binance and Huobi have frozen accounts linked to a $100 million (£83m) hack carried out by Lazarus Group, a hacking group located in North Korea, in June 2022.

Close to $1.4 million (£1.17m) of crypto was frozen across both exchanges that were originally stolen last year in an attack on the Harmony Horizon cross-chain bridge.

The accounts were identified following an investigation by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, according to a 14 February report...

Jump Crypto finds infinite token vulnerability on Binance BNB Chain

Web3 infrastructure firm Jump Crypto has alerted Binance to a vulnerability in the BNB Beacon Chain that would have allowed for an infinite mint of tokens.

The issue was reported privately to the BNB team on 8 February and patched within 24 hours, according to a blog post from 10 February. The post said that, if exploited, the vulnerability could have led to a “large loss of funds”.

The vulnerability would have allowed for an attacker to make a malicious transfer,...

Cardano recovers from 50% of network nodes going offline

Cardano ADA Token

Cardano users reported that at least half of the blockchain network’s nodes went offline over the weekend.

A Telegram post from a group for Cardano stake pool operators (SPOs) said that an anomaly caused 50% of Cardano nodes to disconnect and restart.

The post said the disruption was caused by a “a transient anomaly causing two reactions in the node, some disconnected from a peer, others threw an exception and...

Visa will ‘actively contribute’ to web3 development

Visa refuses to become a dinosaur and will “actively contribute” to developing the web3 and crypto ecosystem.

Aside from maximalists, few experts believe that crypto poses an existential threat to fiat currencies. Legacy payment processors like Visa and Mastercard have increasingly been joining the web2-era disruptors like PayPal and Square in supporting the web3 and crypto ecosystem.

Greater public adoption of “crypto” will likely come through CBDCs (Central...

Cardano to launch algorithmic stablecoin in January 2023

Cardano ADA Token

Cardano, the proof-of-stake blockchain network oft touted as Ethereum’s most serious competitor, plans to launch an algorithmic stablecoin in January 2023.

Project ‘Djed’, which is being developed in partnership with COTI, a DAG-based Layer 1 protocol, will use an algorithm that is backed by excess collateral through a cryptocurrency reserve.

Djed is set to launch on Cardano’s mainnet as early as January next year, so long as it passes an audit and a planned...

Sam Bankman-Fried deepfake aims to scam FTX collapse victims

A deepfake of former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried aims to scam victims of the exchange’s collapse.

FTX was the third-largest cryptocurrency exchange and Bankman-Fried was seen as the face of crypto in Washington. The exchange enjoyed many celebrity endorsements and secured a 19-year, $135 million sponsorship agreement with Miami-Dade county that included the local stadium being renamed the FTX Arena.

All of that success went up in smoke when concerns around the...

‘Solana killer’ Aptos soared to $100 on Binance before plunging

Aptos, a blockchain created by former Meta employees, debuted on Binance this week and soared to $100 before plunging to around $8.

The project has been called the “Solana killer” due to its claims of being able to process an incredible 130,000 transactions per second (tps).

As of writing, Aptos is processing around 24tps. This has led to many within the crypto community saying that Aptos’ performance claims are misleading.

Aptos co-founder Mo Shaikh has...

Jeremy Epstein, RDX Works: On the ‘practically unlimited scalability’ of Radix

Radix claims it will offer “practically unlimited scalability” with its novel consensus algorithm, Cerberus.

In 2019, Radix set a record for decentralised ledgers when it demonstrated the ability to process over one million transactions per second. For the demonstration, Radix replayed 10 years of Bitcoin’s transaction history in under 30 minutes. That demonstration used Cerberus’ predecessor, Tempo.

Despite the record-breaking demonstration, it was...

CasperLabs: On delivering ‘the vision for Ethereum 3.0’ today

CasperLabs believes its blockchain has solved Vitalik Buterin’s infamous trilemma and is already delivering “the vision for Ethereum 3.0”.

The Block caught up with Casper Labs’ CTO and Co-Founder Medha Parlikar, and Senior Business Development Manager Niamh O’Connell, to hear more about the blockchain that claims to be several years ahead of Ethereum in technical advancements.

The Block: Vitalik Buterin’s “blockchain trilemma” suggests that any blockchain...