Weekly Report | HashKey Approved for Hong Kong's First Virtual Asset New License; Curve and Other Protocols Attacked Due to Reentrancy Lock Vulnerability
Zhao Changpeng stated that Binance's registered user count has exceeded 150 million; Binance Launchpool has launched Sei and CyberConnect.整理：饼干，ChainCatcher
"What Important Events Happened This Week (7.31-8.6)"
1. HashKey Exchange Announces Approval for Hong Kong's First Virtual Asset New License and Launches OTC Trading Services
HashKey Exchange announced that it has been approved for Hong Kong's first virtual asset new license and has upgraded its License No. 1 and No. 7 to provide retail services. HashKey stated that it has partnered with Standard Chartered Bank to provide fiat currency deposit and withdrawal services, and is currently not accepting account opening requests from users in mainland China, only supporting professional investor certification. The company also launched its virtual asset OTC trading business, HashKey Brokerage.
HashKey Capital will launch a brand new compliant secondary liquidity fund on September 1, planning to invest in various mainstream virtual assets in the future. This fund will officially accept subscriptions from investors starting September 1, 2023.
Additionally, OSL Digital Securities Limited, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BC Technology Group, officially announced that it has obtained approval from the Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission to upgrade its existing license. The OSL Digital Securities platform officially provides digital asset trading services for mainstream coins such as Bitcoin and Ethereum to retail investors. (Source link)
2. Curve and Other Protocols Attacked Due to Reentrancy Lock Failure, Hackers Have Repaid Alchemix Approximately $12.7 Million
In the early hours of July 31, Curve Finance stated on Twitter that due to a reentrancy lock failure, some stable pools using Vyper 0.2.14 (alETH/msETH/pETH) were attacked. Subsequently, as a result of the attack, Curve tokens and TVL plummeted significantly. Additionally, many protocols related to Curve were affected to varying degrees. As of now, the founder of Curve Finance has sold a total of 134 million CRV tokens.
On August 5, the attacker of the Curve pool returned a total of 4,820 alETH and 2,258 ETH to the Alchemix Finance protocol, amounting to approximately $12.7 million. The "Latest Updates on the Curve Attack Incident" topic has been tracking the progress of this incident and the market fluctuations it has caused.
3. Zhao Changpeng: Binance's Registered User Count Exceeds 150 Million
Binance founder Zhao Changpeng tweeted that the number of registered users on Binance has exceeded 150 million. Additionally, Binance Japan officially launched this week, and Binance obtained an MVP operating license in Dubai.
Furthermore, according to internal data obtained by The Wall Street Journal, in May alone, Binance's Chinese customers' cryptocurrency trading volume exceeded $90 billion, with most trades being related to cryptocurrency futures contracts, accounting for 20% of Binance's global trading volume (excluding a small portion of trades from ultra-large traders), making the Chinese market Binance's largest market, followed by South Korea with a 13% share, and Turkey with nearly 10%.
According to data from Binance's internal platform called "Mission Control," there are 5.6 million registered users in China, of which 911,650 are active users. Additionally, Binance's investigation team continues to work closely with Chinese law enforcement to investigate potential criminal activities among active users. According to Binance internal documents and a former employee, as of January, approximately 100,000 Chinese users were classified as "politicians."
4. Binance Launchpool Launches Sei and CyberConnect
Binance Launchpool launched mining activities for Sei and CyberConnect on August 2, lasting for 30 days. The total rewards are 3 million CYBER and SEI tokens, each accounting for 3% of their total token supply.
The total supply of SEI tokens is 10 billion, of which 20% will be allocated to private investors, 20% to the team, 9% to the foundation, 48% to ecological reserve funds, and 3% as Binance Launchpool rewards.
The total supply of CYBER tokens is 100 million, of which 34% will be used for ecological development, 25.12% will be allocated to private investors, 15% will be allocated to the team and advisors, 10.88% will be used as community treasury, 9% will be used for community rewards, and CyberConnect allocated 3% of the tokens to CoinList public sale and Binance Launchpool.
Additionally, CyberConnect announced that some early users will receive token airdrops, including users holding Mystery Box, The Shards, Mini Shards, W3ST, CyberProfile Early Adopter NFT, and CyberProfile Premium Handle. The total amount of airdropped tokens is 2.4 million, and the airdrop query webpage is now open, with claims starting at 20:00 on August 15. (Source link)
5. Coinbase to Officially Open Base Mainnet on August 9
Coinbase announced that its Layer 2 blockchain Base, built on the Optimism OP Stack, will be open to the public on August 9. Starting Thursday (today), users will be able to bridge their Ethereum (ETH) to the Base network.
Additionally, crypto detective ZachXBT stated that the BALD deployer may be Milkyway (@milkyway16eth). The account is currently shown as protected and claims to be a "DeFi Farmer and Speculator." (Source link)
6. Web3 Creator Platform Nifty Announces Shutdown
According to ChainCatcher, the Web3 creator platform Nifty tweeted its announcement of closure. In a tweet on August 3, Nifty stated that earlier this year, considering its limited resources in a difficult market, it shifted to developing a platform for Web3 creators. It has been committed to developing new products and seeking funding necessary for continued development. Unfortunately, investment opportunities did not succeed, and it will gradually end its business starting today.
Nifty was originally a social platform focused on NFTs and had collaborated with some well-known brands in the entertainment industry to launch NFTs, including a collaboration with Warner Bros. to launch NFTs based on "Space Jam," as well as NFTs featuring "The Matrix" and "Game of Thrones." According to the crypto data platform Rootdata, the platform raised $10 million in 2021 with support from Mark Cuban and Joe Lubin, with investors including Coinbase Ventures and Dapper Labs. (Source link)
7. Musk: X Will Never Launch a Cryptocurrency Token
Musk replied to Dogecoin designer DogeDesigner, stating that X will never launch a cryptocurrency token. (Source link)
8. Data
- RootData: In July, the cryptocurrency market financing amount was $547 million, a month-on-month increase of 7.8%
- The Curve pool attacker has returned a total of 4,820 alETH and 2,258 ETH to the Alchemix Finance protocol
- JPEG'd has received 5,494.4 WETH returned by white hat hackers
- The Multichain attacker sold stolen assets worth $36.7 million in the past week
- 1,023.8 WBTC was transferred from Multichain and exchanged for stablecoins, with outflows linked to rumored FTX bribery funds
- Coinbase's Q2 revenue was $707.9 million, a year-on-year decrease of 12.4%
- Block's Q2 Bitcoin revenue reached $2.4 billion, a year-on-year increase of 34%
- Robinhood's Q2 crypto revenue fell to $31 million, a quarter-on-quarter decrease of 18%
- Yuga Labs' royalty revenue accounts for nearly 10% of the current total royalty revenue on the Ethereum chain NFT
- Stablecoins: FDUSD's total circulation has exceeded 100 million, and GHO's minting volume has surpassed 10 million
- Ethereum's NFT market gas consumption has reached a near two-year low
- Nearly 100 crypto funds have closed this year
"What Exciting Articles Are Worth Reading This Week (7.31-8.6)"
1. "Five Highlights of Hong Kong's Cryptocurrency Policy for the Next Year After Opening Retail Trading"
On August 3, HashKey and OSL trading platforms announced the official upgrade of License No. 1 and No. 7, becoming licensed trading platforms for retail users in Hong Kong. In addition to providing support for fiat currency deposits and withdrawals, the HashKey trading platform will collaborate with Standard Chartered Bank, Morgan Stanley Asia, ZA BANK, and others to provide fiat currency deposit and withdrawal services. Furthermore, the platform has opened compliant OTC trading. After opening retail trading, what other highlights can we expect in the coming year?
The attack on Curve has triggered a series of chain reactions, affecting several of its DeFi applications. The drastic fluctuations in the price of the CRV token also hide potential on-chain liquidation crises. This could be Curve's darkest hour; will it manage to overcome this challenge like it has in the past?
3. "How Does Crypto Queen Katie Haun Navigate the Darkest Moments of Cryptocurrency?"
Cryptocurrency may experience cyclical fluctuations, but this downturn is steeper than investors expected, and the collapse of many leading projects in the cryptocurrency industry has exacerbated this volatility. For Haun, transitioning from a Supreme Court clerk to a significant position in the Department of Justice, and then to the top of the VC world, the cryptocurrency industry's Waterloo has posed the first serious setback to her rapidly rising career and carefully cultivated reputation.
4. "Exclusive Interview with 1inch: How to Innovate in the DEX Field Under the Shadow of Uniswap's Monopoly?"
Born from the 2019 hackathon, 1inch successfully emerged during the DeFi Summer of 2020. Led by two Russian youths, Sergej Kunz and Anton Bukov, 1inch has steadily climbed to the leading position in the DeFi aggregator space with its efficient and low-cost trading methods.
On June 13 of this year, the Uniswap team announced the launch of its fourth-generation version, V4, introducing two new concepts: "Hooks" and "The Singleton." Among them, the former, Hooks, has garnered particular attention. Many see it as Uniswap's secret weapon to defeat all DEXs. At the subsequent ETHCC conference, Uniswap also launched UniswapX, launching an offensive in the liquidity aggregator field. Amid these successive shocks, many DeFi entrepreneurs have expressed sentiments of "abandoning DEXs and joining Hooks."
Last week, during the ETHCC conference in Paris, BlockBeats interviewed 1inch co-founder Anton Bukov to deeply explore 1inch's development history, views and thoughts on DeFi innovation, and how to respond to Uniswap's offensive.
5. "Halving Ignored, Slow Ecological Development, Is Litecoin LTC Completely Out of Luck This Time?"
This halving is the third in Litecoin's history since its launch in 2011. However, the response from the cryptocurrency market has been somewhat tepid, with its LTC token experiencing a decline in the secondary market.
Just days before the halving, Litecoin founder Charlie Lee and his brother announced the joint launch of 500 "Litecoin Halving Silver Commemorative Cards," each made of 50g of silver and containing 6.25 LTC, with a temporary price of $1,000 and an estimated revenue of at least $500,000. This action has been mocked by users, suggesting that Litecoin seems to have little utility, and the founders can only sell cards to raise money.
As the founders sell cards during the halving, users are more concerned about whether the halving can bring back attention to the long-ignored Litecoin and whether it can positively impact its ecological development.
6. "Arthur Hayes: DAOs are Companies in the AI Era, DEXs are Financial Markets in the AI Era"
In this article, Arthur Hayes outlines his thoughts on DAOs, AI, DEXs, and their relationships with companies and even nations. He elaborates on the following five points:
Nations cannot exert control over AI because they cannot kill AI or meaningfully punish it.
Because nations cannot exert control, AI economic units (i.e., AI DAOs) have no reason to follow any nation-based legal norms.
To compel AI compliance, the underlying network powering DAOs will need to use smart contracts deployed and executed on public blockchains.
Since nations cannot exert control over DAOs, DAOs will raise and trade tokens for debt, equity, utilities, etc., on DEXs that are not hosted on traditional centralized exchanges (CEXs).
DEXs will tend to become natural monopolies as they will become the first truly global trading venues where anyone with an internet connection can meet and trade.
7. "Lybra: The Growth Path and Real Challenges of the New LSDFi Star"
Lybra Finance is a new LSDFi project that was born in April this year, facing continuous turmoil since its inception. Issues related to IDO funding sources and contract problems, as well as implications of its relationship with Lido on social media, have made Lybra Finance a focal point of controversy, and its stablecoin design's lack of anchoring capability has also been widely criticized by DeFi players.
Nevertheless, Lybra's TVL has already occupied a significant share during the so-called LSDFi summer.
8. "After Bald Became the 'Rug Pull Leader' in an Instant, Can the Base Ecosystem Create Another Meme Craze?"
Recently, the meme leader Bald on Base skyrocketed in value, sparking heated discussions in the crypto community. Just as everyone was immersed in thoughts about whether Bald would create a new myth of wealth, Bald's rapid rug pull dealt a heavy blow to crypto users.
After experiencing such volatility, Bald only responded on Twitter, stating, "It seems the Base chain can handle heavy loads well," implying that the release of the Bald project was merely to test the actual load handling capacity of the Base chain, denying the sale of tokens and stating, "Since deployment, only actions such as adding and removing liquidity and purchasing tokens have been performed."
However, Bald's mysterious operations have sparked numerous speculations about its behind-the-scenes operators in the crypto community. More importantly, as liquidity withdraws from Bitcoin Ordinals and BRC-20 trending projects, more on-chain funds are beginning to move, and with the upcoming launch of the Base mainnet in August and Bald's "rug pull" breaking the mold, can Base create a new meme craze?
9. "Data Interpretation of OP Mainnet's Development Status: Overall Still Lacks Competitive Advantage, OP Stack's Brand Cooperation Strategy Benefits the Ecosystem"
As the Ethereum Cancun upgrade approaches, the market heat in the Layer 2 track is rising. Recently, Optimism (renamed OP Mainnet) has achieved significant growth in various on-chain data thanks to its killer feature OP Stack, becoming a focal point of market attention. So, what is the current development status of OP Mainnet? How is it creating its differentiated advantages in the Layer 2 battlefield?
10. "Celestia Researcher Analyzes Rollup (II): Four New Rollup Solutions"
This article is a compilation of scattered remarks by Celestia researcher NashQ regarding Rollup models, including four new Rollup variants. Previously, in the article "Celestia Researcher Analyzes Six Rollup Variants: Sequencer = Aggregator + Header Generator," he listed six different Rollup models, and this article presents four new types of Rollup models abstracted from that foundation.
