ChainCatcher news, the blockchain interoperability platform Connext has announced its rebranding to Everclear, introducing a settlement layer for intent-based cross-chain bridges. The project also sold $5 million worth of NEXT tokens to Pantera Capital through an over-the-counter transaction to support the development and implementation of the settlement layer.Everclear is developing a Rollup chain based on Arbitrum Orbit, and Everclear's testnet is currently running, with multiple partners already developing on it, including Socket, Particle Network, Router, Enzo, etc. Its mainnet is expected to launch in the third quarter of 2024.

ChainCatcher news, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext states that the window for claiming the Connext airdrop will close on March 5th at 21:00 Beijing time. Connext reminds users not to wait until the last minute to avoid any issues, as the claiming window will not be extended.

ChainCatcher news, the Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext announced on platform X that it has launched on Base. Renzo Protocol users will be able to restake native ETH on Base through EigenLayer without interacting with Ethereum. Additionally, users can earn ezPoints and EigenLayer restaking points.

ChainCatcher news, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext announced a network upgrade Bacco on December 14.Connext stated that Bacco significantly reduces the operational costs of the network and enables Connext to quickly scale to new chains and L2. Bacco changes the way messages are transmitted between chains, with messages being transferred between chains via the Connext Sequencer (affected by the fault-proof window and observer disputes), rather than through the sequencers of other Rollups.

ChainCatcher news, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext tweeted, calling for the establishment of an open bridge standard along with Across, Celer Network, ChainSafe, Sygma, LI.FI, Socket, Router Protocol, and the Cross-chain Interoperability Alliance.The initiative expresses concern over LayerZero's recent actions, as they deployed wstETH to Avalanche, BNN Chain, and Scroll without the support of Lido DAO. It argues that:Proprietary standards locked by vendors are not standards. While OFT and other vendor-specific systems are marketed as standards, fundamentally, they are owned by the cross-chain bridges that implement them. They enforce vendor lock-in, making it nearly impossible for projects to iterate on preferences, respond to security risks, or otherwise switch to another option permanently.Lock-in creates systemic risk. Tokens issued through proprietary standards are forever tied to the security model of the issuing bridge. Lock-in hinders positive iterations on security, thereby introducing unquantifiable systemic risks to projects. Over the past two years, cross-chain bridges have suffered over $2 billion in hacks due to these systemic risks.Token issuers should own their tokens. Token issuing DAOs should be the ultimate arbiters of their assets' typical representations on specific chains. Without DAO-led social consensus, it becomes impossible to determine the typical representation of a specific asset, leading to fragmentation through the issuance of many non-reproducible representations.Open standards unrelated to providers encourage healthy competition. Open public standards like ElP-7281 (xERC20) allow token issuers to adopt typical representations as per point (3) while avoiding lock-in as per point (2), thereby rewriting the incentive structure around token bridge security. Standards drive bridges to compete openly and continuously on pricing, uptime, and security. This encourages ongoing innovation around secure bridging methods, ultimately benefiting users.

ChainCatcher news, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext has released the Connext DAO governance framework on social media, which includes: the purpose of the DAO, rights and responsibilities, guiding principles, and more.Connext states that the DAO governance framework will consist of a constitution, governance processes, and a security council to ensure transparent, fair, and impactful decentralized governance for the Connext collective.

ChainCatcher message, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext released an analysis of the claim issue, stating that the attacker deliberately conducted a DOS attack on Tokensoft's API to disrupt the claim database and UI. In the process, 274,956 NEXT from 253 wallets (unrelated to Connext) were claimed and sold for about 40,000 USDT before ordinary users could make their claims.

ChainCatcher news, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext announced on platform X that the airdrop claim has been re-enabled and the process is smooth. The Connext community and core contributor team have launched ConnextDAO, and its cross-chain token NEXT will be used for governance and staking activities.In addition, regarding whether there are issues of airdrop abuse with Connext, Slow Mist founder Yu Xian stated on platform X that after analyzing the target contract of Connext, he believes that others cannot fraudulently claim the airdrop. He agrees with Connext core contributor Arjun Bhuptani's view that the address 0x44Af is related to a witch and has not been countered by Connext's anti-witch measures. Previously, addresses starting with 0x44Af claimed a large amount of NEXT airdrop through 230 accounts within one hour of the airdrop claim opening and sold all of it for ETH, USDT, and USDC, earning approximately $39,000.

ChainCatcher message, according to SlowMist intelligence, some accounts' NEXT tokens have been claimed to unintended addresses. The SlowMist security team followed up with an analysis and shared a brief summary as follows:Users can claim NEXT tokens through the claimBySignature function of the NEXT Distributor contract. There are two roles involved: the recipient role, which is used to receive the claimed NEXT tokens, and the beneficiary role, which is the address eligible to receive NEXT tokens, determined when the Connext protocol announced the airdrop eligibility.When a user claims NEXT tokens, the contract performs two checks: first, it checks the signature of the beneficiary role; second, it checks whether the beneficiary role is eligible to receive the airdrop. During the first check, it verifies whether the recipient provided by the user is signed by the beneficiary role, so arbitrarily providing a recipient address without the beneficiary's signature cannot pass the check.If a beneficiary address is specified to construct a signature, it may pass the signature check, but it will not pass the second check for airdrop eligibility. The airdrop eligibility check is performed through a Merkle proof, which should be generated by the official Connext protocol. Therefore, users who are not eligible to receive the airdrop cannot bypass the check to claim someone else's airdrop.

ChainCatcher message, Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext tweeted that bot activity has been detected causing overload on partner and service provider Tokensoft servers. Currently, Tokensoft is working to resolve this issue for normal claims.

ChainCatcher message, Connext core contributor Arjun Bhuptani stated that the address starting with 0x44Af belongs to the Witch Bot, which may also be the reason why the claiming interface is not functional. This bot sends a large number of junk requests to the tokensoft backend, causing its API to crash.According to previous reports, on-chain data shows that the address starting with 0x44Af aggregated airdrops of NEXT from 230 addresses and sold them all for ETH, USDT, and USDC, making a profit of approximately $39,000.

ChainCatcher news, according to on-chain data, the address starting with 0x44Af has claimed a large amount of Connext token NEXT airdrop through 230 accounts in the past hour, and has sold all of them for ETH, USDT, and USDC, earning approximately $39,000.

ChainCatcher news, according to feedback from community users, the airdrop claiming process of the Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext seems to have encountered issues, where "scientists" can exploit contract vulnerabilities to batch steal other users' Connext token airdrops, only needing to know the address details of the airdrop-eligible accounts.Previously, it was reported that the Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext would launch its native token named NEXT on September 5. The Connext team also plans to airdrop NEXT tokens to early users of Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Gnosis Chain, with claims opening on September 5.

ChainCatcher news, the Layer2 interoperability protocol Connext announced on its community forum that after the completion of the community witch filtering program, the latest distribution of NEXT tokens is as follows: total airdrop size is 105,631,496.18 tokens, with 57,801 airdrop wallets; circulating supply at issuance is 106,841,704.25 tokens, with community allocation of 62,600,196.08 tokens.Connext will airdrop NEXT tokens to early users on Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Gnosis Chain, with the airdrop claiming starting on September 5th. The claiming address is: https://airdrop.connext.network/

ChainCatcher news, Connext released the audit results of the Witch Hunter program on Discord: Connext received a total of 507 reports, of which 361 passed the audit, and 48 Witch Hunters submitted valid reports.Connext stated that 5,725 witch addresses have been identified and removed from the eligibility list, recovering 5,932,065 tokens. Among them, 1,438,016 NEXT (accounting for 25% of the recovered amount) will be redistributed to the Witch Hunters, and 50% of the tokens allocated to the Witch Hunters will be locked for 2 years.