Author: The Block

An attacker has siphoned over $11 million from Agave and Hundred Finance in what appears to be a flash loan reentrancy attack on both DeFi protocols on the Gnosis chain. The DeFi platforms each confirmed the hacks in Twitter posts on Tuesday, stating that their contracts have been paused to forestall further damage. The attack marks the second flash loan exploit recorded today as Deus Finance DAO also lost $3 million. Examining the transaction breakdown data for both exploits on Tenderly, the attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability in both protocols. Reentrancy is a Solidity programming language vulnerability that allows an attacker to trick a protocol’s contract into making an external call to…

Coinbase revealed new details about its planned derivatives business during an event in Florida on Tuesday. The presentation at FIA Boca, a futures industry conference, came months after Coinbase announced its planned acquisition of FairX, a CFTC-regulated derivatives exchange. Appearing before the audience of traditional finance professionals were Vishal Gupta, Coinbase’s head of exchange, and Neal Brady, FairX’s co-founder and now a senior product director at Coinbase. Brady is also leading the rebranded FairX, now known as Coinbase Derivatives. During the presentation, the company outlined the three major aspects of its derivatives business. The first is its planned futures commission merchant, dubbed…

Sophie is standing in a high-ceilinged warehouse studio, decked out with industrial, exposed metal pipes, chandeliers, and painted canvases stacked up on the floor. She is wearing an immaculate, white t-shirt and hoop earrings with her hair slicked back. “Hey, what’s your name?” she says. “I’m Lucy,” I type. “Super, I’ll call you ‘I’m Lucy’ from now on.” This is the first miscommunication of many with the conversational AI bot touted as the “world’s most advanced” AI digital human by her creators. I had originally tried to chat through voice notes, but she couldn’t seem to understand me, so I switched…

Magic Eden, the largest NFT marketplace on the Solana blockchain, has raised $27 million in a Series A funding round. Paradigm led the round, with Sequoia Capital, Solana Ventures, Greylock Partners, Electric Capital and others participating. The raise was an equity funding round and will help Magic Eden focus on the blockchain gaming sector, the firm’s co-founder and CEO Jack Lu told The Block. To that end, Magic Eden has today launched Eden Games, a content hub for game publishers. The hub will allow publishers to share their landing pages custom-built by Eden Games, said Lu. “We hold over 90% of market…

A crypto custody startup spearheaded by financial services giants Standard Chartered and Northern Trust is plotting new products aimed at generating yield for institutional investors. Maxime de Guillebon, Zodia’s CEO, told The Block in an interview that the business is ready to launch collateral management products that will help big investors generate income on their crypto holdings. Any launch would require sign-off from regulators, but de Guillebon is hoping the products will be live this year. “Given the rapid expansion and sophistication of the crypto asset industry, Zodia’s institutional clients are looking for more than spot exposure to digital assets,” said…

The Securities and Exchange Commission has shot down two spot bitcoin exchange-traded fund proposals, continuing a trend of rejections from the US securities market regulator. The rejections were for proposals submitted by NYDIG and Global X. As has been the case with rejections for other spot bitcoin ETF proposals, the regulatory filings cited a lack of surveillance-sharing agreements and the perceived inability to curb fraud or manipulative practices in the market. “This order disapproves the proposed rule change,” the SEC wrote in its NYDIG-related order. “The Commission concludes that NYSE Arca has not met its burden under the Exchange Act and the Commission’s Rules of Practice to…

The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has contacted crypto ATM operators to shut down their machines or face penalties since they are unlicensed. According to an FCA notice published on Friday, none of the crypto ATM operators in the UK are registered to do business in the country. As such, all such machines are operating illegally. There are 81 crypto ATMs in the UK, according to data from CoinATMRadar, with the majority located in the London Area. Manchester, Oxford and Birmingham also host a few machines. The FCA’s notice comes on the heels of a court ruling against Gidiplus, a crypto ATM operator in…

Digital real estate platform Roofstock closed a $240 million Series E equity financing round, achieving a valuation of $1.94 billion. The Roofstock platform enables the $4 trillion fragmented, cottage industry of single-family rentals or “SFRs” to become a relevant asset class. Since it was founded in 2015, the platform has facilitated more than $5 billion in transaction volume, half of which came in the last year, according to a company statement. These are made up of both individual investors and portfolio transactions by institutional investors. In 2021, Roofstock bought homes on behalf of institutional clients, representing over $1.2 billion in assets. SoftBank Vision Fund…

On March 10, blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis announced the launch of new tools for identifying crypto wallets that fall under sanctions. The announcement comes as crypto’s potential role in sanctions on Russia draws attention among policymakers and news publishers. In an announcement shared with The Block, Chainalysis said:  “Given the transparency of blockchains, it would be difficult for the Russian government or financial elite to systematically evade sanctions at scale through cryptocurrency without detection. However, as with the traditional financial system, some sanctioned Russian actors may attempt to use cryptocurrency as a means to evade sanctions.” Launching today are Chainalysis’ oracles, which are…

Nordic neobank Lunar announced a $77 million round led by Heartland on Thursday while unveiling new crypto trading tools. The company said in a press release that the fundraise, an extension of its $210 million Series D round in July last year, will be used to maintain momentum as it rolls out crypto trading tools, a separate blockchain arm, and looks at M&A in the Nordics. Founder and CEO Ken Villum Klausen said in an interview with TechCrunch that adding crypto trading tools will help the startup stand out in a market where incumbent players are already digitized. Lunar will offer trading…