Hi, everyone! It’s Friday, October 13th, while some might be dodging ladders and black cats, we’re here to bring you luck in the form of some fascinating news and updates. 👀
So, grab your lucky charm (or your coffee) and let’s dive in! ☕️
A QUICK BRIEF 💭
👨🏻⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Continues
🐺 First European NFT-Backed Film ‘CALLADITA’ Set to Debut at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
🟣 Circle Launches Native USDC Tokens on Polygon
[THE BLOCK WITH THE TOP HEADLINES OF THE WEEK]
Your Weekly News Digest 🗞️
👨🏻⚖️ Sam Bankman-Fried Trial Continues
Last week marked the beginning of the eagerly awaited six-week trial of the ex-CEO of FTX, Sam Bankman-Fried, and now, after a week, it’s safe to say we’ve had our fair share of jaw-dropping moments.
On the 4th day of the trial, during the Friday’s continued testimony, Gary Wang, the co-founder of Alameda Research and FTX, who faces a potential 50-year prison sentence, disclosed Alameda’s special privileges ingrained into FTX’s code as early as July 31, 2019, just months after the exchange’s launch.
EXTRA: Day 4 covered by Carly from OPJ, Laura from UnChained, and live updates by Blockworks.
Day 5 took an intriguing turn when Caroline Ellison, former CEO of Alameda Research and SBF’s ex-partner, stepped up to unveil allegations of financial mismanagement at Alameda and FTX, which she asserted were directed by Bankman-Fried. During the cross-examination of Gary Wang, glimpses of SBF’s defense strategy began to emerge, although Wang’s role appeared largely as a faithful follower of his friend and co-founder.
EXTRA: Day 5 covered by Carly from OPJ, Laura from UnChained, and live updates by Blockworks.
Day 6 brought a whole new level of drama to the trial, with Caroline Ellison’s testimony featuring shocking references to alleged bribery of Chinese government officials, the use of Thai prostitutes’ IDs to create accounts, and an attempt to secure funds by selling FTX shares to a Saudi prince.
EXTRA: Day 6 covered by Carly from OPJ, Laura from UnChained, and live updates by Blockworks.
On Day 7, the defense faced challenges in making progress during Caroline Ellison’s questioning. They ended up revisiting old questions, which added to the judge’s frustration.
Nevertheless, this day unveiled startling revelations, notably that around the time when Alameda had “borrowed” $14 billion of FTX customer funds, Sam Bankman-Fried expressed an interest in making a major investment in the messaging platform Telegram.
EXTRA: Day 7 covered by Carly from OPJ, Laura from UnChained, and live updates by Blockworks.
🔐 Trezor Releases New Hardware Wallet
Trezor, a prominent hardware cryptocurrency wallet provider, is commemorating its 10th anniversary by unveiling three self-custody products.
These include a new Trezor wallet, a proprietary private key backup solution, and a Bitcoin-only wallet (showed on picture). The company, headquartered in the Czech Republic, officially introduced the Trezor Safe 3, a brand-new hardware wallet capable of supporting more than 7,000 cryptocurrencies, on October 12.
This release marks a significant milestone in Trezor’s commitment to providing entry-level hardware wallets. The Trezor Safe 3 wallet arrives nearly five years after the introduction of the Trezor Model T in February 2018 and is available in four colors: solar gold, stellar silver, galactic rose, and cosmic black.
💰 Local Web3 Community Launches ‘Crypto Aid Israel’ To Help Displaced Citizens
A coalition of crypto organizations based in Israel, including 42Studio, MarketAcross, Collider Ventures, CryptoJungle, Nilos, Blockchain B7, Efficient Frontier, Ironblocks, the Israel Blockchain Association, Bits of Gold, and Cointelegraph, has collaboratively initiated ‘Crypto Aid Israel.‘
This global fundraising effort aims to provide humanitarian assistance to Israeli citizens who have been displaced. In a sign of support, several Israeli banks and regulators have also facilitated the process of receiving crypto donations, potentially serving as a bridge to enable the transfer of these crypto assets to the banking system.
⭐️ Stars Arena Faced Two Attacks In One Week
Avalanche-based Web3 social media platform Stars Arena recently faced a string of attacks, raising significant concerns in the cryptocurrency community.
The first attack, which occurred on October 5th, resulted in a vulnerability that allowed a hacker to transfer $2,000 worth of AVAX from the platform.
Two days later, the platform was hit by a more severe attack, involving a smart contract exploit that enabled the attacker to transfer 266,103 AVAX tokens, valued at nearly $3 million. The exploit was facilitated through the FixedFloat exchange service, causing substantial losses to Stars Arena and its users.
In response to these attacks, Stars Arena acted swiftly to secure funding to cover the assets stolen in the second exploit. Additionally, the platform made an announcement that it would reopen its smart contract once a comprehensive security audit had taken place.
Notably, the team behind Stars Arena has displayed a proactive approach to resolving the situation. They engaged a special white hat development team to review the platform’s security thoroughly, ensuring a more resilient system for the future.
Yesterday Stars Arena was revealed that the hacker responsible for the security breaches returned 90% of the stolen funds. The return of these funds was the result of an agreement with the hacker, who received a 10% bounty fee (nearly $257,000) along with 1000 AVAX, equivalent to $9,333.
♉️ Taurus Expands Europe Footprint After Deutsche Bank Link-up
Taurus, a Switzerland-based crypto infrastructure provider with a recent partnership with Deutsche Bank, is taking significant steps to enhance its presence in Europe. 🇪🇺
In line with its mission to offer comprehensive infrastructure for issuing, safeguarding, and trading cryptocurrencies, tokenized assets, and NFTs, Taurus is establishing new offices in London and Paris.
This expansion is strategically timed as it anticipates a surge in the involvement of European banks in the crypto sector, driven by an increasingly clear regulatory environment. The European Union Parliament introduced the Markets in Crypto Assets Regulation (MiCA) framework in April, which is slated for implementation in the near future, prompting the move to better serve institutions operating within this evolving landscape.
ESPRESSO-SIZED NEWS ☕️
⚔️ Web3 community platform Galxe Protocol fell victim to a DNS attack, resulting in losses exceeding $150,000, with indications of a connection to the Balancer protocol attack in September. Learn more.
🇨🇦 Canada eases strict stablecoin regulations, introducing conditions that mandate stablecoin issuers to maintain an ample asset reserve with a qualified custodian. Learn more.
🇬🇧 The UK’s FCA added Huobi and KuCoin to its warning list of unauthorised firms under the new Financial Promotions (FinProm) Regime for cryptocurrencies. Learn more.
[THE BLOCK WITH NFT & DEFI UPDATES]
Explore the Latest NFT and DeFi Updates 📰
🖼️ MoMa Acquired It’s First Tokenized Artwork
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has made history by acquiring Refik Anadol’s “Unsupervised – Machine Hallucinations,” marking the museum’s first inclusion of a tokenized artwork in its permanent collection.
This three-part work is part of Anadol’s “Unsupervised” exhibition, where he uses artificial intelligence to reimagine more than two centuries of art from MoMA’s collection, creating a unique piece with light, motion, sound, and environmental elements.
The acquisition was made possible with support from RFC Collection and 1of1. Refik Anadol is known for pushing the boundaries of digital art, with his recent work “Machine Hallucinations: Sphere” being the world’s largest AI artwork on the Las Vegas Sphere.
🤩 Anyone Can Now Create Free on Zora
Zora’s mission is to empower creators by making it incredibly easy and enjoyable to bring their unique vision and creativity to the blockchain. Now, we’ve taken a step to make it even more convenient for creators to realize the value of their work on Zora using just their Ethereum wallet.
Here’s how it works:
Traditionally, when creators wanted to create an NFT collection on Zora, they had to cover gas fees to publish their collection onto a supported blockchain network, essentially bringing it on-chain.
However, Zora is changing the game. Now, creators can make their collection available for mint on Zora without bringing it onchain. Instead, the first buyer of the edition, known as the “First Minter,” will handle the gas fees to publish the edition on Zora Network.
The edition won’t be visible on the blockchain until the first NFT is minted. At that point, it will be published on Zora Network and become viewable on the blockchain.
🐺 NFT-Backed Film ‘CALLADITA’ Set to Debut at the Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival
CALLADITA, the first European movie everfully funded by NFTs, prepares for its World Premiere at the prestigious Tallinn Black Nights Film Festival, one of the 12 A-Class Film Festivals worldwide.
Directed by Miguel Faus, this movie dives deep into the life of a young Latin-American maid, exploring themes of class disparity and societal injustice with authenticity, offering a fresh perspective on these subjects. As the film approaches its debut at the festival, an official movie trailer has been released.
“The Quiet Maid” is premiering on 10th of November at Coca-Cola Plaza cinema.
ESPRESSO-SIZED NFT NEWS ☕️
❌ Versum, the NFT platform and metaverse constructed on the Tezos blockchain, has made the decision to close its operations, bidding a bittersweet farewell to the Versum community after thorough consideration and assessment. Learn more.
🇨🇳 China Daily, the English-language newspaper under the Chinese Communist Party, is venturing into the metaverse and NFT space, offering a $390,000 contract to a third-party contractor to build the Zhongbao Shuzang NFT platform. Learn more.
🤝🏻 Immutable has teamed up with Amazon Web Services (AWS) to enhance WEB3 gaming, providing game studios with up to $100,000 in cloud services. Learn more.
WEEKLY DOSE OF DEFI NEWS
🟣 Circle Launches Native USDC Tokens on Polygon
Stablecoin issuer Circle has introduced the minting of USD Coin (USDC) directly on the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network, Polygon.
As Federal Reserve interest rates reach a 22-year high, FRAX introduces sFRAX With Circle Mint and developer APIs now compatible with Polygon, USDC is easily accessible to users and developers, eliminating the need to bridge the stablecoin to other blockchains.
This development allows businesses and developers to construct decentralized applications with USDC on Polygon, enabling swift, low-cost transactions for applications like payments, remittances, trading, borrowing, and lending.
🚀 FRAX Has Launched A New Staking Vault sFRAX
With Federal Reserve interest rates at their highest level in 22 years, FRAX announced the launch of sFRAX — a staking vault meant to tap the corresponding hike in Treasury yields
FRAX is in the midst of rolling out a range of “Frax v3” offerings, including the debut of sFRAX, also known as “staked FRAX,” in addition to a bond product that transforms into FRAX’s stablecoin upon maturity.
Frax founder Sam Kazemian has said that “users will be able to deposit sFRAX and receive 10% yield — which would then shrink to around 5.4%, the Fed’s current IORB rate.”
🪐 Mars Protocol V2 is Live
Mars v2 has made its debut on Osmosis, introducing a groundbreaking DeFi innovation: Rover credit accounts.
ESPRESSO-SIZED DEFI NEWS ☕️
Rovers, the core of this Mars v2 update, revolutionize DeFi by providing a unified basket for managing diverse positions, including longs, shorts, margin trades, and LP tokens. These assets can be utilized as collateral to access additional borrowing options from the Red Bank, enabling more leverage, hedges, or trading.
For existing users, both Mars v1 and Mars v2 will coexist on the blockchain. Existing Farm Vault positions on Mars v1 have been seamlessly upgraded to Mars v2 credit accounts. All deposits and borrowings from the Red Bank remain active on Mars v1 but will require manual migration, details of which can be found below.
ESPRESSO-SIZED DEFI NEWS ☕️
💸 Due to malfunctions by 20 validators, leading liquid staking platform Lido Finance is expected to incur Ethereum slashing penalties exceeding $30,000 in the near future. Learn more
🫡 Euler Finance has announced launching V2, aiming for a comeback following a major hack that severely impacted its TVL. Learn more.
👏🏻 Spark, the lending market focused on DAI and a subDAO of MakerDAO, is now active on Gnosis Chain, an Ethereum sidechain. Learn more.
Thank you for reading and enjoy your weekend!
Want more insight and love push notifications? Join our Telegram channel ByBlock Insider.
Do you know someone who would enjoy “Weekly Blocks”? Please share it with them. ❤️
Not financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or make other financial decisions. Always do your own research.