Cryptocurrency firms large and small have started donating to DeFi United, a fund set up to help lending protocol Aave recover from the fallout of the $293 million Kelp DAO hack. After the April 18 theft, hackers thought to be from North Korea moved $230 million in stolen rsETH tokens — valued the same as ether, currently $2,300 — onto Aave, taking out loans using the unbacked tokens as collateral. That left Aave with a huge amount of bad debt, which in turn led to a bank-run-style series of withdrawals that left the protocol frozen. Now a group of firms, beginning with staking provider Lido Finance, have pledged donations and…
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Sandwich Attacks: Are You on the Menu?
Explanation of “front running” risks in crypto and how to avoid them
Traditional “front running” is trading of stocks or other financial assets using privileged information about an upcoming transaction that is anticipated to significantly impact its price. For example, brokers could front run trades by using insider knowledge regarding their firm’s imminent issuance of a buy or sell recommendation to clients, a move expected to influence the asset’s price. Trading on this kind of non-public information is illegal in most jurisdictions, not only because it’s unfair to other market participants but also because it degrades the integrity of financial markets and erodes investor trust. In the often “Wild West” of crypto markets, given that all too often lawmakers haven’t caught up…
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Crypto Start-up Profile: Superfluid
Upgrading payroll, vesting and airdrops via continuous asset streaming
Ever wonder why our paychecks typically come twice a month or bi-weekly, in some cases weekly? In the 19th century it was common for workers to be paid monthly, at the end of a season – or in the case of seamen, at the end of a voyage when profits were divided. Labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein traces the modern pay cycle to World War II, when the U.S. Congress passed the Revenue Act of 1942 to increase revenue to fund the war effort and introduce the country’s first tax withholding system. Given the complexities of calculating pay rates, tax, healthcare and other deductions, as well as managing a company’s human…
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The State of Ethereum Scaling
An overview of State channels, Plasma, Rollups, Sidechains and Validium chains
As Ethereum passes the milestone of a quarter of a billion unique addresses, daily gas used has remained over 100 million for more than a year, the number of ENS names registered approaches 2.6 million and market cap once again flirts with $250 billion, its worth taking a step back to look at the numerous scaling solutions that are enabling this growth without also triggering the sky-high transaction fees the network has seen during several periods of high blockspace demand. How Ethereum would scale was a key issue from the time the network’s launch in 2015, and by 2017 its inventor Vitalik Buterin was discussing its status in interviews, such…
