DAPP

BNB Chain issues list of 191 high-risk, untrustworthy DApps and fake tokens

BNB Chain’s proactive alert does not represent the risk level of the underlying DApp project. Instead, it is aimed at helping users in their research before making investment decisions.

BNB Chain, the blockchain developed by crypto exchange Binance, updated its red alarm list to include 191 high-risk projects and decentralized applications (DApps) currently hosted on the blockchain.

BNB Chain’s red alarm list — updated every Friday — includes projects and DApps deemed risky investments purely based on smart contract assessment. The 191 new projects on BNB Chain that have been added to the list are either suspected of issuing fake tokens, high or opaque tax fees or simply because their websites or Twitter handles don’t work.

A snippet of the risky projects on BNB Chain. Source: dappbay.bnbchain.org

The above screenshot shows a portal wherein users can scan any BNB Chain projects for risks. Out of the lot, three projects — CycGo, Piston token and Shorter Finance — were flagged after being suspected of being funded by assets originating from Tornado.

BNB Chain smart contract-based risk scanner. Source: dappbay.bnbchain.org

“Make sure to review our weekly Red Alarm list to familiarize yourself with suspicious actors on our network,” read BNB Chain’s announcement on the matter. It is important to note that BNB Chain’s proactive alert is not investment advice and does not represent the risk level of the underlying DApp projects. Instead, it is aimed at helping users in their research before making investment decisions.

Related: 73.3% of Q1 rug pulls happened on BNB Chain: Immunefi

On April 10, BNB Chain began testing BNB Greenfield, an in-house attempt to deliver decentralized storage solutions.

As Cointelegraph reported, BNB Greenfield allows users to create wallets and manage data, while developers can exercise control over data assets.

Magazine: Crypto audits and bug bounties are broken: Here’s how to fix them

Gamers made up nearly half of all blockchain activity in January: DappRadar Report

A new report from DappRadar revealed that during the first month of 2023, blockchain gaming made up 48% of all DApp activity.

Play-to-earn blockchain gaming experienced a downturn over the last year as gamers prioritized improving the gameplay experience. 

However, according to a new report from DappRadar, in the first month of 2023, gamers made up nearly half (48%) of all blockchain activity.

January also saw the market caps for top gaming tokens increase by 122% on average, with Gala (GALA), the digital utility token of the Gala Games ecosystem, surging by 218%.

According to the report, the rise in interest in these gaming tokens comes as industry buzz hits mainstream audiences. For example, Gala Games made headlines after it acquired a new mobile gaming studio with more than $20 million in assets under management and 15 games.

Blockchain analyst at DappRadar, Sara Gherghelas, told Cointelegraph that based on on-chain metrics from the past two years, it’s safe to assume blockchain gaming will continue to be a significant sector in the industry.

“This is because blockchain gaming is already a vertical in the traditional industry. As blockchain gains more traction, it will bring more adoption to Web3 games which will become mainstream.”

The Wax blockchain continues to have the most active gaming activity, with 331,000 unique active wallets. The top three blockchain gaming ecosystems all saw an increase in gaming protocols from the end of 2022 to the beginning of 2023, except for the BNB Chain.

Source: DappRadar 

The beginning of 2023 saw increased activity as strong funding set the stage for what many call blockchain gaming’s “buidling” year. This term encapsulates the industry’s focus on building more powerful, high quality games.

Gherghelas said the amount of investments toward this vertical is “increasing significantly,” with overall investment in 2022 around $7.6 billion — a 105% increase from 2021. Investments into the blockchain gaming industry topped $156 million in January alone.

Related: Ushering in a new era of Web3 gaming by making Play-to-Earn sustainable

Additionally, the report highlighted the metaverse’s role in the uptick in blockchain gaming activity this year. The data revealed that the trading volume for January in virtual world-related games hit $44.5 million, a 114% increase from the month prior.

Although sales decreased by 19%, the overall growth can be attributed to the success of major metaverse platforms such as The Sandbox and Decentraland, with an increase in trading volume of 114% and 83%, respectively.

According to at 2022 report from DappRadar, Web3 gaming accounted for nearly half of all blockchain-based transactions in the year. 

NFT sales topped 101 million in 2022: DappRadar report

A recent report from DappRadar revealed that over the last year, NFT and gaming-centered decentralized applications rivaled DeFi DApps on many major blockchains.

Over the last year, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) continued to play an important role in the growing Web3 industry. NFTs initiated a shift away from hype-based drops, to utility-centric projects with long-term value.

A new DappRadar report on blockchain and decentralized application (DApp) adoption in 2022 revealed that the NFT sale count last year reached 101 million — a 67.57% increase from the previous year.

According to the report, the Ethereum ecosystem holds the top spot in the NFT ecosystem, holding 21% of the market share and over 21.2 million transactions processed. It is followed by Wax (14.5 million), Polygon (13.3 million) and Solana (12.9 million).

Both the Solana and ImmutableX ecosystems saw massive growth from the previous year in terms of transaction activity, with a 440% and 315% increase, respectively.

Meanwhile, the data shows no change in the BNB ecosystem, with roughly 1 million transactions for both 2021 and 2022.

The dominant category of DApps on various chains has also shifted in the last year. In 2021, decentralized finance (DeFi) apps were dominant on all but 2 of the 13 chains used in the report.

This year, however, a major shift towards high-risk, gaming and NFT DApps leveled out the playing field.

Related: Opinion: NFTs have a brighter future on Instagram than on Twitter

Additionally, the report highlighted Ethereum and Cardano as the blockchains with the most active developers working on-chain, with 223 and 151 active protocols, respectively. 

While modular blockchains, such as Polkadot and Cosmos, saw their network developer activity grow by 16% and 131.7%.

The importance of NFTs in the Web3 space also spilled over into mainstream culture last year. From continued adoption by legacy institutions like the NBA to Amazon making a documentary series about NFTs and those who collect them.

At the end of the year last year, China announced its first national NFT marketplace to serve as a ​​secondary market for the exchange of digital assets.

New oracle system to help DApps retrieve millions lost to MEV

OEV-enabled oracles auction off the right to extract on-chain value to the same third-party searchers who used to bid for the blockspace.

A new oracle system aims to retrieve the additional fees paid by decentralized application (DApp) users to miners called maximal extractable value (MEV). It is the maximum value a miner can extract from moving-around transactions when producing a block on a blockchain network.

MEV can be defined as the maximum value that can be extracted from block production in excess of the standard block reward and gas fees. The MEV comprises arbitrage and liquidation fees, among others, that could amount to millions and are often extracted by block producers.

A new oracle system called oracle extractable value (OEV) promises to change that and return the extra revenue back to the DApp instead of third parties and block producers. Web3 decentralized oracle service provider API3 has come up with the concept of OEV that promises to offer an additional revenue source for decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols.

The traditional way of extracting MEV is participating in blockspace auctions, which were often done by third parties and block producers, but OEV-enabled oracles take auctions off-chain and auction the right to extract on-chain value to the same third-party searchers who used to bid for the blockspace.

Talking about the working of the OEV oracles and how It would help the DeFi ecosystem,  Burak Benligiray, core technical team lead at API3, told Cointelegraph:

“OEV auctions will happen off-chain, which means even when there is a lot of value being extracted, gas prices will not be affected. Furthermore, proceeds of block space auctions are claimed by block validators, while OEV proceeds can be redirected to the dApps that create them.”

Data from flashbots suggests that block producers have captured nearly $653 million in MEV. Flashbots is a centralized entity dedicated to transparent and efficient MEV extraction.

Related: MEV bot earns $1M but loses everything to a hacker an hour later

OEV-enabled data feeds then return the proceeds of these auctions to the DApps that generate the value in the first place. The OEV-enabled data feeds not only help in retrieving the MEV but also minimize it by updating precisely when needed, achieving a zero deviation threshold.

OEV oracle services are available on numerous Ethereum virtual machine (EVM)-compatible networks, including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, Optimism, BNB Chain, Avalanche, Milkomeda, Fantom and many more.