Uniswap

a16z votes against proposal to deploy Uniswap v3 on BNB Chain

The venture firm used its 15 million UNI holding to vote against the deployment using the Wormhole bridge.

Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) voted against a final proposal to deploy Uniswap v3 on the BNB Chain using the Wormhole bridge, the Uniswap DAO forum shows.

The governance proposal to deploy the latest Uniswap iteration on the BNB Chain was submitted on Feb. 2 by 0xPlasma Labs on behalf of the Uniswap Community, after it passed a temperature check with 20 million (80.28%) votes for yes, and 4.9 million (19.72%) votes for no. On Feb. 5, the venture firm used its 15 million UNI holding to vote against the move.

At the time of publication, only 3% of UNI tokens had cast a vote, resulting in 23.4 million votes. The voting period is scheduled to end on Feb. 10.

*Uniswap DAO – Proposal to deploy Uniswap V3 on BNB Chain using the Wormhole bridge. Source: Tally*

Behind the disagreement is the cross-chain bridge chosen for the deployment. The proposal uses the Wormhole bridge, while a16z supports the use of LayerZero as the interoperability protocol.

Partners of the venture firm expressed their intention to vote for LayerZero as the deployment bridge during the temperature check. Eddy Lazzarin, head of engineering at a16z, commented in the proposal discussion on Jan. 31:

“To be totally unambiguous, we at a16z would have voted 15m tokens toward LayerZero if we were technically able to. And we will be able in future Snapshot votes. So, for the purposes of a “temperature check”, please count us this way.”

In the proposal, 0xPlasma Labs notes that stakeholders within the Uniswap ecosystem “have expressed a desire to see trust-minimized bridges used for governance for the new Uniswap v3 deployment on BNB Chain.”

Based on technical assessments of four bridges and “a very complex discussion and voting on the Snapshot, the community chose the Wormhole bridge for the Uniswap v3 deployment on BNB Chain,” notes the proposal. The second position was held by the LayerZero team, with 17 million votes.

In 2022, the Wormhole protocol suffered one of the largest exploits targeting bridges, resulting in the loss of 120,000 Wrapped Ether (wETH) tokens, worth $321 million at the time. An attacker found a vulnerability in the protocol’s smart contract and was able to mint 120,000 wETH on Solana without collateral before swapping it for ETH

LayerZero Labs is part of a16z venture’s portfolio. In March, the protocol dedicated to omnichain decentralized applications raised $135 million in a funding round led by a16z and Sequoia, among other investors, earning unicorn status with a $1 billion valuation.

Ethereum futures and options data reflect investors’ growing confidence in ETH price

ETH price struggles to flip $1,700 to support, but key derivatives data show bulls making plans to break through the resistance.

The price of Ether (ETH) rallied 16% between Jan. 14 and Jan. 21, peaking at $1,680 before facing a 5.4% rejection. Curiously, the same resistance level resulted in a substantial correction in late August and again in early on Nov. 2.

*Ether/USD price index, 2-day. Source: TradingView*

From one side, traders are relieved that Ether is trading up 35.5% year-to-date, but the repeated corrections that follow retests of the $1,680 resistance may have weakened investors’ sentiment.

Negative newsflow might have limited Ether investors’ appetite after troubled cryptocurrency company Digital Currency Group (DCG) faced more legal issues this week. On Jan. 23, a group of Genesis Capital creditors filed a lawsuit alleging violations of federal securities laws. In addition, the plaintiffs allege the lending firm made false and misleading statements as part of a scheme to defraud potential and existing digital asset lenders.

Another new concern for Ether holders came on Jan. 22, after a “temperature check” proposal to deploy Uniswap v3 protocol to BNB Chain received overwhelming support from the Uniswap community. Some 80% of Uniswap’s UNI governance tokenholders have voted to deploy the additional version of the decentralized exchange protocol.

On the bright side, Ethereum developers have created a testing environment for the upcoming Shanghai network upgrade. According to Ethereum developer Marius Van Der Wijden, the testnet appears to have been created to evaluate staking withdrawals, which are currently disabled on the mainnet. Over 14.5 million ETH (worth $23 billion) has been deposited into the Ethereum staking contract, and harsh criticism followed the multiple delays in enabling withdrawals.

Let’s look at Ether derivatives data to understand if the $1,680 price rejection has impacted crypto investor sentiment.

ETH futures finally enter the neutral area

Retail traders usually avoid quarterly futures due to their price difference from spot markets. Meanwhile, professional traders prefer these instruments because they prevent the fluctuation of funding rates in a perpetual futures contract.

The three-month futures annualized premium should trade between 4% to 8% in healthy markets to cover costs and associated risks. When the futures trade at a discount versus regular spot markets, it shows a lack of confidence from leverage buyers and this is a bearish indicator.

*Ether 3-month futures annualized premium. Source: Laevitas*

The above chart shows that derivatives traders are no longer bearish because the Ether futures premium reached the 4% threshold for neutral markets. So, bulls can celebrate that the indicator shifted to a modest premium, but that does not mean traders expect the immediate result of positive price action.

For this reason, traders should analyze Ether’s options markets to understand how whales and market makers are pricing the odds of future price movements.

Options traders are comfortable with downside risk

The 25% delta skew is a telling sign when market makers and arbitrage desks are overcharging for upside or downside protection.

In bear markets, options investors give higher odds for a price dump, causing the skew indicator to rise above 10%. On the other hand, bullish markets tend to drive the skew indicator below -10%, meaning the bearish put options are discounted.

*Ether 60-day options 25% delta skew: Source: Laevitas*

The delta skew has stabilized near 0% in the past week, signaling that Ether options traders are presenting a neutral sentiment. That is a stark contrast from the end of 2022 when the 25% skew index hovered near 18% — indicating a lack of comfort in taking downside risks.

Ultimately, both options and futures markets point to pro traders moving out of the neutral-to-bearish sentiment to a neutral positioning, meaning there is no discomfort after the rejection at $1,680 and subsequent correction.

Consequently, the odds favor Ether bulls because the negative newsflow could not prevent the 35.5% year-to-date gains and the demand for shorts using futures contracts remains thin.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

December DeFi exploits were the lowest in 2022: Finance Redefined

The DeFi market didn’t see much change in its first week of new year compared to the last week of 2022 as the price momentum remained in a similar zone.

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week.

The end of 2022 saw the least value of stolen funds from DeFi, with $62 million worth of exploits in December. While the figure might seem a relief given the multiple bridge hacks and hundreds of millions of dollars stolen this year, cybersecurity experts have warned that the ecosystem would see no decrease in exploits, flash loans or exit scams in 2023.

Lido protocol overtook MakerDAO to have the highest total value locked (TVL) in the DeFi ecosystem. In other news, Mango Markets hacker Avraham Eisenberg was detained pending trial.

The start of the new year saw a GMX whale hacked for $3.5 million worth of GMX tokens. The hackers took control of 82,519 GMX tokens, exchanged the assets for 2,627 Ether (ETH), and then transferred the assets to the Ethereum network using Hop Protocol and Across Protocol.

The top 100 DeFi tokens started the year on a bullish note, with most of the tokens trading in the green on the weekly charts.

$62 million crypto stolen in December was the ‘lowest monthly figure’ in 2022: CertiK

Cryptocurrency hackers and exploiters seemingly slowed down for the 2022 holidays, with December seeing $62.2 million worth of cryptocurrencies stolen. It was the “lowest monthly figure” of the year, according to CertiK.

On Dec. 31, the blockchain security company tweeted a list of the month’s most significant attacks. It highlighted the $15.5 million worth of exit scams as the method that exploited the most value over the month, followed by the $7.6 million worth of flash loan-based exploits.

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No ‘respite’ for exploits, flash loans or exit scams in 2023: Cybersecurity firm

The new year is a fresh start for malicious actors in the crypto space and 2023 won’t likely see a slowdown in scams, exploits and hacks, according to CertiK. The blockchain security company told Cointelegraph its expectations for the year ahead regarding bad actors in the space.

CertiK pointed to the “devastating” exploits on cross-chain bridges in 2022. Six of the 10 largest exploits during the year were bridge exploits, amounting to around $1.4 billion.

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Lido overtakes MakerDAO and now has the highest TVL in DeFi

Liquid staking protocol Lido Finance has benefited most from the Ethereum merge in September, with its TVL now sitting at the top position among other DeFi protocols.

According to data from DefiLlama, Lido’s liquid staking protocol now commands $5.9 billion in TVL, overtaking MakerDAO’s $5.89 billion and Aave’s $3.7 billion.

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Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg detained pending trial

In a new update to the Mango Markets exploit saga, the United States District Court for the District of Puerto Rico has issued an order of detention to the infamous Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg.

After holding a detention hearing, United States Magistrate Judge Bruce McGiverin decided that it was necessary to detain Eisenberg for several reasons. According to court documents, there is no condition or combination of conditions of Eisenberg’s release that will reasonably assure his appearance as required.

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DeFi market overview

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total market value remained below $40 billion this past week, trading at about $38.5 billion at the time of writing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView show that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a volatile and bullish week, with nearly all of the tokens trading in the green.

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.

DeFi auditor nets $40,000 for identifying Uniswap vulnerability

A security firm flagged a now-fixed vulnerability to Uniswap, highlighting the potential for reentrancy attacks on the protocol’s Universal Router smart contract.

Uniswap’s recently launched bug bounty program has led to the discovery of a now-fixed vulnerability of the protocol’s Universal Router smart contract.

The automated market maker released two new smart contracts to its platform in November 2022. Permit2 allows token approvals to be shared and managed across different applications, while Universal Router unifies ERC-20 and nonfungible tokens (NFTs) swapping into a single swap router.

Uniswap also advertised a lucrative bug bounty program to identify potential vulnerabilities in its smart contracts toward the end of 2022 as it looked to assure the safety and efficacy of its protocol.

Smart contract security and auditing firm Dedaub announced that it had received a bug bounty after flagging a vulnerability in the Universal Router smart contract that would have allowed reentrancy to drain user funds mid-transaction.

The Dedaub team has disclosed a Critical vulnerability to the Uniswap team!

Funds are safe – Uniswap addressed the issue and redeployed the Universal Router smart contracts on all its chains

The vulnerability allows re-entertrancy to drain the user’s funds, mid-tx.

pic.twitter.com/wFSFsohPvy

— Dedaub (@dedaub) January 2, 2023

According to Dedaub’s breakdown, the Universal Router allows users to perform diverse actions including swapping multiple tokens and NFTs in one transaction.

The router embeds a scripting language for a wide variety of token actions, which could include transfers to third party recipients. If correctly implemented, transfers would go to the recipient within specified parameters.

However, Dedaub identified a vulnerability in which a third-party code was invoked during the transfer, allowing the code to re-enter the Universal Router and claim any tokens that were temporarily in the contract.

Dedaub then suggested a straightforward remedy, advising the Uniswap team to add a reentrancy lock to the core execution of the new router. Uniswap awarded the auditing firm a total of $40,000 for flagging the vulnerability. The amount included a 33% bonus for reporting the issue during Uniswap’s bonus period in November 2022.

Uniswap classified the issue as medium severity, while further assessment deemed the vulnerability to have a high impact and low likelihood. According to Dedaub, the possibility of a user sending NFTs to an untrusted recipient directly was considered a user error.

More complex and less likely scenarios were considered valid for reentrancy, which resulted in Uniswap deeming the vector to have a low likelihood. Cointelegraph has reached out to Uniswap to ascertain further details of its ongoing bounty program, amounts paid out and the number of bugs identified to date.

Bug bounties have become commonplace in the cryptocurrency and blockchain space as platforms and companies look to ensure the security of their software, systems and infrastructure.

Cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase recently clarified the terms of its bug bounty, while blockchain security firm Immunefi has facilitated over $65 million worth of bug bounties between ethical hackers and Web3 firms in 2022.

Web3 projects would rather get hacked than pay bounty: Finance Redefined

The top 100 DeFi tokens had a volatile yet bearish week with nearly all the tokens trading in red on the weekly charts.

Welcome to Finance Redefined, your weekly dose of essential decentralized finance (DeFi) insights — a newsletter crafted to bring you significant developments over the last week.

Uniswap, one of the leading decentralized exchange platforms, is integrating debit and credit card support for its users. It will allow Uniswap users to buy cryptocurrency directly with their cards.

An ex-employee caused Ankr protocol’s recent $5 million hack. The DeFi protocol alerted relevant authorities and is seeking to prosecute the attacker while shoring up its security practices.

A Web3 developer has claimed that many crypto ecosystem projects would rather get hacked than pay bounties. After reporting and helping patch a smart contract vulnerability, the developer claims that the projects he helped started to ignore him. However, despite a tumultuous year, DeFi, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and blockchain games drove decentralized application (DApp) usage across the industry, according to DappRadar’s 2022 report.

The top 100 DeFi tokens had a bearish week, with nearly all of the tokens trading in red on the weekly charts.

Uniswap to allow users to buy cryptocurrency using debit and credit cards

Decentralized exchange Uniswap has partnered with fintech company Moonpay to allow users to buy cryptocurrency on its web app using debit cards, credit cards, and bank transfers. The bank transfer option is being rolled out for users within most United States states, Brazil, the United Kingdom, and the Single Euro Payments Area, also known as SEPA.

In the announcement made on Dec. 20, Uniswap shared that its users will now be able to convert fiat to cryptocurrency on the Ethereum mainnet, Polygon, Optimism and Artibrum in a matter of minutes.

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Projects would rather get hacked than pay bounties, Web3 developer claims

As hacks and exploits continue to be rampant within the crypto industry, finding vulnerabilities to prevent potential losses is of utmost importance. However, a Web3 developer highlighted that doing so is not rewarding.

In a tweet, a Web3 developer claimed that he found a vulnerability in a Solana smart contract that would have affected several projects and around $30 million in funds. According to the dev, he reported and helped patch the vulnerabilities. However, when it was time to ask for a reward, the projects just started to ignore him.

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Ankr says ex-employee caused $5M exploit, vows to improve security

A $5 million hack of the Ankr protocol on Dec. 1 was caused by a former team member, according to a Dec. 20 announcement from the Ankr team.

The ex-employee conducted a “supply chain attack” by putting malicious code into a package of future updates to the team’s internal software. Once this software was updated, the malicious code created a security vulnerability that allowed the attacker to steal the team’s deployer key from the company’s server.

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DeFi, NFT, blockchain games: Key takeaways from DappRadar’s 2022 review

2022 will go down as a challenging year for the cryptocurrency and blockchain space, but the adversity faced has been sprinkled with plenty of positives in the DApp ecosystem.

DappRadar has released its yearly report on the industry, focusing on challenges faced alongside notable technological achievements and increasing daily users.

Continue reading

DeFi market overview

Analytical data reveals that DeFi’s total market value dipped below $40 billion this past week, trading at about $38.1 billion at the time of writing. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView, show that DeFi’s top 100 tokens by market capitalization had a volatile and bearish week, with nearly all of the tokens trading in the red.

Thanks for reading our summary of this week’s most impactful DeFi developments. Join us next Friday for more stories, insights and education in this dynamically advancing space.

As DEXs struggle, new approaches kindle hope

Despite their popularity, DEXs have a number of drawbacks that may be preventing growth. A new approach, however, has offered a way forward.

In May 2022, at the tail of the crypto bull market, economist Eswar Prasad wrote an op-ed for the Financial Times arguing that DeFi’s promise as a means of democratizing finance was a long way from being realized. In his words, “For all its promise in democratizing finance and broadening financial access, the emerging reality suggests a concentration of economic power, while the risks fall largely on those investors least able to handle them.”

Prasad is right that early DeFi projects catered almost exclusively to crypto natives, often called “degens” in Twitter parlance. However, he didn’t acknowledge that this is in fact a common pattern for any nascent industry crossing the chasm from fringe to mainstream adoption. New, transformative technology frequently starts out looking like a toy. The internet went through this same phase, as did many of its formative companies, such as Facebook, whose target audience grew from college students to anyone in the world with an internet connection.

This article explores how one foundational building block of DeFi — the decentralized exchange — emerged and continues to evolve from being a toy to a serious product that rivals traditional centralized exchanges.

The heart of DeFi — The decentralized exchange

At the core of any financial system, DeFi included, is the ability to exchange assets. In order for DeFi to rise from nothing to hundreds of billions of dollars in value, it required an easy way to trade tokens. This gave rise to the decentralized exchange, or DEX. The best example is Uniswap, which is by far the most popular and successful DEX in DeFi.

The idea behind the exchange adheres to the tenets of DeFi: It serves as a transaction hub where users can exchange a variety of different currencies without the necessity of an intermediary. However, Uniswap acts as an automated market maker (or AMM), where users can trade against a smart contract acting as a counterparty.

While fulfilling those functions was enough for the platform to break out onto the world stage and carve out the biggest slice of the emerging market share — one that the exchange maintains today — Uniswap is not a perfect solution and the AMM model has several flaws.

The trade-off with AMMs

AMM exchanges pool the liquidity they get from liquidity providers, and employ algorithms to price their supported assets within that pool. This model proved hugely successful for Uniswap in its early days, as it allowed easy sourcing and aggregation of liquidity, against which trades were possible on Ethereum.

Source: Twitter

AMMs work great for two use cases: stable swaps between two stablecoins or price stable assets, and in the initial process of bootstrapping permissionless liquidity for long-tail assets. However, for use cases outside of these, AMMs are not ideal for either the liquidity provider or the trader.

For liquidity providers, AMMs can prove problematic due to toxic flaws where an overabundance of liquidity can get taken advantage of by arbitrageurs and impermanent loss risks. For traders, on the other hand, AMMs have another set of risks including MEV and slippage that can translate to significant losses.

On-chain settlement with off-chain pricing

The main issues with AMMs described above all owe to one simple fact: AMM-style exchanges price assets on chain. This means that smart contracts on Ethereum (or other chains) are required to determine the fair value of an asset via math formulas encoded on the chain. The beauty of this is that you need no additional infrastructure to facilitate a trade. However, the trade-off is that price discovery becomes muddled and a bevy of problems stemming from manipulating prices via transaction ordering end up impacting users.

An alternative approach is the RFQ (request-for-quote) model that allows users to get quotes directly from market makers and trade with zero slippage and full MEV protection. Instead of pricing assets on chain, RFQ-style exchanges handle the settlement and swapping of assets on the blockchain, but enable off-chain actors to price assets. This latter distinction enables far more capital efficiency as well, helping bring in market makers and traditional players unable to provide liquidity via AMMs.

Hashflow, one of the top-10 DEXs by transaction volume, has made it its goal to simplify the decentralized exchange experience with an eye to optimizing it for the retail user. Rather than employing an AMM system, Hashflow uses the RFQ model described above, and has demonstrated its success to the tune of over $11 billion transacted in just over a year.

Source: Hashflow trading metrics

Native, cross-chain swaps and the way forward

Beyond its model, Hashflow also introduces native cross-chain swaps. Hashflow was the first platform to introduce this technology and the end result is a reliable exchange model that is similar in practice to the more convenient experience offered by centralized exchanges, but carries with it all of the advantages that come with decentralized finance. Looking forward, after recently adding Wormhole’s messaging protocol, Hashflow will be integrating more non-EVM chains and introducing structured products along with limit orders.

If there is to be a true democratization of finance, DeFi as a whole needs to change and re-orient itself with retail users as its center of focus. To make that happen, platforms like Hashflow have taken steps to simplify and streamline the transaction process and make it less burdensome for the everyday user. Time will tell whether the rest of the industry follows suit.

Material is provided in partnership with Hashflow

Disclaimer. Cointelegraph does not endorse any content or product on this page. While we aim at providing you with all important information that we could obtain, readers should do their own research before taking any actions related to the company and carry full responsibility for their decisions, nor can this article be considered as investment advice.

Breaking: Ankr confirms exploit, asks for immediate trading halt

The decentralized-finance protocol said it is working with exchanges to immediately halt trading of its BNB staking rewards token, aBNBc.

BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr has confirmed it has been hit by a multi-million dollar exploit on Dec. 1.

The attack appeared to be first discovered by on-chain security analyst PeckShield at approximately 12:35 am UTC on Dec. 2.

Within an hour of the attack, Ankr confirmed on Twitter that the aBNB token has been exploited and that they’re working with exchanges to immediately halt trading of the compromised token.

Our aBNB token has been exploited, and we are currently working with exchanges to immediately halt trading.

— Ankr (@ankr) December 2, 2022

The attacker was purportedly able to mint 20 trillion Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB (aBNBc), a reward-bearing token for BNB staked on the protocol.

According to a Twitter post from on-chain analysis firm Lookonchain, the exploiter has since used services such as Uniswap, Tornado Cash, and various bridges to swap and obfuscate the funds in order to gain around $5 million worth of USD Coin (USDC).

It also added in a following post that “all underlying assets on Ankr Staking are safe at this time, and all infrastructure services are unaffected.”

Seems that @ankr got hacked an hour ago!

The exploiter minted 20T aBNBc and dumped it on #PancakeSwap.

At present, the exploiter have successfully exchanged more than 5 million $USDC.https://t.co/hF1tgNYw0t pic.twitter.com/XIPjBi6wvs

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 2, 2022

In comments to Cointelegraph about the attack, blockchain security firm Beosin suggested the exploit was likely the result of vulnerabilities in the smart contract code combined with compromised private keys, which may have come from a technical upgrade by the Ankr team about 12 hours ago.

Beosin also noted that the mass minting episode caused the price of aBNBc to fall 99.5% from $303.89 to $1.53 in a matter of hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

@ankr has been exploited. $aBNBc has dropped -99.5%.
The hacker minted tons of $aBNBc and made a profit of 5,500 BNB (~$1.6 million)
The deployer changed the implementation contract to the vulnerable contract address before the attack (possibly due to private key compromise). pic.twitter.com/GJheXh0oDp

— Beosin Alert (@BeosinAlert) December 2, 2022

“It is possible that the deployer’s private key was exposed in this upgrade, leading to an attacker using deployer privileges to modify the contract,” a Beosin spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

In a Dec. 2 Twitter post, crypto exchange Binance also confirmed its team is engaged with relevant parties to investigate the matter further, adding that Binance’s user funds are not at risk.

We are aware of the attack targeting @ankr's aBNBc token. Our team is engaged with the relevant parties and @BNBCHAIN to investigate further.

This is not an attack against #Binance, and your funds are SAFU on our exchange. This thread will be updated should there be any updates.

— Binance (@binance) December 2, 2022

Cointelegraph contacted Ankr when the exploit was first discovered but did not receive an immediate response.

Ankr confirms exploit, asks for immediate trading halt

The decentralized-finance protocol said it is working with exchanges to immediately halt trading of its BNB staking rewards token, aBNBc.

BNB Chain-based decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Ankr has confirmed it has been hit by a multi-million dollar exploit on Dec. 1.

The attack appeared to be first discovered by on-chain security analyst PeckShield at approximately 12:35 am UTC on Dec. 2.

Within an hour of the attack, Ankr confirmed on Twitter that the aBNB token has been exploited and that it’s working with exchanges to immediately halt trading of the compromised token.

Our aBNB token has been exploited, and we are currently working with exchanges to immediately halt trading.

— Ankr (@ankr) December 2, 2022

The attacker was purportedly able to mint 20 trillion Ankr Reward Bearing Staked BNB (aBNBc), a reward-bearing token for BNB (BNB) staked on the protocol.

It also added in a following post that “all underlying assets on Ankr Staking are safe at this time, and all infrastructure services are unaffected.”

Seems that @ankr got hacked an hour ago!

The exploiter minted 20T aBNBc and dumped it on #PancakeSwap.

At present, the exploiter have successfully exchanged more than 5 million $USDC.https://t.co/hF1tgNYw0t pic.twitter.com/XIPjBi6wvs

— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) December 2, 2022

Beosin also noted that the mass minting episode caused the price of aBNBc to fall 99.5% from $303.89 to $1.53 in a matter of hours, according to data from CoinMarketCap.

@ankr has been exploited. $aBNBc has dropped -99.5%.
The hacker minted tons of $aBNBc and made a profit of 5,500 BNB (~$1.6 million)
The deployer changed the implementation contract to the vulnerable contract address before the attack (possibly due to private key compromise). pic.twitter.com/GJheXh0oDp

— Beosin Alert (@BeosinAlert) December 2, 2022

“It is possible that the deployer’s private key was exposed in this upgrade, leading to an attacker using deployer privileges to modify the contract,” a Beosin spokesperson told Cointelegraph.

In a Dec. 2 Twitter post, crypto exchange Binance confirmed its team is engaged with relevant parties to investigate the matter further, adding that Binance’s user funds are not at risk. The BNB Chain Twitter page also stated that the exploiter’s wallet address has been blacklisted.

We are aware of the attack on @ankr‘s aBNBc that happened earlier today, leading to a substantial amount of new aBNBc being minted. The exploiter has been blacklisted.
Our community is on top of it, coordinating a response. We will provide more updates as they become available.

— BNB Chain (@BNBCHAIN) December 2, 2022

Cointelegraph contacted Ankr when the exploit was first discovered but did not receive an immediate response.

Update 4:30am UTC Dec. 2: Added in an official statement from Ankr comments from Beosin.

Update 5:30am UTC Dec. 2: Added a statement from Binance’s BNB Chain Twitter account.

DEX token GMX rallies 35% after beating Uniswap on trading fees for the first time

GMX’s technical indicator hints at a strong correction in December, which may push its price toward $40.

The price of GMX rallied to its second-highest level in history on Dec. 1 as traders assessed the decentralized exchange’s ability to evolve as a serious competitor to its top rival Uniswap.

GMX established an intraday high of $54.50 in a recovery that started on Nov. 29 from $40.50. Its rally’s beginning coincided with crypto research firm Delphi Digital’s tweet on the GMX decentralized exchange, as shown below.

*GMX/USD 4-hour price chart. Source: TradingView*

GMX beats Uniswap in fees for the first time

Notably, GMX earned about $1.15 million in daily trading fees on Nov. 28, which surpassed Uniswap’s $1.06 million in trading fees on the same day.

*GMX flipped Uniswap in daily Fees on Nov. 28. Source: Delphi Digital*

This seemingly renewed buying sentiment in the GMX market, helping its price rally 35% to $54.50 afterward.

Moreover, GMX also benefited from the growing discontent against centralized exchanges in the wake of the FTX collapse. The decentralized exchange’s revenue rose by 107% to $5 million in November, boosted by a 128% increase in annualized trading volume and a 31% rise in daily active users.

*GMX exchange’s financial data. Source: Token Terminal*

In comparison, Uniswap’s annualized revenue increased by about 75% and daily active users by 8%.

Independent market analyst Zen noted that GMX’s outperformance could have stemmed from its tokenholders receiving a good portion of all trading fees — about 30%, according to GMX’s official declaration.

On the other hand, holders of Uniswap’s native token, UNI, do not receive shares from the platform’s trading fees.

“[GMX is] an obvious buy and hold during this bear market,” Zen added, saying that it is “consistently the second highest earning protocol after Uniswap.” An excerpt:

“Leverage trading becomes dominant during bear markets. FTX and Bybit grew a lot last time. Expecting [a] similar story here. No big FDV overhang.”

GMX price technicals tilt bearish

From a technical analysis perspective, GMX’s ongoing bull run risks exhaustion in the coming days.

On the daily chart, GMX’s price tests its multi-month ascending trendline resistance for a potential pullback based on its previous corrections after testing the same trendline. In doing so, the token eyes a decline toward the ascending trendline support.

*GMX/USD daily price chart. Source: TradingView*

As of Dec. 1, GMX faced an increase in selling pressure near the trendline resistance at around $53. The GMX/USD pair could drop to the current trendline support near $42, which coincides with its 50-day exponential moving average (50-day EMA; the red wave) and its 0.618 Fib line.

In other words, GMX could drop by nearly 20% from its current price levels by the end of 2022.

This article does not contain investment advice or recommendations. Every investment and trading move involves risk, and readers should conduct their own research when making a decision.

Uniswap launches NFT marketplace aggregator

Developers say the tool can help users save upwards of 15% on gas fees when shopping for NFTs.

According to a new post on November 30, decentralized exchange (DEX) Uniswap announced that users can now trade nonfungible tokens, or NFTs, on its native protocol. As told by Uniswap, the function will initially feature NFT collections for sale on platforms including OpenSea, X2Y2, LooksRare, Sudoswap, Larva Labs, X2Y2, Foundation, NFT20, and NFTX.

“To bring users the first-rate experience they’ve come to expect with Uniswap, we built the aggregator to deliver better prices, faster indexing, more unassailable smart contracts, and efficient execution.”

Uniswap developers claim that users can save up to 15% on gas costs compared to other NFT aggregators when using Uniswap NFT. unifies ERC20 and NFT swapping into a single swap router. Integrated with Permit2, users can swap multiple tokens and NFTs in one swap while saving on gas fees.

The NFT aggregator is powered by the Universal Router smart contract and optimized by UX smart contract Permit2, both Uniswap inventions. According to the DEX, it “unifies ERC-20 and NFT swapping into a single swap router. Integrated with Permit2, users can swap multiple tokens and NFTs in one swap while saving on gas fees.”

“We originally conceived Permit2 and Universal Router to improve our own products, optimizing gas costs, simplifying user transaction flows, and strengthening security. As we ideated, we realized that other applications could greatly benefit from integrating these contracts.”

As part of launch efforts, Uniswap says it is airdropping approximately 5 million USDC to certain historical users of NFT aggregator Genie, based on a wallet snapshot on April 15, 2022, and offering gas rebates to the first 22,000 NFT users. However, the gas rebate will only run for two weeks and is capped at 0.01 Ether (ETH).