ATHDAOx: Building the future of Web3 in physical-digital with DAOs

December 13, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Arbitrum DAO passes $23M extra budget to fund all grant applicants

December 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Arbitrum

The Arbitrum community is expanding its grant program budget to over $70 million, supporting a total of 56 projects.

The Arbitrum DAO has confirmed the disbursement of millions in extra tokens to fund all projects approved on its latest Short-Term Incentive Program (STIP), boosting its budget by $23.4 million.

The proposal, voted by the Arbitrum community between Nov.

The supplementary capital was approved by 216.7 million votes in favor to 73.1 million against, bringing STIP's total budget to 71.4 million ARB tokens.

*ARB holders approved the addition of 21.1 million tokens for funding grant applications. Source: Tally/Arbitrum*

Arbitrum is a layer-2 networking designed to scale transactions on the Ethereum blockchain, allowing funds to be transferred more quickly and at a lower cost.

DefiLlama data shows that Arbitrum generated over $180,165 in fees and $43,342 in revenue just on Dec.

*Layer-2 Arbitrum generated over $57 million in cumulative transaction fees. Source: DefiLlama*

The new budget includes funding for Gains Network (4.5 million ARB), Wormhole (1.8 million ARB), and Stargate Finance (2 million ARB).

The approval of additional funding was not without controversy.

ZK community aligned with the core Web3 mission: ZkDay Istanbul roundup

November 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The ZkDay Istanbul event offered exposure and networking opportunities to new and upcoming ZK-based projects and entrepreneurs.

As zero-knowledge (ZK) technology marches its way toward solving mainstream use cases, the community backing the disruptive tech continues to grow stronger. Over 1,200 ZK developers, community members and enthusiasts, including Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, attended the latest zkDay Istanbul event.

ZK meetups attract 1,500 to 4,000 attendees, and zkDay Istanbul — as a platform for knowledge sharing and collaboration — witnessed a significant increase in enthusiasm as well. The event was built on top of the success of zkDay Paris, which attracted early-stage ZK startups and market leaders.

ZK-focused projects from various stages built connections and interacted with top members of zkDay sponsor projects, such as Manta Network, co-hosted by Polyhedra Network and =nil; Foundation. Kenny Li, the chief operating officer and co-founder of the Manta Network, spoke to Cointelegraph about zkDay. He said:

“The interest and attendance for zkDay is a testament to the community’s interest in the space, and we are excited to see that interest continuing to grow from country to country.”

Additionally, zkDay Istanbul ran alongside Devconnect 2023, an event dedicated to Ethereum community, builders and researchers.

*Manta Network co-founder Kenny Li (left) and Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin (right) at zkDay Istanbul 2023. Source: Cointelegraph*

The zkDay Pitch competition saw participation from numerous high-quality projects, many of which have previously topped competitive events such as ETHGlobal. Li anticipates future collaborations with zkDay Pitch sponsor ETHGlobal to provide greater exposure to promising upcoming projects.

Abner Jia, the CEO of Polyhedra Network, echoed Li’s optimism about the ZK community’s growth, highlighting the surge in interest in ZK technology:

“With more projects and enthusiasts joining the ZK ecosystem, it’s clear that the community is on a strong growth trajectory.”

Improving user experience remains a common goal across the ZK community as projects strive to onboard users into the next-generation consumer products. Li added:

“That’s why we are so focused on our universal circuits at Manta Pacific, where we can offer ZK-as-a-service so developers can hit the ground running, launching EVM [Ethereum Virtual Machine]-compatible decentralized applications that leverage ZK without having to figure out the cryptographic elements.”

Attendees of zkDay Istanbul highlighted the ZK community’s strong convergence to the core mission of developers, users and community in Web3 in general. Despite the surface-level differences in focus areas and priorities, such as privacy, scalability and real-world applications, the fundamental ethos of decentralization and innovation remains consistent between the two communities.

zkDay has become a tradition for @MantaNetwork and this time it took place in Istanbul.

Endless thanks to the 1000+ people who attended our event!✨@zkdayofficial Istanbul adventure started at the Registration Desk! pic.twitter.com/Ijg708Y15o
— zkDay ️ Istanbul (Devconnect) (@zkdayofficial) November 14, 2023

The year-over-year growth in the ZK dev community suggests that the future of ZK technology holds incredible promise. Jia believes that collaboration remains key for the ZK ecosystem to thrive. “We are all striving for a fair, decentralized future. Leveraging zk is just another step to get there!,” added Li.

Speaking about the future of ZK, Jia also revealed Polyhedra’s newly deployed distributed proof system on zkBridge, named deVirgo. “We are open for collaborations. Entrepreneurs looking to make a mark in this space should closely watch our progress and implementations. It’s essential to keep up with the latest developments in zk technology, as it’s a rapidly evolving field,” he concluded.

The budding ZK community is exploring use cases that can be directly applied to drive next-generation consumer products using intuitive EVM-compatible decentralized applications.

dYdX founder claims targeted attack led to $9M insurance claim

November 18, 2023 Coin Telegraph

dYdX founder claims targeted attack led to M insurance claim

Coin Telegraph

dYdX founder Antonio Juliano said that the decentralized exchange as well as the Yearn.Finance token (YFI) are victims of a targeted attack.

Decentralized exchange (DEX) dYdX was forced to use its insurance fund to cover $9 million in user liquidations on Nov. 17. According to dYdX founder Antonio Juliano, the losses resulted from a "targeted attack" against the exchange.

Based on reports from the dYdX team on X (formerly Twitter), the v3 insurance fund was used "to fill gaps on liquidations processes in the YFI market." The Yearn.Finance (YFI) token dropped 43% on Nov. 17 after soaring over 170% in the previous weeks. The sudden price crash raised concerns within the crypto community about a possible exit scam.

The alleged attack targeted long positions in YFI tokens on the exchange, liquidating positions worth nearly $38 million. Juliano believes trading losses affecting dYdX, as well as the sharp decline in YFI, have been caused by market manipulation:

"This was pretty clearly a targeted attack against dYdX, including market manipulation of the entire $YFI market. We are investigating alongside several partners and will be transparent with what we discover."

According to Juliano, the v3 insurance fund still holds $13.5 million, and users' funds were not affected by the incident. "Even though no user funds were affected, we will also be conducting a thorough review of our risk parameters and making appropriate changes to both v3 and potentially the dYdX Chain software if necessary,” he noted on X.

*Balance changes on dYdX's insurance wallet. Source: DYDX Explorer*

The profitable trade wiped out over $300 million in market capitalization from the YFI token, leading the community to raise eyebrows about a possible insider job in the YFI market. Some users claimed that 50% of the YFI token supply was held in 10 wallets controlled by developers. However, Etherscan data suggests some of these holders are crypto exchange wallets.

Cointelegraph reached out to dYdX and Yearn.Finance's teams for comment and is awaiting a resoonse.

Magazine: Beyond crypto — Zero-knowledge proofs show potential from voting to finance

Small Islands, big problems: Can Bitcoin fix this? Cointelegraph Cape Verde video

October 30, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Africa

A small island nation in the Atlantic Ocean grapples with a cash economy influenced by tourism, remittances and limited resources. Can Bitcoin help?

Cointelegraph recently traveled to Cape Verde, West Africa, to explore whether Bitcoin (BTC) could be a tool for progress.

In the latest on-the-ground video documentary from Cointelegraph, global reporter Joe Hall investigates the remittances market, cash economies, and the challenges and opportunities faced by small island nations worldwide.

Cape Verde, officially the Republic of Cabo Verde, is an island nation in the central Atlantic Ocean. Cape Verde comprises 10 main islands and several smaller islets, sitting 570 kilometers (350 miles) west of Senegal, West Africa.

Hall discovers that more Cape Verdeans live abroad than on the country’s islands. Due to its small land mass, it struggles to cultivate and export goods abroad. The islanders of Cape Verde, especially Sal, rely on tourism to stimulate the economy, and relatives living abroad send money home.

The combination of a tourism and remittance-based economy presents multiple issues. Due to the presence of tourists year-round, Sal uses three currencies: the local Escudo, the U.S. dollar, and the Euro, although Hall discovered it’s also possible to pay in British pounds. Mastercard and Visa charge upward of 4% for transaction fees in stores, which merchants often pass on to customers.

*Hall receives “confused change” — a mix of euros and escudos — at the checkout. Source: Cointelegraph*

Western Union and MoneyGram charge customers as much as 15% for remittances to send money across borders. The high remittance costs act like a tax on the higher incomes of Cape Verdean workers living abroad.

The Cape Verde cash economy is also hamstrung by high ATM and bank access fees, as well as strict opening and closing hours. Cape Verdean banks close at 5:00 pm local time on the islands, and during bank holidays, ATMs often run out of cash for withdrawal, presenting further economic hurdles for full-time workers.

Finally, inflation runs higher in Cape Verde than across the eurozone, even though the escudo is “pegged” to the euro. Compared with Western economies, the islands’ incumbent financial systems impede Cape Verdeans from simply spending, saving and sending money the way many Westerners take for granted.

While investigating these economic issues, Hall met with Renato Evarchi, one of the first business owners in Cape Verde to accept Bitcoin. He shed light on the economic situation and explained how more and more Cape Verdeans were warming up to a borderless, immutable and decentralized internet currency.

To learn more from Hall’s travels in Cape Verde, watch the full documentary above and subscribe to Cointelegraph’s YouTube channel.

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Reddit removes moderators involved in alleged insider trading of Moon tokens

October 23, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

On Oct. 18 Reddit closed its blockchain based points program that involved the use of certain crypto tokens native to subreddits.

Reddit’s r/Cryptocurrency community has fired two moderators who were found to be involved in insider trading of the Moon token, Cointelegraph has confirmed.

As Cointelegraph reported on Oct. 20, at least three wallets linked to Reddit group moderators dumped hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Moon tokens on Oct. 18, just minutes before the official announcement of the closure of the blockchain-based points program that involved the use of certain cryptocurrencies native to each community. The market dump by the three wallets was highlighted by on-chain analysis accounts on X (formerly Twitter) such as Lookonchain.

1/ Three @CCMOD_ moderators dumped $MOON in advance via #inside information from @Reddit admins. pic.twitter.com/ucrPkh6siX
— Lookonchain (@lookonchain) October 19, 2023

The Reddit moderators were made aware of the closure of the blockchain-based points program an hour earlier than the official announcement. The Reddit announcement caused the token to drop by nearly 85% to $0.0198 but two moderators managed to sell just in time to make more gains than the rest of the unaware community.

Cointelegraph reached out to r/Cryptocurrency to understand the insider trading allegations and how the investigation went through. u/mellon, a core contributor and founder of told Cointelegraph that two moderators were removed while three others are being investigated:

“2 mods got removed as they sold their Moons before the official announcement from Reddit: u/rider_of_the_strom u/McGillby. "

The program allowed participants on the platform to earn points and spend them using community-native crypto tokens such as Moon. In the r/CryptoCurrency subreddit, users who post or leave comments are given the ERC-20 token MOON, which they can freely exchange, tip, or use for other purposes in the community.

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DeSci-focused DAO community funds cancer research

October 17, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

VitaDAO community agreed to fund an early-stage cancer research through the launch of a biotech company named Matrix Biosciences.

VitaDAO, a decentralized collective dedicated to early-stage longevity research, funded the launch of a biotech company, Matrix Biosciences, dedicated to the treatment of cancer and aging diseases.

The initial discussions around the use of high molecular weight hyaluronic acid (HMW-HA) for anti-cancer and pro-longevity effects started off in November 2022 and gained majority consensus in March 2023. The proposal snapshot reveals that 35 members cast their votes using VITA tokens.

*The VITA token holders voted to agree or disagree with VitaDAO funding the HMW-HA cancer research venture. Source: snapshot.org*

Out of the lot, 30 members supported the cause, 4 members abstained from voting, and 1 voted against the proposal. As an active contributor in decentralized science (DeSci), VitaDAO made an initial investment of $300,000 and plans to carry out further funding through tokenization of intellectual property (IP) in early 2024.

The HWA-HA compound is derived from the tissues of naked mole rats, a type of rodent that possess stronger cancer resistance which is responsible for their higher lifespan.

Speaking to Cointelegraph, a VitaDAO spokesperson revealed that the funds have been provided to Matrix Bio by converting USD Coin (USDC) stablecoins from the community treasury to the US dollar and wired to their bank account.

Once the first batch of experiments is complete, Matrix Bio will have the option to raise additional funding by issuing IP Tokens (IPTs) in return for sharing governance rights in the ongoing development of the IP. The next round of fundraising will commence after the budget for the next phase of development is established, expected in Q1 2024.

VitaDAO believes modulating HMW-HA appears to be a viable therapeutic candidate in supporting the treatment of a complex disease like cancer. The DAO told Cointelegraph:

“Like most early-stage research, it is too early to know what the outcome of the research will provide. VitaDAO believes there is a high likelihood that the research will be translatable to the clinic.”

While the DAO’s commitment to funding this particular cancer research will depend on the results obtained from the various experiments, VitaDAO’s community treasury has in the past funded up to $1 million of a research project’s needs before enlisting the support of professional investors and pharma stakeholders.

Magazine: Beyond crypto: Zero-knowledge proofs show potential from voting to finance

Elon Musk told to dump Satoshi ‘X’ account: crypto community

October 3, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Bitcoin Community

The crypto community has asked Elon Musk to remove the X account under the name of Satoshi Nakamoto claiming it is in breach of the platform’s terms of use.

Members of the crypto community have rallied behind a post on X calling for Elon Musk to remove the profile on the platform that has been claiming to be the fabled creator of Bitcoin (BTC) Satoshi Nakamoto.

On Oct. 3 the X profile Pledditor posted saying both the account claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto and the account with the handle “Bitcoin” should be removed as they are breaching the platform’s terms of service for using "misleading and deceptive" identities.

Hey @ElonMusk, the @Bitcoin and @Satoshi accounts are in breach of your terms of service for using "misleading and deceptive" identities.

Please remove the checkmarks. pic.twitter.com/BCwFMSOfQJ
— Pledditor (@Pledditor) October 2, 2023

Pledditor continued to highlight the areas of the terms and conditions in which they believed the accounts to be violating.

“You can't misappropriate someone else's identity without disclosing you are a parody account. It's no different than making a fake 'Tesla' or 'Elon Musk' account.”

The terms and conditions of the X platform have a specific policy for misleading or deceptive identities, in which it says, “[users] may not misappropriate the identity of individuals, groups, or organizations or use a fake identity to deceive others.”

It defined this as impersonation of someone who already exists, and also deceptive identities which it defines as misleading the public with an identity that isn’t real.

Aside from the ongoing controversy over the true identity of Satoshi Nakamoto, which has been a subject of discussion in the Bitcoin and crypto community for years, the account has been claimed to be run by an X user named Andy Rowe back in 2018.

On July 2, 2018 Rowe posted saying he curates “quotes” for the Satoshi account.

I curate quotes from Satoshi Nakamoto at @satoshi. AMA!
— Andy Rowe (@andyrowe) July 2, 2018

The account has been quiet since Oct. 31, 2018. However, on Oct. 2 of this year, the account made a new post saying “Bitcoin is a predicate machine” and then going on to explain how it will “explore different aspects of the whitepaper” over the coming months.

Bitcoin is a predicate machine. Over the following months, we shall explore different aspects that were not explicitly contained within the white paper. These aspects are all parts of bitcoin, and are important. Some of these ideas were touched upon in the early years; now is…
— Satoshi Nakamoto (@satoshi) October 2, 2023

Members of the crypto community rallied behind Pledditor’s post calling the account “embarrassing” and that this “needs to happen now.” One user said he previously tried to reach out to administrators about those accounts but was ignored.

Another user called for the accounts to be disabled and likened them to what X did with the account with the handle “@internet.”

Both accounts should be disabled imo, just like they did with @internet.
— . (@m__btc) October 3, 2023

Satoshi’s true identity remains a mystery, with many takers over the years. The most prominent claim of Satoshi’s identity is from Craig Wright.

On July 21, a court in the United Kingdom granted Wright an appeal in the Bitcoin rights lawsuit, in which he claimed copyright to the Bitcoin white paper and database.

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Binance successor in Russia: Everything you need to know about CommEx, so far

September 27, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Binance

The sale has sparked chatter among local crypto enthusiasts, who say the two sites appear so similar that CommEx could be a “Russian version” of Binance.US.

Cryptocurrency exchange Binance has claimed that it will fully quit Russia by selling its local business to a completely new exchange known as CommEx. While promising its customers a “smooth” migration, Binance hasn’t provided much information about its successor in Russia.

At the time of the announcement, little is known about CommEx’s founders or background. The exchange was launched on Sept. 26, 2023, or just one day before Binance announced the sale of its business to the newly created exchange for an undisclosed amount.

A spokesperson for CommEx didn’t respond to multiple questions from users about the company’s owners or executives in the official Telegram group. The person claimed that CommEx is registered in Seychelles and will serve its customers as a global exchange, focused on two main regions: the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) and Asia.

CommEx already on Binance-owned CoinMarketCap

At launch, CommEx supports only a browser version, with the firm promising to introduce a mobile app in the near future. Despite being launched just one day ago, CommEx is already listed on CoinMarketCap, a major crypto tracking website which Binance acquired in April 2020. On the other hand, rival market tracker CoinGecko doesn’t include any information about CommEx at the time of writing.

According to CoinMarketCap data, CommEx lists 25 trading pairs at launch, including stablecoins like Tether (USDT) and Binance’s BNB (BNB) cryptocurrency. “CommEx is a rapidly expanding cryptocurrency exchange, backed by top-tier crypto VCs,” the description of the new exchange on CoinMarketCap reads.

CommEx will initially support peer-to-peer (P2P) transactions in Russia, allowing users to exchange their crypto without using the platform’s fiat channels. The platform will launch spot trading of USDT against Russia’s fiat currency, the ruble, once fiat channels are live, according to a spokesperson in CommEx’s Telegram group.

A spokesperson for Binance told Cointelegraph that it will be “entirely optional” for Binance users to move over to CommEx. “You may also withdraw your funds to another platform if you'd like,” the person noted, adding that users would still be able migrate their assets to CommEx. The spokesperson noted:

“Russia KYC’d new users registration will immediately be redirected to CommEX. Then, over the next several months, Binance will sunset all exchange services and business lines in Russia.”

According to the CommEx representative, the platform’s users will be able to trade without completing Know Your Customer (KYC) checks for up to 2 Bitcoin (BTC) withdrawals. The firm will not allow account registration or services for locations including the United States, Belgium, Republic of Cyprus, Czech Republic, Netherlands, Singapore as well as sanctioned regions like Iran and Crimea, CommEx’s location restrictions page reads.

The spokesperson also said that it’s unlikely that Binance’s contactless payment tool Binance Pay will continue to work with CommEx.

Users question CommEx ownership

Binance's announcement has triggered some speculation in the local crypto community regarding the owners of Binance’s successor in Russia. Some users have found similarities in the layouts of Binance and CommEx’s websites, while others said that CommEx was a “full copy” of Binance’s website.

“They just changed the logo and colors but essentially it’s the same website. I wouldn’t be surprised if Russian tops who left banana [Binance] would be managing directors here,” one commenter wrote in a now-deleted comment on CommEx’s Telegram group.

Among some of the similarities, one may observe significant resemblances between Binance and CommEx’s privacy notices as well as other website pages like terms of use. For example, CommEx’s privacy notice essentially provides a reworded copy of Binance’s privacy notice, closely following its structure and many formulations.

*An excerpt from CommEx’s privacy notice. Source: CommEx*

*An excerpt from Binance’s privacy notice. Source: Binance*

Russia has been one of Binance's biggest markets, and the country is listed as the top market in terms of user visits for the website Binance.com, accounting for 6.9% of total visits at the time of writing, according to data from SimilarWeb.

“I don’t think that CZ [Changpeng Zhao] is ready to abandon such a huge pie like Russia and leave just like that,” one local cryptocurrency observer told Cointelegraph. Some people in the community have drawn parallels between CommEx in Russia and Binance’s affiliate in the United States, Binance.US, which has been claiming to operate "independently" from Binance.

“It looks like some sort of Binance.US but just without the word ‘Binance’ in its name,” another local crypto enthusiast told Cointelegraph.

A spokesperson for Binance declined to comment on whether the company is aware of CommEx’s founders or executives. CommEx’s spokesperson declined to comment immediately, stating that the firm is focused on "platform optimization and stability" as the CommEx website briefly went down amid Russian users rushing to the website after Binance made the announcement. CommEx's Russian Telegram group, which had just about 50 members before the announcement, now counts nearly 2,000 users.

“With this sale, Binance fully exits Russia. We have no plans to get back,” a spokesperson for Binance told Cointelegraph.

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Friend.tech look-alike ‘Alpha’ emerges on Bitcoin network

September 21, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

A new social token network called Alpha has emerged, rivaling the popular Friend.tech platform but built on top of the Bitcoin blockchain.

The Bitcoin network got its own community-based social token ecosystem after a new project called Alpha emerged overnight.

As a decentralized social network protocol, Alpha is similar to the widely-known Ethereum-based platform Friend.tech. It allows users to monetize their online persona and content creation via its social tokens.

️Alpha α is officially here

More than the @friendtech of Bitcoin, Alpha is set out to be one of the leading SocialFi dApps

Built on Bitcoin
Fully decentralized & permissionless
Optimized UX for Key trading & alpha calls sharing

Get Alpha Now: https://t.co/V7GX7UReQ4 pic.twitter.com/q6j4IrGic7
— New Bitcoin City (@NewBitcoinCity) September 16, 2023

However, unlike Friend.tech, Alpha has a different makeup. The finality is anchored on the Bitcoin blockchain, while the Polygon blockchain is used for data storage, with Trustless Computer being the project’s own scaling network for Bitcoin.

One of the co-founders of the project is a pseudonymous user dubbed Punk3700, who is quoted describing the makeup of Alpha as “a rollup that rolls up to another rollup that rolls up to Bitcoin.”

Cointelegraph spoke with Punk3700 to better understand the developments behind the launch of the new Bitcoin-based social token network.

“Alpha implies a layered architecture that includes NOS-TC. Trustless Computer (TC) is an optimistic rollup layer that centers directly on the Bitcoin blockchain. NOS is implemented as another optimistic product of layers to provide additional scalability on Bitcoin.”

He said the optimistic rollup layers “work in tandem” to provide security and efficiency for the environment to deploy decentralized applications.

“NOS is configured with a hybrid design that uses Bitcoin for data validity,” he said, “and then uses Polygon for data storage — in the end, we settle on Bitcoin.”

“This will allow for flexibility with data storage for different needs because the fee on Bitcoin is insanely expensive. We believe that for those kinds of actions, we shouldn’t pay a lot.”

He said building up Alpha in this way helps benefit the users in terms of lowering transaction fees. According to Punk3700, users and the community are the main drive for the creators of the Alpha platform, who developed and launched in only 48 hours.

“Alpha has a strong community-driven development approach,” Punk3700 said. He mentioned a new referral program currently being built, which will allow users to earn 1% of their friends’ trading volume.

“This will encourage users to invite their friends into the platform and also will inspire content creators to create more valuable content.”

Alpha works by users purchasing tokens connected to content creators themselves, which are used to access exclusive content.

While Alpha is quickly amassing new users since its launch, Friend.tech recently posted on X (formerly Twitter) about its decision to punish users who use forks of copycat versions of its platform.

“To make sure loyal users are rewarded fairly during our beta, users moving to forks and copies will automatically opt out of earning Points and forfeit existing points,” it posted.

That came shortly after critics announced the platform as “dead” after a slump in key metrics, including user activity, inflows and volume. It also struggled with rumors of a data leak — refuted by Friend.tech — of over 100,000 of its user’s personal data being breached.

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Community

CommEx already on Binance-owned CoinMarketCap

Users question CommEx ownership

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