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‘This will be our last post’ — LBRY throws in towel against the SEC

Coin Telegraph
‘This will be our last post’ — LBRY throws in towel against the SEC
Coin Telegraph

“Thank you to everyone who fought with us for online freedom,” the LBRY Inc team said.

Blockchain company LBRY Inc. — the creators of the LBRY blockchain — has issued its final message to the crypto, citing “several million dollars” of debts that have now made it impossible for the firm to continue.

“This will be our last post,” said the LBRY Inc. team in an Oct. 20 statement on Odysee, a LBRY-powered video-sharing website, which was also shared on X.

LBRY said several millions of dollars of debt owed to the SEC, its legal team and a private debtor ended up being too big a barrier to overcome.

“LBRY Inc. must die, there is no escaping this. It has lost a judgment to the federal government, has several million dollars in debts, and has pledged to shut down.”

“Thank you to everyone who fought with us for online freedom,” LBRY added in an Oct. 19 X post.

LBRY originally announced it would wind down in July after a final judgment in favor of the SEC on July 11. The SEC originally sought a punishment of $22 million but then downgraded that to $111,000 when it realized the defunct firm couldn’t pay.

In September, the community was delighted after it seemingly backtracked on the decision by filing a notice of appeal against the regulator.

In its latest statement, however, the firm revealed it will no longer continue its appeal against the SEC.

LBRY says they won’t pursue their appeal against the SEC. Source: Odysee

The firm also noted that LBRY Inc.’s executives, employees, and board members have resigned and are now only engaged in satisfying any outstanding legal requirements.

“It wasn't a happy ending, but it was a happy journey,” the now-former CEO Jeremy Kauffman explained in an Oct. 19 X post, reflecting on LBRY’s eight-year tenure in the cryptocurrency industry.

Crypto community salutes

The announcement saw members of the crypto community come out to give their final words of support to the LBRY team.

One X user, “Steve,” thanked LBRY for putting up a “good fight” — presumably against the SEC, while another, “archerships” suggested LBRY’s network was one of the most useful blockchain-based platforms on the market.

In the comments section of LBRY’s post on Odysee, community members expressed a willingness to keep supporting Odysee up and running.

Comments from LBRY’s Oct. 19 post on Odysee. Source: Odysee

Related: The aftermath of LBRY: Consequences of crypto’s ongoing regulatory process

As LBRY’s blockchain is open-sourced and decentralized, it will continue to operate so long as blocks continue to be mined, the team noted on Odysee.

Odysee served 5.3 million unique users on a monthly basis between January and April this year, more than any other decentralized social media platform in the market, according to CoinGecko.

Magazine: Crypto regulation — Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Friend.tech adds new security upgrade in wake of SIM-swap attacks

Coin Telegraph
Friend.tech adds new security upgrade in wake of SIM-swap attacks
2FA

The 2FA security measure is optional for Friend.tech users seeking additional security on the platform.

The team behind the decentralized social media platform Friend.tech has added a new security feature amid attempts to stem a flood of SIM-swap attacks targeting its users.

“You can now add a 2FA password to your Friend.tech account for additional protection if your cell carrier or email service becomes compromised,” the team explained in an Oct. 9 post on X (formerly Twitter).

Friend.tech users will be prompted to add another password in when signing onto new devices.

“Neither the friendtech nor Privy teams can reset these passwords, so please use care when using this feature,” Friend.tech added.

The latest change follows several SIM-swap attacks targeting Friend.tech users since September.

On Sept. 30, froggie.eth was among the first in a string of Friend.tech users to be compromised by a SIM-swap attack, urging others to stay vigilant.

More Friend.tech users came forward with similar stories in the following days with an estimated 109 Ether (ETH), worth around $172,000, stolen from four users within a week. Another four users were targeted over a 24-hour period just days later, with another $385,000 worth of Ether stolen.

Friend.tech had already updated its security once on Oct. 4 to allow users to add or remove various login methods in an attempt to mitigate the risk of SIM-swap exploits.

Several observers criticized Friend.tech for not implementing the solution sooner.

“Finally,” one user said, while another said: “took you long enough.”

However, a prominent creator on Friend.tech, 0xCaptainLevi, was more optimistic, stressing that 2FA is a “big deal” and can help push the social media platform to unseen heights:

In an Oct. 8 X thread, Blockworks founder Jason Yanowitz revealed one of the ways the SIM-swap attacks are being orchestrated. The process involves a text message that asks the user for a number change request, where users can reply with “YES” to approve the change or “NO” to decline it.

If the user responds with “NO” — the user is then sent a real verification code from Friend.tech and is prompted to send the code to the scammer’s number.

“If we do not hear a response within 2 hours, the change will proceed as requested,” a follow-up message shows.

"In reality, if I sent the code, my account would get wiped," he said.

Related: Friend​.tech copycat Stars Arena patches exploit after some funds drained

The total value locked on Friend.tech currently sits at $43.9 million, down 15.5% from its all-time high of $52 million on Oct. 2, according to DefiLlama.

Change in total value locked on Friend.tech since Aug. 10. Source: DefiLlama.

Cointelegraph reached out to Friend.tech for comment but did not receive an immediate response.

Magazine: Blockchain detectives — Mt. Gox collapse saw birth of Chainalysis

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Friend.tech clone Stars Arena drives surge of activity on Avalanche

Coin Telegraph
Friend.tech clone Stars Arena drives surge of activity on Avalanche
avalanche dapp

The price of AVAX has surged more than 8% amid heightened network activity brought about by Friend.tech look-alike Stars Arena.

Decentralized social media (DeSo) application Stars Arena has caused a major uptick in activity on Avalanche’s C-chain network.

As network activity increased, so did the price of the network’s native AVAX (AVAX) token, which has gained more than 8% in the last 24 hours. 

Launched in late September, the Friend.tech-inspired Stars Arena has seen the total number of daily transactions on the Avalanche C-chain — the blockchain component specifically designed for running smart contracts on Avalanche — grow by more than 186% over the past two days.

Total Avalanche C-chain network activity spiked 186% from Oct. 1. Source: Snowtrace.io

The Stars Arena application has grown rapidly as well, with more than 10,000 unique active wallets on the platform. Over the course of the past 2 days, the platform has witnessed more than $3.26 million in total trading volume and a little over 462,000 transactions, according to data from DappRadar.

Stars Arena has grown rapidly since its launch in late-September. Source: DappRadar

Meanwhile, data from DefiLlama shows that the platform has exceeded $1 million in total value locked (TVL). This however, still pales in comparison to Friend.tech, which commands some $44.27 million in TVL.

Like Friend.tech, Star Arena lets users link their Twitter accounts to the platform. Users then use the AVAX token to purchase “tickets” of other users, with a small cut of fees being paid to the platform itself and the users when tickets are bought and sold.

While purchasing a users’ ticket provides users with access to a private chat — unlike Friend.tech, Stars Arena features a public feed, so users can follow others without needing to front up large sums of money.

Related: Decentralized social networks have a retention problem, say execs

Pseudonymous X user Wale.swoosh described Stars Arena as “superior to Friend.tech in a lot of ways” — with its public feed feature allowing users to be more social than they would on the Base-based DeSo app.

Still, Wale.swoosh and a number of others users across X noted that that the application was still quite buggy, with chats being “very laggy” and drew attention to the lack of information on the team behind the application. 

Stars Arena is the latest app to join a growing roster of social finance platforms such as Alpha on the Bitcoin network, Friendzy on Solana and PostTech on Arbitrum. Despite the surge in similar DeSo apps, Friend.tech remains the market leader, with more than $293 million monthly trading volume, outpacing the next-closest app PostTech, by more than $283 million.

Magazine: Are DAOs overhyped and unworkable? Lessons from the front lines

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

OnlyFans, Patreon models turn to Web3 amid payment and censorship fears

Coin Telegraph
OnlyFans, Patreon models turn to Web3 amid payment and censorship fears
Coin Telegraph

Patreon creators had difficulties getting paid in August, while OnlyFans once tried to ban porn on the platform, forcing creators to look at alternatives, including Web3.

Adult content creators have continued to shift towards decentralized versions of OnlyFans and Patreon, after recent payment difficulties and the ever-present threat of being de-platformed.

Leon Lee, founder and CEO of Only1 — a decentralized version of OnlyFans — tells Cointelegraph there has been a recent power shift from intermediaries to content creators, thanks to Web3.

“The role of intermediaries are diminishing while the role and earnings of creators are increasing,” said Lee.

In August, creators on Patreon reported having difficulties withdrawing their earnings from the platform as payments were being flagged as fraudulent by banks.

Many content creators also haven’t likely forgotten when OnlyFans tried to ban sexually explicit content in 2021, only to reverse the decision days later.

Speaking to this, Lee argues that creators will always be at risk of being deplatformed as long as they stay on centralized platforms using traditional payment rails.

“Creators are still at risk of being deplatformed and are not realizing their full earning potential.”

Only1 was launched on the Solana blockchain in March 2023 — backed by Animoca Brands. However, the platform is just one out of many startups looking to capture the magic of adult subscription platforms with a decentralized crypto twist.

In 2022, OnlyFans model Allie Rae created a crypto-powered adult content platform WetSpace, as an alternative to OnlyFans.

Rae told Cointelegraph in December 2022 that she created the platform to circumvent the payment pressures that creators on platforms like OnlyFans were receiving from banks:

“I started to figure out that the banks really were largely in part the driving force behind some of those decisions that platforms were having to make. And so that naturally led to me: How do you get rid of the banks? And crypto came out like a knight in shining armor.”

More recently, creators on OnlyFans started flocking to Friend.tech, a new decentralized social media platform built on Coinbase’s layer-2 network Base.

Lee believes a mass migration event will happen when more creators realize they don’t want to be shackled by censorship rules imposed by a centralized intermediary.

“Creators are already waking up to the fact and are becoming less dependent on intermediaries to monetize,” Lee said.

He acknowledged that TV producers, advertisers and brands will maintain a market share in the creator economy, but said a true peer-to-peer payment infrastructure like blockchain is the “next logical step” for creators:

“By removing the dependency on traditional payment processors, a web3 platform and its community can have full autonomy over the types of content allowed,” he said, adding:

Since the OnlyFans adult content censorship, creators have been creating ‘backup accounts’ on different platforms due to such deplatform risk.”

Proof of Peach, SEXN and Keyhole are three other adult entertainment platforms working in the Web3 space.

Related: DuckSquad — First decentralized venture capital NFT launches on Only1

Lee believes more creators will eventually flock to decentralized platforms that provide them with “full autonomy” over their content and full ownership rights to the money they make:

“It is an inevitable future where there will no longer be any intermediaries between fans and creators — this is an obvious but unrealized potential of blockchain technology.”

Magazine: NFT Creator: ‘Holy shit, I’ve seen that!’ — Coldie’s Snoop Dogg, Vitalik and McAfee NFTs

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Friend.tech TVL tops $20M weeks after being declared ‘dead’

Coin Telegraph
Friend.tech TVL tops M weeks after being declared ‘dead’
Coin Telegraph

User activity on friend.tech has witnessed a major resurgence after briefly fizzling last week.

Decentralized social media platform friend.tech has seen a sudden surge in total value locked (TVL), doubling to reach more than $20 million within the last four days. 

Only two weeks ago, critics declared the platform “dead” after activity on the app looked to be fizzling out. 

Total value locked and fees on Friend.tech since Aug. 10. Source: DeFiLlama

However, activity on Friend.tech has witnessed a significant resurgence over the last few days, with the app witnessing $12.3 million in daily trading volume — the third-highest ever — on Sept. 9, according to data from Dune Analytics.

Trading volume and number of traders on Friend.tech since inception. Source: Dune Analytics

As the pseudonymous account TylerDidIt pointed out, the Sept. 9 trading volume on Friend.tech eclipsed that of OpenSea, outperforming the NFT platform by more than $3 million on the day.

While there’s no apparent reason why the platform saw such a surge, many crypto industry heavyweights shared some reasoning for its resurrection.

Prominent trader Hsaka jested that TVL had doubled since users realized that Friend.tech chats were “just yield farms rebranded” — a comment that refers to the potential gain from the 5% fee earned when users buy or sell someone’s “key.”

Another potential reason behind the resurgence of activity on Friend.tech may have something to do with the growing number of non-crypto figures that have joined the platform in recent weeks, including a number of prominent YouTubers and OnlyFans creators.

PancakesBrah, the pseudonymous account in charge of growth and business development at Friend.tech said this hammers home the point that the platform “isn’t an app for just crypto bros.”

Additionally, the app has shipped a number of updates that have offered improvements to user experience and functionality.

Initially plagued by bugs and various technical errors, the app has added a series of new features including the ability to upload photos, credit-card-enabled purchase options and new sections to view different types of activity.

Related: Friend.tech denies report that database of over 100K users was leaked

Friend.tech launched on Coinbase’s layer-2 Base on Aug. 11, and generated a staggering $5.9 million in fees by its 10th day.

Shortly afterwards however, user activity stalled — daily fees plummeted 87% and transaction volume fell 90% over the course of the next week, causing some to prematurely declare the platform “dead.”

Magazine: How smart people invest in dumb memecoins — 3-point plan for success

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Jack Dorsey courts controversy by claiming ETH is a security

Coin Telegraph
Jack Dorsey courts controversy by claiming ETH is a security
block

Since Binance and Coinbase were sued for offering unregistered securities, the longtime Bitcoin advocate has tweeted posts promoting a focus on BTC development.

Long-time Bitcoin (BTC) advocate Jack Dorsey has found himself in a Twitter war with several crypto industry pundits after he responded with “yes” to a question asking if Ether (ETH) was a security.

The comment caught the attention of Udi Wertheimer, a Bitcoin Ordinals developer at Taproot Wizards, who inferred Dorsey was a “clown” in a tweet on June 6.

In response, Dorsey tweeted, “ETH is not a security? Teach me wizard,” which prompted Wertheimer to share a five-year-old video of the United States Securities Exchange CommissionChair Gary Gensler stating that ETH was now “sufficiently decentralized” and wasn’t a security.

However, Gabor Gurbacs, strategy adviser to stablecoin issuer Tether and investment management firm VanEck, weighed in on Wertheimer’s comment, stating that Ethereum’s recent transition to proof-of-stake may have re-triggered securities laws.

The online scuffle comes in light of the SEC filing lawsuits against cryptocurrency exchanges Binance and Coinbase on June 5 and 6 for allegedly offering tokens considered to be unregistered securities.

Dorsey also tweeted and implied approval of a screenshot of a post by Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong in 2015, where he referred to altcoins as a “distraction” and that Coinbase should instead “be focused” on Bitcoin.

Dorsey continued on his pro-Bitcoin tweeting streak and retweeted a video of Jack Mallers — CEO of Bitcoin Lightning application Strike — calling out Armstrong for choosing to prioritize altcoins over building on Bitcoin and the Lightning Network.

Related: Jack Dorsey tips pro-crypto candidate Robert Kennedy to win presidency

When Dorsey was in charge of Twitter in 2021 the company sold 140 Ethereum-based nonfungible tokens (NFTs) but he rejected investing in Ether at the time.

Dorsey also downplayed Ethereum’s development in August 2021 when he claimed that Ethereum alone wouldn’t be able to disrupt big tech.

Dorsey recently provided funding and became an advocate for Nostr, a decentralized “Twitter killer” network that integrates Bitcoin Lightning-based payments on the “Damus” platform.

Magazine: Crypto regulation — Does SEC Chair Gary Gensler have the final say?

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Web3 social media protocol launches ‘layer 3’ to provide instant posts

Coin Telegraph
Web3 social media protocol launches ‘layer 3’ to provide instant posts
blockchain social media

The new layer relies on Bundlr, a decentralized storage platform built on Arweave, for mass storage of social media data.

The team behind Lens, a Web3 social media protocol, has announced the launch of a new “layer 3” network to scale blockchain social media apps. Called “Bonzai,” the new network processes and stores posts, comments and shares, taking this data off the Polygon network and thereby increasing scalability for Lens, according to an April 26 announcement viewed by Cointelegraph.

Lens is a blockchain protocol that allows users to form a portable “social graph,” or digital set of connections, between themselves and others. When users form a connection with another person on one Lens app, they can transfer those connections to any other app built on the protocol. There are 17 different Lens-based social media apps listed on the protocol’s official website, including Buttrfly, DumplingTV, Lenster, Lenstube and others.

Lens runs on the Polygon network, a layer 2 of Ethereum.

In a technical document linked to in the announcement, the Lens team stated that the Polygon network cannot handle the transaction volume or data-storage needs of large-scale social media apps, making it necessary for a new “optimistic L3 hyperscaling data solution” to be launched. According to the document, shared blockchain networks can only handle up to 200 transactions per second (TPS), while the previous incarnation of Lens could only handle 40 to 50 TPS. By contrast, it stated that Twitter often does 25,000 TPS during peak periods.

Related: Meta working on text-based decentralized social network codenamed P92

The team anticipated this limitation could prevent the protocol from scaling as its user base grew. To solve this problem, Bonzai launched as a layer 2 of Polygon itself, or an “L3” of the Ethereum network. Bonzai uses Bundlr, a decentralized storage platform built on Arweave, to store large files while storing verification data about them.

According to the technical paper, the Bonzai network consists of three types of nodes: submitters, verifiers and timestamps. Submitters validate transactions, build metadata and submit them to Bundlr. Verifiers monitor the data submitted by submitters and confirm that it is valid. And timestamps determine the proper block number and timestamp for a particular piece of data.

The paper states that this system should “[provide] consumers the experience (instant posts, etc.) they have come to expect from social networks.”

Stani Kulechov, the founder of Lens Protocol, believes Bonzai will be an important step toward spurring mass adoption of Web3 social apps:

“To be competitive with web2, decentralized social must scale. With the ability to support mass consumer adoption, we’ll see continued web3 innovation – new, exciting and compelling features and business models that will spur web3 adoption.”

Several companies in recent years have created decentralized social media protocols, including Lens, Subsocial, DeSo and others. Developers hope these apps will help broaden the appeal of blockchain networks beyond the financial world. While none of them have attained the success of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other Web2 social apps, some blockchain experts believe decentralized social media will be the next big thing in crypto.

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Crypto Venture Capitalist Forecasts Future of Decentralized Social Media – Here’s His Outlook

The Daily Hodl
Crypto Venture Capitalist Forecasts Future of Decentralized Social Media – Here’s His Outlook
A16Z
Crypto Venture Capitalist Forecasts Future of Decentralized Social Media – Here’s His Outlook

Crypto venture capitalist Sriram Krishnan is giving his take on the future of decentralized social media as multiple projects in the space make their mark. In a new interview with Bankless, the general partner at venture capital fund Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) says that people are increasingly discovering the benefits of decentralized social media platforms. Krishnan […]

The post Crypto Venture Capitalist Forecasts Future of Decentralized Social Media – Here’s His Outlook appeared first on The Daily Hodl.

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Jack Dorsey unveils decentralized social with algo choice and portable accounts

Coin Telegraph
Jack Dorsey unveils decentralized social with algo choice and portable accounts
ADX

The long-awaited “Bluesky Social” app is now accepting users for private beta and says it will “launch soon”

Twitter co-founder and former CEO Jack Dorsey have lifted the curtain on the latest iteration of its social protocol and a new Bluesky Social app — as part of its decentralized answer to Twitter. 

The Oct. 18 announcement comes nearly three years since the initiative was announced by Dorsey in December 2019, with the aim that social media users should have control over their data and be able to move it from platform to platform without permission.

The new protocol has been renamed from “ADX” to “Authenticated Transfer Protocol” — or AT Protocol — and is described as a “protocol for large-scale distributed social applications” that will allow for account portability, algorithmic choice, interoperability and performance.

Under the protocol, user identity will be handled by domain names in the AT protocol, such as @alice.com. These would then map to cryptographic URLs which will secure the users’ account and its data.

This data can also be ported from one provider to another “without losing any of your data or social graph.”

Other features of the protocol include interoperation and enhanced performance, as well as “algorithmic choice” — giving users access to “an open market of algorithms,” similar to the way that users interacting with Web search engines are free to select their indexers.

Bluesky explained that this means users will have more control over what they see and who they reach on social media platforms using the protocol, rather than that aspect being controlled and manipulated by a single corporation seeking engagement.

Bluesky previously described its content moderation model as occurring in “multiple layers through the system, including in aggregation algorithms, thresholds based on reputation, and end-user choice.”

“There’s no one company that can decide what gets published; instead there is a marketplace of companies deciding what to carry to their audiences.”

Responding to a user’s question on Twitter, Dorsey also confirmed that a user could choose “no algorithms.”

However, not much is known about the new social app — named Bluesky Social — other than it will “launch soon,” and is currently allowing users to join a private waitlist to test the beta before opening it up to the wider public.

Bluesky noted it reached a “temporary limit on mailing signups” from users signing up for the beta, before switching to mailing list providers to allow for signups to resume.

“We’re looking forward to sharing more about the Bluesky application as it develops,” it said.

Related: ‘Decentralized Twitter’ Bluesky releases code, outlines content moderation

The decentralized social platform could be one answer to the centralized manipulation of’ social media feeds, accounts, and data, which has been criticized by many as harmful to social cohesion.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has previously criticized Twitter’s crackdown on “misinformation,” saying in April that under his prospective leadership, Twitter should be “reluctant to delete things” and permanently ban accounts, and he would endeavor to encourage free speech according to respective countries’ laws.

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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

Aave Launches Social Media Project Lens Protocol With Over 50 Apps Built on Polygon

Bitcoin.com
Aave Launches Social Media Project Lens Protocol With Over 50 Apps Built on Polygon
50 applications
Aave Launches Social Media Project Lens Protocol With Over 50 Apps Built on PolygonThe blockchain firm Aave has launched the Lens Protocol, a social media project with applications built on the Polygon blockchain. Lens is similar to the social media platform Twitter but Lens profiles are linked to a non-fungible token (NFT) that can be ported into decentralized applications. Lens Protocol Is Live – Aave Founder Believes People […]
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Gala Games exploiter returns M from GALA token attack

Gala Games exploiter returns $22M from GALA token attack

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