Erik Voorhees
Russian Bitcoin Mining Assessed Amid Conflict With Ukraine, Large ETH Pool Cancels Service to Russia
With the conflict between Russia and Ukraine, many observers are curious about the large quantity of hashrate located in Russia, as the region reportedly controls the third-largest sum of SHA256 hashpower worldwide. Furthermore, on February 24, the ethereum mining operation Flexpool announced it has halted services to Russia entirely. “We apologize to our Russian miners; […]THORChain concludes 2 security audits following summer exploits
DeFi has become a popular attack vector for cybercriminals. After a highly ambitious launch, THORChain suffered two major exploits in July.
Cross-chain liquidity protocol THORChain has fully recovered from two summer exploits that compromised millions of dollars in user funds after the company announced Thursday that it had received passing grades in a new security audit.
The simultaneous audits, which were carried out by cybersecurity companies Trail and Bits and Halborn, allowed THORChain to implement a five-step recovery plan. THORChain’s contributors now say the protocol is fully operational after a restart brought all the major cryptocurrency integrations and cross-chain trading features back online.
In addition to the audit, THORChain announced that it has commissioned Immunefi, a leading bug bounty platform for the DeFi sector, with a bounty program to identify new vulnerabilities as they arise.
The launch of THORChain earlier this year came with much fanfare, as it marked an important evolution in decentralized exchanges. In July, however, the platform suffered two multi-million-dollar security breaches, the first being a $7.6 million Ether (ETH) exploit that generated significant backlash. As Cointelegraph reported, network activity was halted as developers investigated the extent of the damages.
Related: THORSwap closes investment round as cross-chain DEXs take center stage
Roughly one week later, a white hat attacker drained the protocol of roughly $8 million worth of ETH, but would later request a 10% bounty for returning the funds. The two thefts capped off a horrible month for THORChain, with even its biggest supporters calling for a slowdown in project ambitions.
Thorchain has had a horrible month, not going to sugar coat it. Bleh
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) July 23, 2021
The project needs to slow down. Time to take the tortoise strategy.
Regardless, I remain a committed supporter, and am glad these issues are being discovered during chaosnet. https://t.co/gcWCyFYuTI
Security breaches are nothing new for the cryptocurrency market, with DeFi emerging as a popular attack vector for cybercriminals. According to industry sources, roughly $1.2 billion has been lost to DeFi exploits. That figure omits the recent nine-figure exploit of Cream Finance, which suffered a major flash loan hack on Wednesday.
ShapeShift issues second token airdrop following decentralization pledge
In a July interview with Cointelegraph, CEO Erik Voorhees described full decentralization as an “iterative process” that can take many years.
Non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift has completed its second airdrop of FOX tokens — dubbed “fairdrop” — as part of a broad decentralization pledge that was first announced in July.
The airdrop of 6,613,000 FOX tokens was distributed to over 33,000 DAO community members, ShapeShift announced Tuesday. These holders were previously ineligible for the airdrop reward because their tokens were locked in staking or liquidity operations.
A proposal to amend the token distribution process to include DAO community members was submitted on Sept. 16, receiving overwhelming support.
As Cointelegraph reported, ShapeShift airdropped 340 million FOX tokens to over one million users in July after the company announced it was dissolving its corporate structure — an industry first — as part of a broad commitment to decentralization.
In a follow-up interview with Cointelegraph, CEO Erik Voorhees described decentralization as an “iterative process,” given that some parts of an organization are easier to open source than others. As part of this process, ShapeShift has established a foundation to oversee the shift to decentralization. This foundation, said Voorhees, will become less relevant as the open-sourcing process expands in the coming years. By that time, ShapeShift will be better described as an open-source, multi-chain self-custodied cryptocurrency platform for all users.
Related: Decentralized search engine becomes default option on European Android devices
The modern premise of decentralization was made famous by Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin’s (BTC) pseudonymous creator, who ushered the blockchain revolution in a 2008 whitepaper that explained the merits of a peer-to-peer electronic cash system. Many blockchain projects that have since emerged have promised decentralization, though in practice their operations have been closer to “shadow-centralization.”
Recently, Securities and Exchange Commissioner Hester Peirce warned that DeFi projects that have not embraced full decentralization risk running afoul of federal regulations. In an August interview with The Defiant, Peirce said:
“If you want to be decentralized, you really need to be decentralized, and that is going to then put you in a different category from the perspective of regulators because that’s just not something that we’ve dealt with before.”
ShapeShift open-sources its upcoming version 2 platform code
The Erik Voorhees-led company is making strides to fully decentralize its corporate structure. In July, ShapeShift announced the largest airdrop in history as part of its decentralization pledge.
As part of its ongoing decentralization efforts, non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange ShapeShift announced Thursday that it has open-sourced the code of its upcoming version two platform, giving developers the opportunity to contribute to the iteration process.
ShapeShift’s v2 code repository is now available on Github, making it easier for developers to download it to their local drives. “This is a great step in our ongoing efforts to open source and involve the community in iterating on the first comprehensive, multichain, community-built interface,” said Josh Foreman, engineering workstream lead for ShapeShift DAO.
The company also announced that open-source developers can attend biweekly community calls held on ShapeShift’s Discord channel. The meetings will feature demos and discussions related to various product engineering topics.
Related: Algorithmic stablecoins show promise of reducing volatility — ShapeShift
ShapeShift is in the process of dissolving its corporate structure and fully decentralizing its operations as part of a pledge to create an open, immutable organization. As part of that process, the company announced plans to airdrop 340 million of its native FOX tokens. Over 1 million users are eligible for the airdrop.
Decentralization has been a driving force of the blockchain revolution ever since Bitcoin’s (BTC) pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto proposed a decentralized approach to transactions. Some of Bitcoin’s most ardent proponents — dubbed “Bitcoin maximalists” by the community — argue that no other cryptocurrency has achieved a level of decentralization near that of BTC.
Related: Erik Voorhees lashes ‘disgusting’ behavior of Bitcoin maxis: ‘Not the community I come from’
Although not every crypto-based project requires a decentralized value proposition to drive adoption, decentralization is viewed as a solution to many of the perils of centralized systems. Decentralization is therefore seen as both a philosophical approach and a technical solution.
Erik Voorhees lashes ‘disgusting’ behavior of Bitcoin maxis: ‘Not the community I come from’
Erik Voorhees is embarrassed by toxic Bitcoin maxis and told a podcast: “I don't know when they got into Bitcoin, but absolutely that is not the community that I come from in Bitcoin.”
Erik Voorhees, the founder and CEO of ShapeShift, has revealed in a podcast that he felt embarrassed and disgusted by the behavior of Bitcoin maximalists at the 2021 Bitcoin conference in Miami.
A Bitcoin OG who can see some merit in altcoins, Voorhees spoke on a panel during day two of the Miami conference in June. He caused a stir when he said “Did I hear someone on that prior panel say ‘If you’re against toxic maximalism, you’re against Bitcoin and you’re against freedom?’… Yeah, that’s some bullshit.”
The ShapeShift CEO expanded on those comments in a July 27 interview on the Unchained Podcast hosted by journalist Laura Shin. The 35-year-old slammed Bitcoiners who believe that toxic behavior such as trashing proponents of other cryptocurrencies is a good thing for BTC:
“They’ve spun themselves up into thinking that trashing these people is a virtue and it's helping Bitcoin. Frankly, I think it’s just kind of disgusting and I was embarrassed.”
He added: “These people were on stage talking about the virtues of toxic maximalism. I don't know when they got into Bitcoin, but absolutely that is not the community that I come from in Bitcoin."
Vorhees has spoken out before against toxic maximalism, but told Shin that the Miami conference was the first Bitcoin conference he’s been to in which he was “embarrassed about the people who were there.”
He stated that if there is a genuine enemy to Bitcoin and toBitcoin maxis, it is “central banks, banking and fiat currency” and not the “Dogecoin community or Ethereum community.”
ShapeShift is a noncustodial crypto exchange operated out of Denver and headquartered in Switzerland. The platform announced a full integration with cross-chain DEX THORChain in April which enabled direct trading of Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin. However, THORChain has suffered two multi-million dollar breaches from hackers this month, along with a third more minor breach.
Related: ShapeShift to decentralize entire company, plans for largest airdrop in history
Cointelegraph reported on July 16 that Thorchain came to a halt after a hacker stole $7.6 million worth of crypto assets, and last week an apparent white hat hacker stole $8 million worth of ETH.
Voorhees conceded the exploits show that ThorChain still has a long way to go, but the fact that it can provide a DEX that is chain-agnostic is a “huge development for the industry.”
“THORChain is very new early software and they’ve had a few pretty atrocious bugs recently. Right now the chain is offline. So it's not a panacea and it’s not ready for prime time, but it works. It works with real money and it's out in the wild getting better and better each week.”
Coinbase CEO Tells Dogecoin Creator Bitcoin Made “Many People Wealthy”
Shapeshift to Dissolve Corporate Model, Platform Airdrops FOX Tokens to Community of Users
Founded on July 1, 2014, Shapeshift has been offering global trading of a variety of digital assets for seven years. Following the company’s recent anniversary, it announced Shapeshift is evolving into a community-owned decentralized platform. Shapeshift founder Erik Voorhees explained in a blog post that the firm airdropped FOX tokens to over a million customers […]ShapeShift to decentralize entire company, plans for largest airdrop in history
“It has become clear that open, immutable finance requires open, immutable organizations,” said Erik Voorhees, founder and CEO of ShapeShift.
ShapeShift, a leading non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange, is planning to open-source its platform and dissolve its entire corporate structure — an unprecedented move that underscores the company’s commitment to decentralization.
Largest airdrop in history
As part of its decentralization pledge, ShapeShift plans to airdrop 340 million FOX tokens to over one million users who traded $1 or more of Ether (ETH) or any ERC-20 token through the platform prior to June 9, 2021. Both current and past users of ShapeShift are eligible to receive the airdrop. The breakdown of the FOX token distribution is as follows:
- 1-4 trades: 200 FOX
- 5-9 trades: 350 FOX
- 10-24 trades: 750 FOX
- 25-99 trades: 1,500 FOX
- 100+ trades: 8,500 FOX
Wallets registered with ShapeShift that are holding cryptocurrency balances as of June 9 will also receive 250 FOX. Furthermore, users of KeepKey who have connected with ShapeShift as of June 9 are also eligible for 900 FOX.
The airdrop effectively transfers ShapeShift governance rights to the users, who will begin governing the now community-owned platform. Over 60% of the total FOX supply will be allocated to the ShapeShift community. Over 120,000 decentralized finance (DeFi) users from other platforms, including THORChain, Curve, Balancer and Uniswap, will also be eligible to collect FOX tokens through the airdrop.
The first round of FOX liquidity mining will begin at 9:00 am MT on July 16.
Airdrop recipients are not bound by lockup periods, the company confirmed. All employees and shareholders, as well as the ShapeShift DAO Governance Treasury, have a three-year vesting period through June 2, 2024.
Open-sourcing to begin shortly
All of ShapeShift’s code and infrastructure will be open-sourced in the coming months, the company said, explaining that:
“Anything that cannot be open-sourced in the short-term will be run by the Foundation, with the intention of it open-sourcing and decentralizing when possible in coordination with the community.”
The open-sourcing process also seeks to decentralize all protocol functionalities that currently rely on centralized infrastructure, such as ShapeShift oAuth, which allows partners to request third-party applications access from users.
Related: Decentralized insurance could save DeFi from contagion, according to ShapeShift report
Promoting a decentralized future
ShapeShift founder and CEO Erik Voorhees said the decision to dissolve the company’s corporate structure and transfer governance rights to the users was inspired by the DeFi community, which has grown significantly over the past year. Voorhees explained:
“Inspired by the broader DeFi community, we’ll now help pioneer a new model of economic coordination for the 21st century. No corporate entity, no banks and no borders. The tools are ready. Our customers, and the broader crypto community, are now the primary stakeholders of a decentralized, open-source digital asset platform for the world.”
In an interview with Cointelegraph Magazine earlier this year, Voorhees credited DeFi in general and decentralized exchanges (DEXs) in particular for helping ShapeShift reorient its business model back to its original vision, after traditional banking rules forced the company to implement Know Your Customer, or KYC, identity verification procedures.
“I had learned with Satoshi Dice that an economic relationship didn’t need anything other than a public key to send in a transaction, and anything else could be based around that,” he said.
Self-custody.
— Erik Voorhees (@ErikVoorhees) June 16, 2021
Decentralization.
Immutability.
Each requires the former.
This is the way.
ShapeShift’s support of decentralized exchanges began in January 2021 after the platform integrated with Uniswap, Balancer, Curve, Banor, Kyber, 0x and others.
Voorhees has spoken at length publicly about the ethos of decentralization and decentralized planning, also known as market competition. In May of this year, he gave a presentation titled “Decentralization & Use of Knowledge in Society” at the Cryptocurrency and Hayek Conference at George Mason University. In the presentation, he said:
“Amid the volatility, the periodic disasters, the silly dog memes, people often miss just how profound cryptocurrency as a social and economic phenomenon has become. This is a phenomenon where one-and-a-half-trillion dollars of wealth has been created in just over a decade. [...] Where lending and exchange markets have formed to trade billions of dollars of value per day and yet which have no office, no CEO and are run by no company.”
There Are Now Twice as Many 2021 ‘Bitcoin Deaths’ Compared to 2020’s BTC Obituaries List
Bitcoin is down in value 45% since the crypto asset’s all-time high (ATH) three months ago and the downward movement has ignited significant speculation about another bear market. Other skeptics believe that bitcoin has died, as the web page that hosts bitcoin obituaries indicates 2021 bitcoin deaths have doubled in comparison to all the bitcoin […]