Terra Whistleblower Publishes Alleged Chat Log Between Do Kwon and Network Validators

June 2, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Solana attributes major outage to denial-of-service attack targeting DEX offering

September 21, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Bot attack

The Solana Foundation says bots spammed the Grape Protocol IDO on Raydium with 400,000 transactions per second, bringing the network to its knees.

Solana has attributed the 17-hour outage it suffered last week to a denial-of-service attack aimed at Grape Protocol’s Sept. 14 initial DEX offering (IDO).

In a Sept. 21 blog post, the Solana Foundation stated that bots spammed the network as Grape launched its IDO on the Solana-based decentralized exchange (DEX) Raydium at 12:00 UTC last Tuesday.

The botting activity overwhelmed the network with a transaction load of 400,000 per second, with Solana noting that “unbounded growth of the forwarder queues and resource-heavy blocks” resulted in a number of forks being automatically proposed to the network.

The attack caused Solana’s network’s validators to crash after running out of memory. As a result the network went offline for roughly 17 hours during Sept. 14 and Sept. 15.

The recovery was led in collaboration between Solana engineers and more than 1,000 validators, with a hard fork being passed after receiving support from 80% of the network’s active stakers.

“This was a coordinated effort by the community, not only in creating a patch, but in getting 80% of the network to come to consensus.”

The foundation estimates that the network was patched, upgraded, and restored to full functionality within 18 hours of Solana going offline.

The post added that the community is still working on providing a detailed “technical post-mortem and root cause analysis report” that will be released in the coming weeks

The price of Solana (SOL) has performed bearishly since posting an all-time high of $213 on Sept. 9. Since then, SOL has pulled back by 39% to change hands for $129 at the time of writing.

The retracement followed a meteoric couple of months for SOL, with the token surging 565% since trading for $32 on July 31.

Infrastructure bill set for a vote by Sept. 27 with no changes to crypto tax provisions

August 25, 2021 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The House of Representatives will vote on the controversial infrastructure bill without amendments to its cryptocurrency provisions by Sept. 27.

The controversial $1 trillion infrastructure bill will see a vote in the U.S. House of Representatives without any amendments to the crypto tax provisions by Sept. 27.

The vote was agreed to after the House narrowly approved the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion budget blueprint in a vote of 220 to 212. Despite some initial pushback from moderate Democrats, the dissident voters were swayed after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi committed to pass the bill before Sept. 27. Pelosi stated:

“I am committing to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill by September 27. I do so with a commitment to rally House Democratic support for its passage.”

In late July, last-minute cryptocurrency provisions were added to the infrastructure bill in a bid to raise a further $28 billion through expanded tax obligations for the crypto sector.

However, the loose language contained in the bill sent shockwaves across the crypto community and analysts believe it will impose stringent third-party reporting requirements on network validators and software developers who would be unable to comply with the newly mandated obligations.

The Senate appeared poised to pass compromise amendments to the bill that would specifically exempt network validators and software developers in early August, but owing to one dissenting Senator the legislation ultimately passed through the Congress without alteration.

However, a Treasury Department official has sought to offer the crypto industry a glimmer of hope, telling CNBC that reporting requirements will not be imposed on entities that are unable to comply.

The anonymous official indicated that the Treasury intends to conduct detailed research to understand which actors within the crypto sector can adhere to the new reporting requirement.

However, the official's comments were of little comfort to Coin Center executive director Jerry Brito, who emphasized that the bill’s language currently requires reporting on transfers as well as trades. Brito also highlighted that any crypto transaction valued at more than $10,000 will need to be reported to the Internal Revenue Service alongside personal information on the counterparty.

“I appreciate that it seems to be Treasury’s intention to get this right [...] but please don’t accept the narrative that folks in crypto are overreacting about this provision,” he added.

Commenting on the lack of amendments to the infrastructure bill, executive director of The Blockchain Association, Kristin Smith, described the events as “unfortunate but unsurprising.”

“However, this is not the end of the process,” she stated, adding:

“The Blockchain Association, our 46 member companies and the newly-energized, nationwide crypto community will rededicate our energy to supporting technology-neutral, pro-crypto legislation and regulation — on this specific tax issue as well as broader crypto policy.”

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