Ava Labs President John Wu Makes 2024 Crypto Predictions, Says Big Developments Coming for Avalanche Ecosystem

October 20, 2023 The Daily Hodl

Stars Arena recovers 90% of stolen funds after offering $257K bounty

October 12, 2023 Coin Telegraph

bounty

The exploiter of the Web3 social media platform agreed to keep a 10% bounty in exchange for returning the remainder of the stolen funds.

Web3 social media platform Stars Arena says it has recovered nearly all of the crypto stolen from an Oct. 7 exploit — minus a 10% bounty to the person responsible.

In an Oct. 11 X (Twitter) post, Stars Arena said around 90% of the 266,000 Avalanche (AVAX) exploited, at the time worth around $3 million, was returned after reaching an agreement to give a 27,610 AVAX bounty worth nearly $257,000 to the exploiter.

The bounty also included compensation for 1,000 AVAX worth over $9,000 seemingly lost by the exploiter in a bridge.

UPDATE:

We have recovered approximately 90% of the lost funds.

We reached an agreement with the individual responsible for the recent security breach.

The funds have been returned in exchange for a 10% bounty fee + 1000 AVAX that was lost in a bridge.

Total funds lost:…
— Stars Arena (@starsarenacom) October 11, 2023

In a separate post, Stars Arena added it had written a new smart contract and before placing the returned funds and launching, it was finalizing an audit of the new contract.

Stars Arena first alerted its community to the exploit on Oct. 7, calling it a “major security breach” with its smart contract leading to funds being drained.

In a subsequent post, Stars Arena said it secured funding to plug the hole left by the exploit and it had contracted a development team to do a full security audit, though the team has yet to detail how the exploit took place.

Days earlier, on Oct. 5, Stars Arena was hit by a smaller exploit, though hackers only made off with around $2,000, they claimed.

The exploit was caused by Stars Arena developers missing a vulnerable price function in the platform’s smart contract. This allowed the exploiter to sell user shares for nothing and get AXAX in return, pseudonymous X user “0xlilitch” explained in a post.

Stars Area claimed to have patched the vulnerability.

Users of Stars Arena’s main competitor, Friend.tech, have also seen targeted SIM-swap attacks with Friend.tech recently adding security features to mitigate the attempts.

Magazine: Recursive inscriptions — Bitcoin ‘supercomputer’ and BTC DeFi coming soon

Avalanche (AVAX)-Based Social Finance Platform Suffers $2,900,000 Exploit: Peckshield

October 8, 2023 The Daily Hodl

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

October 5, 2023 Coin Telegraph

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.

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.

I've capitulated in creating a Stars Arena account after seeing it all over my timeline.

Won't shill my own ref link, but a few thoughts:

Stars Arena is superior to Friendtech in a lot of ways and solves one of the main problems I had with FT.

There is a public feed, so people… pic.twitter.com/S9KzPp3hqC
— wale.swoosh (@waleswoosh) October 4, 2023

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

stars arena

Ava Labs President John Wu Makes 2024 Crypto Predictions, Says Big Developments Coming for Avalanche Ecosystem

Avalanche (AVAX)-Based Social Finance Platform Suffers $2,900,000 Exploit: Peckshield

Share this video