SEC Charges Gig Economy Platform for $2.6 Million Unregistered Coin Offering

December 26, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Nifty News: Building bridges in the Metaverse, elaborate Apes scam and more

December 19, 2022 Coin Telegraph

A South Korean province is using the Metaverse for closer economic ties with Vietnam and an elaborate phishing scam netted 14 Bored Apes.

South Korea’s Gyeongbuk Province has announced plans to use Web3 technology to expand its economic relations with Vietnam.

In a Dec. 19 announcement, the province’s governor Lee Cheol-woo said the metaverse project would focus on “growing economic, cultural, commercial, and people-centered contacts with Vietnam.”

Back in June, the province announced it would invest $13.8 million to establish itself as a hub for metaverse innovation in the hope of growing the local economy.

South Korea has been very active in Metaverse development since the beginning of 2022 and it aims to become the fifth most metaverse-ready country in the world. It has allocated $186.7 million to create an all-encompassing metaverse platform known as Expanded Virtual World.

14 Bored Apes stolen in phishing scam

A Cybersecurity analyst using the name Serpent has detailed in a lengthy Dec. 17 post how a scammer allegedly stole 14 Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) nonfungible tokens (NFTs) through a month-long social engineering scam.

The analyst alleged the scam began when the victim was asked to license the IP rights for the Apes, with the scammer claiming to be “a casting director working for ‘Forte Pictures’,” on an NFT related film called "The Return of Time.” He said the alias used by the alleged scammer was fake, although Forte Pictures is a real company (and not involved).

Using a fake website, fake pitches, legal contracts and other elaborate subterfuge including Twitter spaces to build credibility, they offered a bid for the NFTs and directed the victim to a fake NFT platform where they were asked to “sign the contract" which is where the wallet drain took place.

“The scam website displayed a gas-less Seaport signature, which they claimed he needed to sign for the license. However, the signature actually created a private bundle listing of all of the victim's BAYCs to the scammer for 0.00000001 ETH,” Serpent said.

“The scammer's wallet, funded by Secret Network, ran the match orders function to complete the private sale. The scammer then accepted the highest WETH offers on all of the NFTs, then converted the 852.86 WETH to 1.07m DAI,” the analyst added.

10/ A few notes to take:
- Understand what you're signing, don't blindly sign random signatures/transactions
- Don't sign Seaport signatures outside of OpenSea
- Don't trust new/random platforms
- Use multiple wallets (Hot, cold, hardware)
- Always confirm authenticity/identities
— Serpent (@Serpent) December 17, 2022

Manchester United Launch NFT collection

Manchester United Football Club (Man U) has launched its first collection of NFTs on the Tezos blockchain.

According to the collections website, the initial drop was free, and only required fans to sign in using their Tezos wallets to claim an NFT.

The wait is over!

Get United's first digital collectible! Unlock now

Powered by @Tezos and brought to you by Tezos ecosystem companies. #MUFC || #CollectUnited
— Manchester United (@ManUtd) December 16, 2022

NFTs were divided into three groups based on their rarity — classic, rare and ultra rare — and were distributed to subscribed fans at random.

Each NFT acts as a key offering access to competitions, tickets, content on Discord and the chance to join the club’s new virtual world which is set to launch at a later date.

Trump NFT collection right clicked images?

Eagle eyed social media sleuths are questioning whether former United States president Donald Trump’s NFT collectible project has plagiarized images from other sources.

On Dec. 15, the former president unveiled a collection of 45,000 NFT trading cards, with the artwork depicting himself in outfits such as golf attire, hunting gear and a superhero costume.

In the days following the NFT drop, some Twitter users undertook reverse image searches on Google and uncovered similarities between the NFTs and images from a variety of other sources including Amazon and Shutterstock.

In one example, Matthew Sheffield, who describes himself as a right-wing media operative, compared an NFT of Trump wearing waders and holding a rifle, to a very similar wader set from a hunting apparel company.

Trump's NFT of him pretending to be a hunter (something he would not be caught dead doing in real life) seems to be derived from this wader set https://t.co/OepeYADNB6 pic.twitter.com/cJ8sxDu5m2
— Matthew Sheffield (@mattsheffield) December 16, 2022

More Nifty News:

Amazon's new series 'NFTMe' explores NFT culture and disruption worldwide as artists, collectors, and industry professionals across the world share their experiences with NFTs and how the merger between art and technology has positively affected their daily lives.

Artist and founder of the family-friendly NFT collection Lucky Ducky, Jeremy Fisher, told Cointelegraph that NFTs are great tools for general mass adoption and teaching newcomers about the space, including younger generations.

Stablecoin BUSD’s Supply Shrunk by 3.24 Billion in 3 Days, Market Cap Is Down 20% Since Last Month

December 16, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Coinbase launches tool to recover ‘mistakenly sent’ ERC-20 tokens

December 15, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Business

“Our recovery tool is able to move unsupported assets directly from your inbound address to your self-custodial wallet without exposing private keys at any point,” said Coinbase.

Major cryptocurrency platform Coinbase has offered an asset recovery tool for users who “mistakenly send unsupported tokens” to exchange addresses.

In a Dec. 15 announcement, Coinbase said users who sent any of roughly 4,000 ERC-20 tokens to a Coinbase address could recover their previously unrecoverable funds by providing “the Ethereum TXID for the transaction where the asset was lost and the contract address of the lost asset.” The exchange said certain ETC-20 tokens including Wrapped Ether (wETH), TrueUSD (TUSD), and staked Ether (STETH) would be eligible for recovery, with a 5% charge on transactions of more than $100.

“Our recovery tool is able to move unsupported assets directly from your inbound address to your self-custodial wallet without exposing private keys at any point,” said Coinbase. “We did this by using patent pending technology to send the funds directly from your inbound address without processing the funds through our centralized exchange infrastructure.”

Many users have been dealing with mistakenly sent funds since almost the beginning of the crypto space. In a 2018 case in Canada, a court ruled that a user who received 530 Ether (ETH) instead of 530 Copytrack (CPY) tokens — now defunct — was required to return them. An Australian judge made a similar ruling for a case in which Crypto.com mistakenly sent $10.5 million to a user instead of a $100 refund.

Other major exchanges seem to offer recovery for similar transactions on a case-by-case basis. Binance said on its support pages that it may choose to assist users “solely at its discretion” and largely “does not offer a token/coin recovery service.” Crypto.com instructed users to contact its customer service department, adding “fund retrieval may not be possible in some cases.”

Coinbase has more more than 100 million users globally. CEO Brian Armstrong reported in December that the exchange’s trading revenue for 2022 was projected to be “roughly half” that of 2021. The platform also reported that law enforcement agencies had increased requests for information related to criminal investigations.

Russian Social Media Giant Vkontakte Launches NFT Service

December 15, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Is DeFi back? GMX rallies toward all-time high and LOOKS price gains 30%

December 13, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Adoption

GMX and LOOKS price pulled off double-digit rallies in the last week as former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes revealed his investment thesis for both projects.

In a recent blog post, cryptocurrency legend and former BitMEX CEO Arthur Hayes mentioned he holds sizable bags of GMX and LOOKS tokens. According to Hayes, his main reasoning for investing in both tokens was their platform revenue and the potential of both assets to outperform standard treasury bills.

Let’s take a brief look at on-chain data and compare GMX and LOOKS to competitors to determine whether Arthur’s assumption will work out.

GMX usage cooling after a strong November

The week prior to Nov. 16 provided decentralized Finance (DeFi) with a significant influx in fees after the centralized exchange (CEX) exodus triggered by FTX’s bankruptcy. The temporary high inflows to DeFi propelled GMX to outperform Uniswap in protocol fees.

On Nov. 28, GMX earned about $1.15 million in daily trading fees, which surpassed Uniswap’s $1.06 million in trading fees on the same day.

*GMX fees and daily active users. Source: Token Terminal*

While usage of GMX may be decreasing, the token is outperforming the industry. The GMX token is only 8% away from an all-time high after gaining 59% in the past 30-days.

*GMX token performance. Source: Delphi Digital*

Since Uniswap is the closest competitor to GMX, comparing the two protocols can show which users prefer to use for trading. Aside from Nov. 28 where the fee flip is noticed, Uniswap continues to outperform GMX in terms of fee revenue and daily active users. Unlike Uniswap, GMX distributes fees to stakers of various GMX and GLP tokens.

The 90-day peak for Uniswap fees is $5.9 million whereas GMX’s high in daily fees is only $1.4 million. The major difference in peak fees may show that GMX has reached capacity when it comes to platform usage.

The fees that GMX accrues are split 30% to GMX token holders and 70% to GLP holders. The current homepage for GMX cites the estimated APY on the GMX tokens is around 10% and for GLP tokens, 20%. While GLP would fit Hayes’ 20% annual yield goal, liquidity providers are susceptible to impairment loss and price declines making it difficult to ensure success against the conservative treasury bill strategy.

*Fees earned by Uniswap and GMX. Source: TokenTerminal*

OpenSea usage continues to dominate LooksRare

LooksRare, which is also the home of the LOOKS token, was also mentioned by Hayes due to the fees the NFT protocol earns. To date, NFT marketplaces, including Coinbase, have struggled to chip away at OpenSea’s market dominance.

While OpenSea seems to have a natural flow of daily active users between 35,000 and 50,000, LooksRare has a small range of 350 to 500 users. Using this metric, OpenSea is 100 times bigger than LooksRare and the trend does not seem to change over a 90-day timeframe.

Further difference between the two protocols is that OpenSea does not have a token that emits rewards through staking and inflationary minting. The rewards emission may hit Hayes’ 20% goal, but it should also be noted that LooksRare is notorious for wash trading. The primary objective of these wash trader is to gain more LOOKS tokens, but this could have the effect of diluting the price.

*Daily active users of LooksRare and OpenSea. Source: TokenTerminal*

The recently announced UniSwap NFT aggregator could help propel LooksRare to gain more “authentic” transactions since users can purchase LooksRare NFTs without ever visiting the site.

The current fee distribution is heavily concentrated toward OpenSea. Over the past 90-days, OpenSea reached a peak of $2.5 million in daily fees, whereas during the same period LooksRare only earned over $200,000 in daily fees once.

*Fees earned by LooksRare and OpenSea. Source: TokenTerminal*

Investigating the protocol fundamentals mentioned by Hayes are an important first step when considering investing in DeFi and altcoin. Looking at the competitive landscape for both LooksRare and GMX, it would take much more adoption for either protocol to overtake the current leaders. Furthermore, the 20% goal Hayes sets out might be a stretch when analyzing inflated emissions and token prices.

The views, thoughts and opinions expressed here are the authors’ alone and do not necessarily reflect or represent the views and opinions of Cointelegraph.

MetaMask Institutional, Cobo and Gnosis DAO team up for soulbound token project

December 13, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

A new soulbound NFT project from Cobo, MetaMask Institutional and Gnosis Safe is bringing new nonfungible exclusivity and proof of identity to users.

Soulbound tokens (SBTs) are becoming a mainstay in the Web3 space for users and projects to define themselves in digital reality.

A Dec. 13 announcement from Cobo, a digital asset custodian and blockchain technology developer, revealed a new SBT project which unites crypto industry giants to cater to users’ developing digital identities.

Cobo, MetaMask Institutional and Gnosis DAO teamed up to create “Evolution,” an SBT project, a tool to help users define themselves in digital reality and stay up to date on industry trends.

A spokesperson for Cobo told Cointelegraph that since SBTs cannot be sold on the market, it helps create a bridge between Web2 and Web3 surrounding user identity.

“This provides assurance to the token provider and allows them to give exclusive access and benefits to their targeted users by giving them an identity."

While SBTs may be the new trend to mark a digital persona, they will not replace nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and the inherent utilities that come with tradable assets.

However, according to the Cobo spokesperson, SBTs may be increasingly used to create another level of exclusivity not achievable by a standard NFT. Using the “Evolution” collection as an example, holders will receive exclusive quarterly research on the decentralized finance space unavailable to those outside their SBT community.

“Although the tokens can be used to identify and reward certain users, they can also be used to limit and exclude users from certain projects or benefits.

From a perspective of brands or wallets, SBTs may “dissuade users from changing wallets or rotating keys for security purposes,” says the Cobo representative

This development from major Web3 players comes as the space shifts with the development and introduction of SBTs.

These new digital assets are now being looked at as a potential key to the metaverse of the future, in which users have citizenship as a part of their digital identity.

Recently in Japan, the financial giant Sumitomo Mitsui announced it is experimenting with SBTs to help meet local social needs.

Nomad releases bridge relaunch guide after patching contract vulnerability

December 8, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

The Nomad protocol will allow users to bridge back madAssets and access a pro-rata share of recovered funds.

The Nomad token bridge announced its relaunch guide after fixing the contract vulnerability that led to a $190 million exploit in August. According to a blog post from Dec. 7, the Nomad protocol will allow users to bridge back madAssets and access a pro-rata share of recovered funds.

A redesign for the token bridge was also implemented by the Nomad team, said the company, explaining that without this redesign, the "first people to bridge back their madAssets would receive canonical tokens on a one-to-one basis until there were no canonical tokens left."

To avoid this first-come, first-serve approach, the team implemented changes in the protocol to give users the ability to bridge back and access a pro-rata share of recovered funds, ensure the tokens accessed from bridging back are in the original token and provide a mechanism for impacted users to access future recovered funds. The company stated:

"Given the scope of these changes, a full audit of the smart contracts was completed along with an additional re-review of any remediations with our auditors.”

Users seeking to access recovered funds must complete a Know Your Customer (KYC) and an Anti-Money Laundering (AML) verification process, as well as linking their wallet addresses to their Coinlist account, noted the blog post.

Users will be able to bridge back madAssets to Ethereum after successfully completing the first step and receive a unique nonfungible token (NFT) that accounts for the type and quantity of assets that can be bridged back. NFT will grant access to a portion of a bridged asset equal to the recovered percentage.

As reported by Cointelegraph, bad actors discovered a security loophole in Nomad’s smart contracts in August, allowing them to extract funds via dubious transactions. A Coinbase analysis later revealed that hundreds of copycats joined the hackers by copying the same code but modifying recipient addresses, token amounts, and target tokens.

Nomad is a token bridge that allows transfers of tokens between Avalanche, Ethereum, Evmos, Milkomeda C1, and Moonbeam chains. As of August, only 20% of the stolen funds, nearly $37 million, had been recovered. The company's official website still asks white hats to return tokens.

Japan’s Sumitomo Mitsui to issue soulbound tokens to explore Web3

December 8, 2022 Coin Telegraph

Banks

Japan’s financial giant Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group is experimenting with soulbond tokens to satisfy new social needs.

The Japanese financial group Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group (SMBC) is moving to explore the benefits of Web3 by issuing soulbond tokens (SBTs).

Proposed by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin, SBTs refer to digital identity tokens that represent the characteristics or reputation of a person or entity, or a “soul.” Such tokens are non-transferable and are designed for the decentralized society and Web3.

SMBC officially announced on Dec. 8 an initiative focused on the practical use of SBTs in partnership with the digital asset firm HashPort.

The companies plan to conduct research on SBTs to find out their practical uses for communities, jobs, knowledge sharing services and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).

According to SMBC, the development could specifically be useful for individuals increasingly assuming diverse roles and personalities within society. The company stated:

“It is expected in this new society that each individual will be able to control which personality he/she displays in each community in which he/she participates. SBTs satisfy these new social needs through the use of multiple ‘souls’.”

One of the practical uses of an SBT could be a situation where a user has a role of a working adult and another role of a music fan. “If this user wants to prove his/her skills and work history when changing jobs, he/she can simultaneously prove his/her identity and his/her career information associated with them by allowing his/her employer to reference the SBTs,” SMBC said.

The company also noted that the partnership with HashPort can be put to practical use in the future and is a meaningful initiative to drive the growth of the Web3 economy in Japan.

“The two parties will also consider undertaking content business associated with NFTs and developing infrastructure for the Web3 economic zone to encourage the spread of the token business both in Japan and overseas,” the announcement notes.

A major financial institution in Japan, SMBC is part of Mitsui Group, which is one of the largest corporate groups in the world. Various companies within Mitsui have been actively exploring blockchain and cryptocurrency tools in recent years.

In February, Japanese trading house Mitsui was reportedly planning to issue a cryptocurrency pegged to gold, called ZipangCoin. Previously, Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank launched asset-backed securities tokens in partnership with Securitize in March 2021.

Court in China Recognizes NFTs as Virtual Property Protected by Law

December 6, 2022 Bitcoin.com

Tokens