FTX EU launches withdrawal website to pay back European users

March 31, 2023 Coin Telegraph

FTX EU was only approved by the Cyprus regulator in March, 2022, about seven months before FTX collapsed in November.

The European arm of FTX, FTX EU has launched a website to allow European customers to submit withdrawal requests.

It comes nearly five months after the global trading platform collapsed and went bankrupt in early November.

The new website domain name — https://ftxeurope.eu/ — was reportedly approved by the Cyprus Securities and Exchange Commission according to a report in Finance Magnates.

*A screenshot of the newly launched website to withdraw funds from FTX EU. Source:* *FTX Europe*

The new domain will not offer any products or services other than to pay back impacted customers, the report said, referencing an email received by FTX Europe.

"Please be informed that our new domain, www.ftxeurope.eu, has been approved by our regulator CySEC as you have well identified. The website will only be used for all FTX EU LTD clients to be able to claim their FIAT balances. There will be no services or products offered via this website."

While FTX EU was made available to users in the Europe Economic Area and Middle East, it is not clear how many users were impacted.

FTX EU only became available in March 2022 and the global enterprise collapsed in November, so numbers are not expected to be large.

FTX EU, a solvent entity, is now paying out its customers on https://t.co/MEw8Oz8vTk.

Note: Almost none of FTX's EU citizens are FTX EU users, because for some reason, FTX EU only onboarded customers registered from March 2022. pic.twitter.com/gu56Vysvlc
— FTX 2.0pium (FTX Creditor) (@AFTXcreditor) March 30, 2023

FTX Japan is another subsidiary that has already made amends to impacted customers. In late February, it allowed a total withdrawal of funds, which amounted to about $50 million.

The Cyprus regulator requested FTX EU to suspend its operations on Nov 9, shortly before FTX Group and its 130 affiliated companies (including FTX EU) officially filed for bankruptcy on Nov 11.

FTX Europe was headquartered in Switzerland for the relatively short duration that it operated.

Magazine: Can you trust crypto exchanges after the collapse of FTX?

*The FTX EU website has been approved by the Cyprus securities regulator: Source:* *Cyprus Securites and Exchange Commission*

Forget HTTP: Ethereum has a new URL standard that can’t be blocked

March 15, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Under a newly rolled out Ethereum standard, DApps and NFTs can be accessed by internet users without the worry of centralized censorship.

Web3 URLs — enabled with the launch of ERC-4804 — have made it onto Ethereum, allowing internet users to access Ethereum apps and NFTs without worrying about centralized censorship.

The new Ethereum standard, titled “Web3 URL to EVM Call Message Translation,” was first proposed on Feb. 14, 2022, and was co-authored by ETHStorage founder Qi Zhou, Ethereum researcher Sam Wilson and Chao Pi.

It described the proposal as an “HTTP-style” URL to directly access on-chain Web3 content, such as decentralized apps (DApps) front-ends and NFTs. More than a year later, ERC-4804 was approved and finalized on the mainnet on March 1.

1/n, I am delighted to announce that the first web access protocol for ETH ERC4804: Web3 URL is approved by EIP editors and finalized!

web3:// (https://t.co/uXpTGdXirF) is decentralized http://. It allow users to directly browse the rich web content on EVM, pages/images/songs!
— Qi Zhou (@qc_qizhou) March 1, 2023

Anthurine Xiang, a spokesperson for layer-2 storage protocol ETHStorage, explained that in many cases, the ecosystem is still reliant on centralized web servers to provide access to “decentralized” apps.

“Right now, all the DApps like Uniswap [...] claim to be decentralized apps," Xiang explained, adding: "But how [do] we get on the webpage? You have to go through the DNS. You have to go through GoDaddy. [...] All those are centralized servers.”

*Graphic explaining how the new model compares to Web2. Source:* *w3eth.io*

Today, most users access the internet via “Hypertext Transfer Protocol,” widely known as HTTP.

When an internet user clicks a link or types in a website address, the computer uses HTTP to ask another computer to retrieve the information, such as a website or pictures.

Under ERC-4804, internet users have the option to type in web3:// (as opposed to http://) in their browsers to directly bring up DApps such as Uniswap or on-chain NFTs. This is because the standard allows users to directly run a query to an Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM).

*Flow chart explaining how Web3 URL standard works with Uniswap. Source: w3eth.io*

Entire websites can also theoretically be accessed by these means as long as their content is stored on the Ethereum blockchain or a compatible layer-2 protocol. However, the costs of doing this are still very prohibitive, according to ETHStorage founder Qi Zhou.

“The critical issue here is that the storage cost on Ethereum is super, super expensive on mainnet,” Zhou said in a recent presentation at ETH Denver.

“For example, 1 Gigabyte of on-chain data will cost roughly $10 million. [...] That is unacceptable for a lot of Web2 applications and even a lot of NFTs,” Zhou added, noting that layer-2 storage solutions could help mitigate some of the costs.

Xiang suggested that given the costs, the new URL standard makes sense only for specific applications.

“Not everything needs to go decentralized. If you are running a pretty good Web2 business and you don’t have to worry too much about centralized censorship. [...] You can just go for that.”

On the other hand, the new standard would be useful for DApps or websites that are at risk of censorship, with Tornado Cash as an example.

“For example, for Tornado Cash, a lot of people can’t get to them through their website because there’s censorship,” Xiang explained.

“If you’re a DApp and you’ve already been decentralized, why are you still using a centralized website for people to get access to you?”

*Example of websites that are able to be accessed via web3:// URL Source: w3eth.io*

Asked whether the new standard could be leveraged by bad actors to partake in illicit activity, Xiang said:

“This is really hard to say just like how Bitcoin was founded. I think Bitcoin was not born for evil, but still, in the beginning, people [were] doing shady things like the Silk Road, they had been using Bitcoin.”

Instead, Xiang believes like Bitcoin, they're just giving people a decentralized option they may not have otherwise.

The new Ethereum standard is the first of its kind for the blockchain, noted Xiang, though it’s not the first solution to decentralized web hosting.

IPFS, or the InterPlanetary File System is an example of a network that was created to do what centralized cloud servers currently provide, only via decentralized means. However, Xiang noted that an IPFS URL can only link to static content, which can’t be amended or changed.

I *use* IPFS to store my blog. It has serious UX issues (took ~1h for my last update to propagate). Sticking the blog on-chain would have been way easier.

For blogs, that's unfortunately too expensive, but for short text records the logic applies.
— vitalik.eth (@VitalikButerin) May 27, 2022

ERC-4804 however, will allow for “dynamic data,” such as allowing people to leave likes and comments and interact with content on a website, explained Xiang. Being Ethereum native, the standard is also expected to be able to interact with other blockchains much easier, Xiang added.

Fake Ethereum Denver website linked to notorious phishing wallet

February 20, 2023 Coin Telegraph

Coin Telegraph

Hackers continue to create fake Web3-enabled websites to fleece unsuspecting victims’ browser-based wallets, with ETHDenver being the latest victim.

A fake website of the popular Ethereum Denver conference is the latest phishing target of a red-flagged smart contract that has stolen over $300,000 worth of Ether (ETH).

The popular conference saw its website duplicated by hackers this week in order to trick users into connecting their MetaMask wallets. According to Blockfence, which identified the fraudulent website, the smart contract has accessed more than 2,800 wallets and stolen over $300,000 over the past six months.

Another day, another scam.
This time the scammer targeted the @EthereumDenver website. Blockfence is here to protect you and fight scammers together: The scam contract was marked as "High Risk" by our ML algorithm and our partners at @GoplusSecurity pic.twitter.com/Jdtoz2Bgu4
— Blockfence (@blockfence_io) February 20, 2023

ETHDenver also issued a notice to its followers on Twitter warning of the malicious website.

Hello Fellow Bufficorns!!

Please be aware that there is a FAKE ETHDenver website that is asking for you to connect your wallet.

“Go-ETHDenver” is not us. Please report the site! pic.twitter.com/1dt4hYmfvO
— ETHDenver (@EthereumDenver) February 20, 2023

Blockfence CEO Omri Lahav told Cointelegraph that users were prompted to connect their MetaMask wallets via the usual “connect wallet” button. The website prompts a transaction that, if approved, carries out the malicious function and steals the users’ funds.

Blockfence’s research team identified the incident while tracking different trends in the industry. Lahav said that the smart contract executing the scam had stolen over 177 ETH since its deployment midway through 2022:

“Since the smart contract was deployed almost six months ago, it’s possible that it was used on other phishing websites.”

Hackers had gone as far as paying for a Google advertisement to promote the malicious website’s URL, banking on search trends being high, with ETHDenver taking place on Feb. 24 and 25. The fake website appeared second on a Google search, above the actual ETHDenver website.

As Cointelegraph previously reported , hacks and scams continue to be commonplace in the cryptocurrency ecosystem. 2022 saw over $2.8 billion of cryptocurrency stolen through a variety of hacks and exploits.