Last week, Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum (ETH)'s co-founder, voiced his disapproval regarding the emergence of cross-chain bridges, citing security vulnerabilities due to their interdependency. In the days that followed however, developers working on cross-chain technologies largely dismissed his skepticism. In a statement to Cointelegraph, Kadan Stadelmann, chief technology officer of atomic swap blockchain Komodo, responded to Vitalik's critique: "What we ultimately need is true decentralization. For example, instead of relying on one or two trusted bridges that have a single point of failure, it would be better to work towards a future where we have numerous bridges that are secure, trustless, …
Reducing the amount of hacking by improving cybersecurity should be considered a top priority for the crypto industry, said Kim Grauer, director of research of blockchain intelligence firm Chainalysis. As pointed out by the firm, this year could outpace 2021 in terms of crypto stolen through hacks. The vast majority of these exploits have been targeting the field of decentralized finance. “This can't go on in the industry because people are going to lose faith in investing in DeFi platforms”, Grauer said in an interview with Cointelegraph. Unlike centralized exchanges, which have improved their resiliency to crypto hacks, decentralized protocols …
As Bitcoin and numerous altcoins surge toward new all-time highs, traders who are coin rich but cash poor are increasingly flocking to decentralized finance lending platforms where they can collatoralize their holdings to raise funds for new investments. Compound is one of the leading DeFi lending platforms and over the past month its TVL and governance token price has rallied to new highs. Compound, which ranks third among DeFi lending protocols, has $4.55 billion worth of assets locked on the platform and its COMP governance token has doubled in value over the past week. Currently COMP trades for $566, a …
Trading perpetual futures contracts in decentralized apps is a crypto sub-sector ripe for growth, especially as discussions of regulation, taxation and mandatory KYC at centralized exchanges continue to take place. One DEX platform that has begun to gain traction is Injective (INJ), an interoperable layer-one protocol designed to facilitate the creation of cross-chain Web3 decentralized finance (DeFi) applications. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that after hitting a low of $3.91 on Feb. 3, the price of INJ has rallied 157.8% to a daily high of $10.08 on Feb. 11 amidst a 1,756% spike in its 24-hour trading …
Blockchain bridges allow decentralized finance (DeFi) users to use the same tokens across multiple blockchains. For example, a trader can use USD Coin (USDC) on the Ethereum or Solana blockchains to interact with the decentralized applications (DApps) on those networks. While these protocols may be convenient for DeFi users, they are at risk of exploitation by malicious actors. For example, in the past year, the Wormhole bridge — a popular cross-chain crypto bridge between Solana, Ethereum, Avalanche and others — was hacked, with attackers stealing over $321 million worth of wrapped Ethereum (wETH), the largest hack in DeFi history at …