Prospective users of an Arbitrum-based decentralized finance (DeFi) project have been left out of pocket following a $2 million exploit. Web3 security firm CertiK flagged the incident on Feb. 21, following an announcement from the Hope Finance Twitter account notifying users that they had been scammed. #CommunityAlert @hope_fin have announced the community has been scammed for ~$2m making this the largest #exitscam on Arbitrum in 2023. $1.86m was transferred to @TornadoCash. Hope_fin have posted steps for user's to withdraw their staked LPhttps://t.co/hJbFXiKujt — CertiK Alert (@CertiKAlert) February 21, 2023 Details of the project are difficult to come by. The platform’s …

Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) on-chain activity has been increasing to the extent that the leading two networks now process more transaction volume than the Ethereum network. Layer-2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism have seen an increase in transactions over the past three months. Comparatively, aside from a few spikes, transactions on the Ethereum network have declined by around 33% since late October according to Etherscan. This has enabled the two L2s combined to flip Ethereum for this metric, according to Dune Analytics data. The chart shows Ethereum processed over 1.06 million transactions on Jan. 10 whereas Arbitrum and Optimism combined processed over …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Trader Joe has announced its very first expansion from Avalanche and onto the Ethereum ecosystem, as part of its plans to access new markets and drive up user activity. The decentralized trading platform announced its “multi-chain” expansion into Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum One on Dec. 1 and follows around a month after it stated its intention to expand to additional markets and ink new partnerships amid falling TVL and user activity in the third quarter. We're extremely excited to announce that @traderjoe_xyz has expanded into the Ethereum ecosystem with Arbitrum One as its destination! ‍ …

Circle, the issuer of the United States dollar-pegged stablecoin USD Coin (USDC), has added support for Apple Pay — with the intention of bringing the crypto and traditional payment systems closer together. Circle made the announcement in a Nov. 15 blog post suggesting it may boost sales for crypto-native businesses as they can facilitate traditional payments from non-crypto-using customers while enabling customers to “buy crypto with Apple Pay on their preferred exchange.” According to Circle, the addition of Apple Pay support will benefit traditional businesses by allowing them “to shift more retail payments to digital currency.” Apple Pay is available …

Post Ethereum (ETH) merge, layer-2 blockchains have been catching the eyes of users and investors alike. Research firm Delphi Digital has been tracking Arbitrum since August and recently shared its analysis in a monthly market report. According to data, user behavior and historical analysis show multiple trends of rapid growth in transactions, total value locked (TVL) and daily active users at Arbitrum-based platforms. Arbitrum reaches the top-10 in monthly earnings When projects give away more token incentives than the revenue they incur, they have negative earnings. Token incentives that are higher than fees a protocol receives are typically a sign …

In the past year, Polygon (MATIC) has focused on growing their list of high-profile partners which includes luminaries like Disney, Starbucks and Robinhood. The recent announcements of partnerships with both Instagram and JPMorgan have speculators pushing the token price up nearly 200%. In addition to partnerships, blockchain adoption through network usage is important to analyze. Blockchain adoption can be analyzed by looking into daily active users of the blockchain, protocols using the technology, number of transactions and total locked value. Total value locked on Polygon rises above $1B Total value locked (TVL) is one cryptocurrency indicator used to assess the …

October may have seen a decline in nonfungible token (NFT) trading volume and sales, but analytics firm DappRadar says an 18% growth in monthly unique NFT traders shows the market is still in “great demand.” According to a Nov. 3 report from DappRadar, the number of monthly unique NFT traders in October reached 1.11 million, increasing 18% from September, of approximately 950,000. This is despite trading volumes falling 30% to $662 million in October, the lowest registered in 2022, while the sales count decreased by 30% to 6.13 million, the firm said, adding: “The rise in the unique traders’ count …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum has seen a massive surge in activity since its Nitro update in August, having just clocked around 62% as many transactions as the Ethereum base layer. In a Nov. 1 report, crypto research firm Delphi Digital noted that as of the week ended Oct. 24, Arbitrum’s number of total transactions has increased by 550% since August, citing data from Dune Analytics. This week, @arbitrum had ~62% as many transactions as Ethereum L1. pic.twitter.com/DyuDNAjRGz — Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) November 3, 2022 In an earlier Tweet, Delphi Digital initially phrased Arbitrum as accounting for 62% of all …

A self-described white hat hacker has uncovered a “multi-million dollar vulnerability” in the bridge linking Ethereum and Arbitrum Nitro and received a 400 Ether (ETH) bounty for their find. Known as riptide on Twitter, the hacker described the exploit as the use of an initializing function to set their own bridge address, which would hijack all incoming ETH deposits from those trying to bridge funds from Ethereum to Arbitrum Nitro. Riptide explained the exploit in a Medium post on Sept. 20: “We could either selectively target large ETH deposits to remain undetected for a longer period of time, siphon up …

Decentralized exchange (DEX) GMX has reportedly suffered a price manipulation exploit from an exploiter who managed to make off with around $565,000 from the AVAX/USD market. The unidentified exploiter is understood to have capitalized on GMX’s “minimal spread” and “zero price impact” features to pull off the exploit, which impacted GLP token holders who provided liquidity in the form of AVAX (the Avalanche token) to GMX. GMX confirmed the price manipulation exploit in a Sept. 18 post on Twitter, but stated that the AVAX/USD market would remain open despite imposing a $2 million cap on long positions and $1 million …

Arbitrum is one of Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solutions designed to improve smart contracts’ efficiency and transaction execution on the network while reducing fees drastically and adding extra privacy features. L2 networks are software that sit on top of the base layer of a blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum to boost the platform’s efficiency and offer inexpensive transactions. In recent years, Ethereum’s surge in the development and adoption of Web3, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized applications (DApps) has resulted in the platform’s excessive congestion leading to skyrocketing fees. Different solutions have been explored to resolve Ethereum’s scalability, including layer-1 dedicated upgrades. …