Like most new-age networks, Solana was developed to resolve major issues confronting the blockchain industry. While the network has addressed some of these issues by its very nature, it has also encountered a few unique problems. From resource exhaustion to a halt in block confirmation, the Solana network has suffered a number of setbacks that resulted in repeated power outages, causing the network to shut down for hours on several occasions. The network went down on December 4, 2020, about three years after Solana was introduced, causing confusion in the community. The chain appears to have stopped validating new blocks …

The National Securities Depository (NSDL), India’s central securities depository based in Mumbai, launched blockchain-based security and covenant monitoring platform. NSDL officially launched the distributed ledger technology (DLT) platform on Saturday during its 25th-anniversary presentation, alongside the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI). The platform is expected to strengthen the monitoring of security and governance in the corporate bonds market to bring “further discipline and transparency to the market.” SEBI chairperson Madhabi Puri Buch underscored the blockchain’s transparency as the key reason for the technology’s popularity but made a reservation regarding its current cost-effectiveness, remarkin that the anonymity feature remains …

The United States Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) announced Friday that it was sanctioning cryptocurrency mixer Blender.io for its role in laundering proceeds from the hacking of Axie Infinity's Ronin Bridge. North Korean state-sponsored hackers Lazarus Group have been identified as the perpetrators of the attack. Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson said in a statement: “Today, for the first time ever, Treasury is sanctioning a virtual currency mixer. […] We are taking action against illicit financial activity by the DPRK and will not allow state-sponsored thievery and its money-laundering enablers to …

Nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace OpenSea suffered a server breach on its main Discord channel, with hackers posting fake "Youtube partnership" announcements. A screenshot shared Friday shows fake collaboration news, accompanied by a link to a phishing site. OpenSea Support's official Twitter account tweeted that the marketplace's Discord server was breached Friday morning and warned users not to click links in the channel. Do not click links in our Discord. We are continuing to investigate this situation and will share information as we have it. https://t.co/jgtHcXifer — OpenSea Support (@opensea_support) May 6, 2022 The hacker's initial post, published in the announcements …

Bitcoin (BTC) marks a milestone mining journey on Thursday, crossing the halfway point on the way to its next halving. In Block number 735,000, mined at approximately 10:29 am UTC, Bitcoin crossed the halfway point to the next halving. The block was mined by Poolin, earning 0.16215354 BTC ($6,402.45) in fees. Halvings occur every 210,00 blocks, and May 5 marks the cross-over point into the second leg of 105,000 blocks. For some Bitcoiners, such as Samson Mow, the Bitcoiner pioneering Bitcoin nation-state adoption, the halving is a reminder to stack more SATs: WE ARE HALFWAY TO THE NEXT HALVING AND …

Blockchain platform Polkadot has launched a new cross-chain communications protocol, saying it will do away with cumbersome bridging mechanisms that have cost the crypto industry billions in cyber attacks. The newly launched XCM messaging system is intended to promote Polkadot’s multichain ecosystem, which is being built on the premise of full interoperability. XCM channels are said to be secured at the same level as Polkadot’s central hub, dubbed Relay Chain, and are also available for use by parachains. In other words, XCM will enable communication between parachains themselves as well as smart contracts. Future iterations of XCM will allow messages …

The decentralized finance (DeFi) space has been rife with hacks, exploits and scams so far this year, with over $1.6 billion in crypto stolen from users, surpassing the total amount stolen in 2020 and 2021 combined. Analysis from blockchain security firm CertiK revealed the statistics on Monday showing the month of March having the most value stolen at $719.2 million, over $200 million more than what was stolen in all of 2020. The March figure is largely due to the Ronin Bridge exploit where attackers made off with over $600 million worth of crypto. We have seen $1.6B lost in …

The Empire State made two appearances on the regulatory stage last week, and neither was entirely reassuring. On April 25, bill S8839 was proposed in the New York State (NYS) Senate that would criminalize “rug pulls” and other crypto frauds, while two days later, the state’s Assembly passed a ban on non-green Bitcoin (BTC) mining. The first event was met with some ire from industry representatives, while the second drew negative reviews, too. However, this may have been more of a reflex response given that the “ban” was temporary and principally aimed at energy providers. The fraud bill, sponsored by …

Ripple (XRP) opened in May with a decent price rebound after falling 28% in April, its worst monthly performance since June 2021. Furthermore, the XRP/USD pair shows prospects of continuing its recovery trend in the coming weeks. Support confluence raises XRP bullish prospects XRP's price rose by nearly 6.25% in the first two days of May, going as high as $0.63 (data from Binance). The buying sentiment surged around $0.58, a level that acted as strong support in January 2022 and enabled XRP to rise by more than 50% thereafter. Interestingly, the $0.58-support coincides with XRP's 200-week exponential moving average …

By many accounts, quantum computing (QC), which uses atomic “spin” instead of an electrical charge to represent its binary 1’s and 0’s, is evolving at an exponential rate. If QC is ever realized at scale, it could be a boon for human society, helping to improve crop yields, design better medicines and engineer safer airplanes, among other benefits. The crypto sector could profit too. Just last week, for instance, a Bank of Canada-commissioned project simulated cryptocurrency adoption among Canadian financial organizations using quantum computing. “We wanted to test the power of quantum computing on a research case that is hard …

Blockchain security firm CertiK has raised $60 million in funding from SoftBank Vision Fund II and Tiger Global, further cementing its unicorn status after raising a combined $290 million over nine months. The raise comes at a time when the blockchain community is leading growth around Web3 application development and creating new use cases for virtual ecosystems, especially in gaming, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized finance (DeFi). “When development moves at breakneck speed, mistakes happen,” CertiK’s vice president of marketing Monier Jalal explained to Cointelegraph in a written statement. He continued: “With current Web3 development, security most often is an …

In a rare comedic bungle among decentralized finance (DeFi) exploits, an attacker has fumbled their heist at the finish line leaving behind over $1 million in stolen crypto. Just after 8:00 am UTC on Thursday, blockchain security and analytics firm BlockSec shared it had detected an attack on a little-known DeFi lending protocol called Zeed, which styles itself a “decentralized financial integrated ecosystem.” The attacker exploited a vulnerability in the way the protocol distributes rewards, allowing them to mint extra tokens, which were then sold, crashing the price to zero, but netting just over $1 million for the exploiter. Blockchain …