The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit technology consortium that supports the Linux operating system, is backing a new blockchain-based project for the insurance industry. On Monday, the foundation announced the launch of the Open Insurance Data Link platform, a project that aims to reduce the cost of insurance reporting and create a standardized insurance data repository using distributed ledger technology. OpenIDL is a joint initiative of the Linux Foundation and the American Association of Insurance Services, a national insurance advisory organization in the United States. The open-source project brings together major global insurance firms like The Hanover and Selective Insurance Group, …

The Oasis Foundation, an offshoot of Oasis Network developers Oasis Labs, announced in a blog post on Friday that decentralized finance (DeFi) insurance and coverage provider Tidal Finance will be implementing a version of their platform on the Oasis Network. The blog post noted that insurance will be important for users of the platform as Oasis scales its DeFi offerings, and that by working with Oasis’ “confidential smart contracts” Tidal will be able to deploy new claims methods, such as “anonymous, democratized voting” that preserves voters and user privacy. The move mirrors similar ones being made in Ethereum’s DeFi ecosystem, …

New York Digital Investment Group announced the completion of a growth capital funding round as well as the launch of a business initiative relating to Bitcoin. In an announcement today, the New York Digital Investment Group, or NYDIG, said it had secured $100 million in funding from major insurance providers including Starr Insurance, Liberty Mutual Insurance, and others in addition to its existing strategic partners, New York Life and MassMutual. A provider of Bitcoin-related technology and investment services, NYDIG also said it would be launching “Bitcoin-powered solutions for U.S.-based life insurance and annuity providers.” This comes as the firm announced …

Chinese holding conglomerate Ping An Group filed the largest number of blockchain-related patents in 2020, according to a new report. Intellectual property-focused magazine Intellectual Asset Management has released a report on the rankings of the world’s foremost blockchain patentees. Based on data from the Derwent World Patents Index, the rankings show that Ping An filed 1,215 blockchain patent families in 2020, more than Tencent and Ant Group combined. Owning a total of 1,749 blockchain patent families, Ping An sharply increased its number of patent applications in 2020, up from just 291 in 2019. Based in Shenzhen, Ping An operates a …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols Yearn Finance and Cover have announced today the end of a protocol merger process initiated in November last year. The two protocols were initially linked during a spree of a half-dozen Yearn acquisitions, mergers, or collaborations, the exact term depending on the project. The split comes as a surprise to many, given that Cover, a protocol that provides coverage or insurance for DeFi deposits, was a natural fit for yield vault provider Yearn. The teams had also collaborated in crisis situations in the past, such as when Cover experienced an “infinite mint” hack in late December …

Unslashed Finance, a decentralized insurance protocol built on Ethereum, has raised $2 million to fund its tokenized insurance product, highlighting another positive use case for blockchain technology. The funding round, which was led by Lemniscap, P2P Capital and other investors, will aid Unslashed Finance in expanding its decentralized insurance protocol for crypto assets. The protocol works by connecting people willing to buy insurance for their assets and investors seeking to earn an uncorrelated yield. Unslashed claims that its protocol enables “almost instant liquidity to insurance buyers and risk underwriters,” as well as constant collateralization. By tokenizing coverage, the platform allows …

As new institutional and retail investors enter the cryptocurrency space on a daily basis, large-cap top performers like Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) attract the lion's share of investor's attention as they are the well-known 'secure' blockchain projects. Once these new investors get a taste of the mainstay cryptocurrencies and how to navigate the volatile markets, their attention soon turns to smaller cap coins as they search for the up-and-coming projects that could be the next big thing. Currently, CoinMarketCap shows that there are 8,475 tokens and more are added daily. This makes it difficult to keep up with the …

A whitehat hacker has seen what was already one of the largest smart contract-related bug bounties ever awarded more than double, after the ARMOR token price pumped following the announcement of his reward. On Feb. 3 ArmorFi announced that Alexander Schlindwein of Idea Markets had identified a critical bug in its smart contracts before the insurance brokerage platform went live. If left unpatched, the bug would have allowed a bad actor with just one dollar of coverage to drain the entirety of funds from ArmorFi’s underwriting contract. Schlindwein was awarded 1 million Armor tokens, worth about $700,000 at the time …

Decentralized finance coverage protocol Nexus Mutual has expanded the list of centralized exchanges eligible for incident protection. Users trading on Binance, Kraken, Coinbase and Gemini are now able to buy protection in the event of an exchange hack or prolonged withdrawal downtime. The project announced the new integrations on Monday as part of their “custody cover” initiative. Users who buy coverage will be eligible for compensation if the custodian is hacked and the user loses more than 10% of their funds. Alternatively, the claim can be honored if the custodian suspends withdrawals for more than 90 days. The program was …

In a largely celebratory community call devoted in part to commemorating lending protocol Aave’s January 8th “Aaveversary” — a full year of Aave on Ethereum mainnet — there was also a look into Aave’s possible future: a proposal from Delphi Digital seeking to fundamentally alter Aave’s Safety Module and create a new insurance product offering. Currently, $aave governance token holders can stake their tokens in the Safety Module, a pool of liquidity designed to help insure the protocol against a “shortfall event” such as a smart contract exploit. Stakers risk up to 30% of funds they lock in the Module, …

Bitcoin’s (BTC) price has risen dramatically over the past days and weeks, recently wheeling past $40,000. An asset largely untied to governmental authority, Bitcoin is a hedge against global uncertainty, according to venture capitalist and billionaire Chamath Palihapitiya. Citing a possible five or 10-year time horizon, Palihapitiya said he thinks Bitcoin will likely reach $200,000 at some point. “The reason is because, everytime you see all of this stuff happening, it just reminds you that wow our leaders are not as trustworthy and reliable as they used to be,” he told CNBC in an interview on Thursday. He added: “So …

Chainlink co-founder Sergey Nazarov believes that increasing the decentralization and scalability of oracle technologies are key to ensure trust in the DeFi ecosystem. Oracles play a key role in the correct functioning of DeFI protocols by connecting them to real-world data. However, the trustworthiness of oracles becomes compromised in instances where they rely on a single data source to retrieve information. For instance, according to Nazarov, excessively centralized oracles enabled five recent flash loan attacks, which resulted in DeFi protocols losing around $40 million. Flash loans, a form of loan that does not require any collateral, can be used to …