Autor Cointelegraph By Ezra Reguerra

Binance recovers the majority of funds stolen from Curve Finance

Crypto exchange Binance has recovered a big part of the funds from the recent hack that targeted the decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Curve Finance. In a tweet, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao announced that the exchange has frozen and recovered $450,000 of the stolen assets, which is more than 80 percent of the stolen funds. According to Zhao, the hacker tried to send the funds to the exchange in various ways but was detected by Binance. The exchange is currently working to return the funds to their rightful owners. The Curve Finance team detected the hack on Tuesday and alerted their users to refrain from using their website. An hour after the warning, the team announced that it was able to find and resolve the issue. However, the attackers were still able to hijack around $537,000 worth of USD Coin (USDC) before the issue was resolved. According to experts from the blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, a hacker compromised the domain name system (DNS) of Curve Finance, which ended with malicious transactions getting signed. The experts told Cointelegraph that the funds were then sent to various exchanges and crypto mixers in an attempt to hide the trail. In the end, the funds were sent to Binance and were caught by its team. Related: Cross-chains in the crosshairs: Hacks call for better defense mechanismsThis is not the first time this week that the good actors in the crypto community have worked to return stolen funds. On Monday, whitehat hackers and researchers returned an estimated $32.6 million worth of USDC, Tether (USDT) and other altcoins to Nomad, following the recent $190 million exploit. The Curve Finance exploit is only one of the many attacks that happened in 2022. According to analytics firm Chainalysis, $2 billion worth of funds were drained because of cross-chain bridge hacks. This is 69% of the overall stolen amount in the year.

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The Philippines halts virtual asset provider license applications

While many believe that the Philippines can become a new crypto hub, that dream may be shattered in the meantime as the country’s central bank announced a thre-year hiatus from accepting new virtual asset service provider (VASP) applications. According to a memorandum signed by Chuchi Fonacier, a financial supervision official at the Banko Sentral ng Pilipinas (BSP), they aim to balance the promotion of innovation in finance and managing the risks associated with virtual assets (VAs). She wrote: “The Bangko Sentral recognizes that as VAs offer opportunities to promote greater access to financial services at reduced costs, they also pose varied risks that may undermine financial stability.”Because of this, the normal application window for new VASP licenses will be closed for three years, beginning on Sept. 1, 2022. According to Fonacier, this will be subject to change depending on developments in the market. However, applications that have already passed the second stage of the process before Aug. 31, 2022, will continue to the next assessment steps. Despite this, those with incomplete requirements before the set date will be rejected. Meanwhile, entities that are classified as BSP Supervised Financial Institutions are still able to apply for a VASP license if they are rated as stable. Related: Philippine SEC cautions the public not to invest with BinanceBack in June, Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao expressed that the crypto exchange is seeking to get the VASP license from the BSP so that the crypto platform can expand its services in the country. Apart from this, the executive highlighted that they are also looking to get the e-money issuer (EMI) license in the Philippines. In a recent interview with Cointelegraph, Binance’s head of Asia-Pacific, Leon Foong, said that they have already submitted the relevant paperwork to acquire the licenses but cannot provide any other details as they may be confidential. Foong noted that they are optimistic about their entry into the country.

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How do you pick your next NFT? Community responds

Since it may be a good time to buy nonfungible tokens (NFTs) as the floor prices are lower, a Reddit user asked the community what they look for when searching for the next NFTs to add to their collection. In a subreddit, the Redditor has gotten various answers from the community including examining the utilities of the tokens, finding overhyped projects with low minting fees and monitoring data collected by oracles and basing their NFT investing strategy on what they see. According to one Redditor, utility is what they look for when checking NFTs because it goes beyond being a “digital art piece.” In addition to that, they highlighted that the project’s community must also be examined as they “keep the utility alive and interesting.” Another user shared their investment strategy for the short term and for the long term. According to Redditor 4laman, their short-term strategy is to look for overhyped projects with low mint fees. In the long term, they look for projects that are collaborations between big brands. Meanwhile, another NFT collector suggested monitoring real-time NFT data that are collected and provided by oracles. According to the trader, the metrics within the NFT data platforms will be able to help collectors choose how to pick their next NFT. Related: What Ethereum use case can make ETH a $500B market-cap asset? Community answersWhile traders are looking for their next NFTs, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin suggested a “low-tech approach” to making NFT transactions anonymous. Buterin said that smart contracts can add a function that lets senders reveal their addresses only to the receiver of the transaction. Meanwhile, NFT marketplace OpenSea recently introduced an update to its stolen item policy to counter NFT theft. According to the company, it has expanded its use of police reports to verify the authenticity of stolen item reports, preventing the misuse of reporting functions in the marketplace.

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OpenSea introduces new stolen item policy to combat NFT theft

As asset theft remains one of the biggest headaches in the nonfungible token (NFT) space, NFT marketplace OpenSea is making an effort to tailor its policy to incorporate additional measures against stolen items. In an announcement, the firm highlighted that its policies were made considering United States laws, where knowingly allowing the sale of stolen items is prohibited. However, the marketplace admitted that in some cases, buyers who unknowingly bought stolen items were penalized even though they were not at fault. Because of this and the NFT community’s feedback, the marketplace has adjusted its policy to expand the use of police reports. Previously, police reports were used within the platform in escalated disputes. With the new update, they will be used to confirm all stolen item reports within the NFT platform. Without a police report within seven days, the platform will enable the buying and selling of the reported item again to avoid fake reports. Following this, the company has also made efforts to ease the process of re-enabling the buying and selling features once the stolen items are recovered. The NFT platform also highlighted that it’s working to find other solutions to tackle the problem of NFT theft at its roots. According to the announcement, the company is working on automating threat and theft detection.A Twitter user praised the move, describing it as a good first step and encouraged other platforms to follow suit while suggesting the consideration of the nuances of laws from other countries as well. On the other hand, some community members are still disgruntled, taking to Twitter to report their issues. A user wrote: That’s funny because when my NFT was stolen, both Opensea and the NFT Company that created it, pretty much told me to go to hell. What a change in attitude. I guess it only matters when 1000s of people are complaining— CompassionateNFTkidz (@COMPASSIONTENFT) August 11, 2022Meanwhile, another user claimed that they had purchased a stolen NFT unknowingly, and the support staff at OpenSea recommended that the user sell it on another NFT marketplace. Related: Hacker tastes own medicine as community gets back stolen NFTsIn June, the NFT platform enabled additional security features to protect its users from NFT scams. The feature hides NFT transfers that are flagged as suspicious automatically. The goal of this is to ensure that only legitimate transactions are visible in the marketplace.

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CryptoPunk to be split into pieces: Nifty Newsletter, Aug 3–9

In this week’s newsletter, read about Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s proposal for stealth nonfungible token (NFT) ownership. Check out how a CryptoPunk will be split into thousands of pieces to enable smaller investors to access it, and how the NFT play-to-earn game Axie Infinity plans to double down on South Korea despite regulatory hurdles. In other news, learn about how NFT storage works according to two NFT experts. Lastly, check out how a Redditor turned criticisms of the NFT space into NFTs. Vitalik Buterin proposes stealth addresses for anonymous NFT ownershipVitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, proposed what he dubs a “low-tech approach” to adding privacy to NFT transactions. According to Buterin, smart contract wallets can add a method that allows senders to mask their addresses to third parties. In a tweet, Buterin wrote that, for example, one can send an NFT to an address like vitalik.eth without anyone except the new owner being able to see where the NFT was sent. However, with this method, senders need to have enough Ether (ETH) to pay five to 50 times in fees. Continue reading… A slice of the punk: CryptoPunk NFT to be split into thousands of piecesWith NFTs becoming more expensive, fractionalization is becoming a solution that lets smaller investors have a share of popular NFTs like CryptoPunks. Through a new campaign, a Punk’s ownership will be in 56,000 wallet addresses that signed up to get a share. This effort gives NFT users a chance to participate in an NFT collection that was once out of their reach but has now become more affordable through fractionalization. The campaign is facilitated by Unique Network, an NFT infrastructure built on top of Kusama and Polkadot. Continue reading… Axie Infinity looking to ‘double-down’ on the South Korean marketJeffrey Zirlin, co-founder of Sky Mavis — the company behind the NFT play-to-earn game Axie Infinity — spoke to Cointelegraph at the Korea Blockchain Week. He said that despite regulatory hurdles in South Korea, the team is still looking at the region and how the team can tailor the game to serve its players in the area. Zirlin noted that their team wants to “double-down” on the region. He said that as Koreans don’t really speak a lot of English, there are barriers to Korean players getting their hands on the game. Because of this, the Sky Mavis co-founder said the company wants to localize. Continue reading… Nonfungible tokens don’t live on the blockchain, experts sayIn a Cointelegraph interview, NFT experts Jonathan Victor and Alex Salnikov talked about the misconceptions surrounding NFT storage. According to the two, NFTs are not stored on the blockchain but on other decentralized storage platforms, such as the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) and Filecoin. Salnikov explained that because NFTs are a relatively new concept, there are many people who don’t know how NFT storage works. Clarifying the topic, Salnikov said that the NFTs that are in a user’s wallet only point to the file that it represents. The actual file, called the NFT’s metadata, is stored somewhere else, according to the CEO of NFT marketplace Rarible. Continue reading… Worthless JPEGs: Redditor turns NFT criticism into NFTsIn a mission to mock NFT critics, a Reddit user who goes by the name u/busterrulezzz introduced his NFT collection in the r/cryptocurrency subreddit to entertain community members as critics rejoice in the bear market. Compiling a collection dubbed “Worthless JPEGs!,” the Redditor curated quotes from the internet along with lines from prominent critics, such as Warren Buffet, Peter Schiff and Dan Olson, minting their anti-NFT sentiments into NFTs. Continue reading…Thanks for reading this digest of the week’s most notable developments in the NFT space. Come again next Wednesday for more reports and insights into this actively evolving space.

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