Do Kwon reportedly to be extradited to the United States

December 7, 2023

Do Kwon reportedly to be extradited to the United States

Do Kwon, founder of the collapsed Terra/Luna project, will be extradited from Montenegro to the United States once he's completed his four-month-long jail sentence for document forgery, says the Wall Street Journal. Although a Montenegrin court had already approved his extradition, it left the decision of whether to send him to South Korea or the United States up to Justice Minister Andrej Milovic. Milovic has reportedly privately said he intends to send Kwon to the US.

Kwon filed a last-ditch appeal of the extradition decision on December 6. A decision is scheduled on the matter by December 15. Milovic is unlikely to publicly announce Kwon's extradition destination until then.

Both South Korea and the United States have sought Kwon's extradition on criminal charges related to the Terra/Luna scheme. Federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York indicted Kwon on eight fraud and market manipulation charges in March 2023. He and his company also face a civil lawsuit from the Securities and Exchange Commission.

"Exclusive: Montenegro Plans to Extradite Fallen Crypto Tycoon Do Kwon to U.S.", The Wall Street Journal [archive]

December 5, 2023

The AEUR stablecoin isn't

Chart of the AEUR price in USDT, showing it maintaining its €1 (~$1.08) peg before spiking to over €3, dropping somewhat, and trending back upwards

I don't think "stable"coins are supposed to do that (attribution)

Binance says traders must have missed the memo on the AEUR stablecoin, which was intended to be pegged to the Euro. Shortly after it was listed on Binance, high demand caused the token — which had a limited supply of 5 million — to begin trading for as high as €3 per token. "[U]sers ... might not have realized its standing as a stablecoin" wrote Binance in an announcement, published the day after the exchange suspended trading in the token due to "abnormal volatility".

Binance announced a compensation plan for users who purchased the token during an eligibility period and who were unable to resell, in an apparent attempt to placate the angry traders who accused Binance of "scamming" them by halting trading.

AEUR was issued by Anchored Coins, a Swiss stablecoin issuer.

December 5, 2023

Nostr Assets gets clogged up

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The Nostr Assets bitcoin platform has had to ask people to stop depositing into their platform because it's all clogged up. The project uses the bitcoin Lightning Network, which itself is an attempt to overcome the slowness and high cost of the bitcoin network. However, it too has limited capacity, and Nostr Assets has announced that the "inbound capacity of lightning channels" was depleted.

Meanwhile, the founder of the Nostr social media platform has accused Nostr Assets of being an "affinity scam" by falsely suggesting in their platform name and $NOSTR token naming they are affiliated with the Nostr project. Nostr Assets has described the allegations as "unfounded", saying that their use of the Nostr network means the name is "pertinent", and suggesting that Nostr's founder has no basis to dictate who can use the Nostr name as it is a decentralized and open source project.

"Bitcoin custodian Nostr Assets pauses deposits after reaching 'maximum capacity'", CoinTelegraph [archive]
Tweet by Web3Luke [archive]
Tweet by fiatjaf (in Chinese) [archive]
Tweet thread by NostrAssets [archive]

December 4, 2023

Rob Robb robs victims of $1.2 million

If you're named Rob Robb, do you have any choice but go into a life of thievery?

Robb, also known as "pokerbrat2019", convinced at least 11 people to give him a total of $1.2 million, which he said he would use to develop various MEV bots. Instead of doing so, he pocketed the money, offering a litany of excuses for why the project was continually delayed.

Robb had previously been convicted of a $4 million scam in 2002 after soliciting funds for an online gambling platform, instead using the money to buy a car and fund his own gambling.

Tweet thread by zachxbt [archive]

December 4, 2023

Ethereum projects scramble to address widespread smart contract vulnerability through ThirdWeb

(attribution)

Projects using the suite of pre-built smart contracts from crypto development platform ThirdWeb have been racing to migrate to patched versions as ThirdWeb has disclosed a vulnerability affecting dozens of its contracts. Although they claim no contracts containing the vulnerability have been exploited, they've urged projects using them to urgently migrate to updated versions without the flaw.

Projects relying on these pre-built smart contracts will have to lock the old contract and deploy new ones, then provide new versions of tokens via airdrop or a claim page — a fairly disruptive process.

Major NFT marketplace OpenSea issued a statement that they were working with ThirdWeb about a vulnerability "impacting some NFT collections". Rarible also stated that some NFT collections on their platform were affected, including some on the Polygon sidechain. Coinbase and Base also disclosed that some projects on their platforms were vulnerable. Projects by groups including Cool Cats and Mocaverse will need to be migrated.

December 3, 2023

Users of the Safe Wallet lose cumulative $2 million to address poisoning

Users of the (not so) Safe Wallet have lost $2.05 million altogether in the past week as they've been targeted by an attacker using an address poisoning attack. The same attacker was also behind such an attack on the Florence Finance real-world lending protocol, in which they stole $1.45 million.

According to research group ScamSniffer, the attacker has stolen at least $5 million from at least 21 victims in the past four months.

Twitter thread by ScamSniffer [archive]

November 30, 2023

Florence Finance loses $1.45 million to address poisoning

(attribution)

An apparent address poisoning attack on the Florence Finance real-world asset lending protocol led to the loss of $1.45 million in the USDC stablecoin.

As of December 4, Florence Finance had not publicly acknowledged the theft.

Tweet by PeckShieldAlert [archive]

November 30, 2023

DraftKings was secretly paid to run a Polygon network validator

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In March 2022, Polygon boasted about how "The decision by DraftKings, a NASDAQ-listed company, to take an active role in day-to-day operations of a major network is an important adoption milestone for the blockchain industry." The company had agreed to run a validator on the network, and Polygon claimed in a press release at the time that DraftKings would be "an equal community member" among other validators.

However, it turns out that Polygon allocated tens of millions of tokens to the DraftKings validator — far more than they allocated to other validators — on which DraftKings earned a highly unusual 100% of staking rewards. Polygon also sent the company 2.5 million of their MATIC tokens (priced at just over $1.5 million at the time), and it's unclear if this was a purchase by DraftKings or a transfer as a part of the deal.

In October 2023, Polygon kicked DraftKings off the network as the validator had failed to maintain performance standards. Throughout the period that the DraftKings maintained the validator, they earned millions of dollars through the undisclosed partnership.

"Polygon Gave DraftKings Multimillion-Dollar Edge in Special Staking Relationship", CoinDesk [archive]

November 30, 2023

Crypto media outlet Forkast goes bust

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The crypto media website Forkast has stopped publishing and laid off most of its editorial staff. The last post on the site is from November 22.

After raising $1.7 million in seed funding in 2021, the site seems to have run out of runway. It merged with the CryptoSlam data aggregator in January 2023, but that apparently didn't help it sustain operations. The company appears to be trying to rebrand as "Forkast Labs", and is offering crypto data feeds.

"Forkast lays off majority of editorial staff amid merger with CryptoSlam", The Block [archive]

November 29, 2023

BitStable decides to burn most tokens after public sale goes wrong

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BitStable launched their BSSB token in a public sale only to watch as all tokens sold out in one block. Four entities acquired the majority of the BSSB tokens, an outcome that the team had been hoping to avoid in the interest of "fairness and integrity". As a result, the team announced that they would burn 75% of the tokens.

Some applauded the decision, seeing the token hoarding as an unfair tactic that deprived others who wanted the tokens of their opportunity to buy any. However, some — particularly those who succeeded in buying tokens in the initial sale — worried that they were being "rugged" as the team threatened to destroy their tokens. Others objected based on the "code is law" ethos: "Basically we used ur platform and ur rules - u said ur selling at 500k mcap valuation and now changed it to 3m mcap valuation after it sold out - straight rug material u can't do that lmao", wrote one person on Twitter.

Tweet thread by BitStable [archive]

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