Has the Biden Administration Lost the Plot on Crypto Regulation?

While we understand the Biden Administration's approach to crypto regulation is in the process of being defined, we have yet to see any definitive proposals or policy statements that will bring clarity and consistency.

What we have glimpsed through statements by Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Chairman Jerome Powell, and from recent congressional hearings, appears defensive and reactionary. It also appears to be influenced more by recent ransomware attacks, China's policy regarding CBDCs, environmental issues, and El Salvador's adoption of bitcoin as legal tender than any effort to clarify markets and assist the industry's growth. It appears that agencies that are responsible for crypto regulation have shifted to national security concerns instead of competitive markets and products. The lack of progress is disappointing.

Olta Andoni is Chief Legal Officer at Nifty's. Donna Redel is a Professor at Fordham Law and Board Member at NY Angels.

This state of affairs contrasts starkly to the increasing institutional adoption of crypto currency assets, the approval of ETFs by  Canada, Brazil and states in Europe) the movement among states here (especially Wyoming, Texas and New York) to create comprehensive legal frameworks for crypto-digital assets and the widespread crypto ownership by the public.

Furthermore, recent enforcement actions/settlements around 2017 ICOs are not instructive in the current environment where DeFi projects with VC backing operate without apparent regulatory oversight. A recent plenary meeting of selected DeFi projects and regulators happened behind closed doors, giving the public and other projects little guidance. The action brought against Ripple and other associated entities is only in the discovery stage, so it is doubtful that any outcome will occur in 2021 that might provide greater legal clarity. There are no cases likely to lead to judge-made law suggesting when a token is or is not a security, still the number one issue of regulatory confusion among several of them.

Chairman Gensler recently stated "…[t]his (crypto) is quite volatile, one might say a highly volatile asset class, and the investing public would benefit from investor protection on crypto exchanges." The emphasis on a federal framework for exchange regulation is, in our opinion, long overdue as we advocated in our CoinDesk article in response to Peirce's Safe Harbor Proposal 1.0.  But more certainty is needed, whether that certainty is the result of judge-made law, a binding rule promulgated by the SEC or a new law created by Congress.  

The beginning of the Gensler tenure doesn't bode well for the crypto market which is still seeking clarity on existing products, much less an ETF product with as many as nine proposals before the SEC for consideration. ETFs are popular with retail investors who currently have little or no access to regulated bitcoin products, thereby "forcing" them into more risky unregulated altcoin alternatives.

The recent CBDC hearings on Capitol Hill, most notably that of Sen. Warren's subcommittee and the committee of Rep. Maxine Walter , have demonstrated a dual-pronged approach to protect the dollar's hegemony. The committees proposed task forces to study a digital dollar and restrictive crypto regulation aligned with national security and crime concerns. In our opinion, this is the wrong approach because it is based on the lack of understanding of the environmental impact of bitcoin, and underplays the need to move quicker on the adoption of CBDCs to be globally competitive while simultaneously protecting citizen privacy. At the same time, USD CBDC might reduce reliance on stablecoins like tether, which were recently labeled by a federal official as a short-term financial destabilizer.

Russian News Outlet Calls for Crypto Donations as Kremlin Cracks Down on Media

Meduza, one of Russia's leading independent news organizations, called for donations in fiat, bitcoin, ether and BNB after Russian authorities labeled it a "foreign agent" last week.

The label, basically marking Meduza as an "enemy of the state," can hurt its ability to contact sources and report news, the team said in a statement.

"They are trying to kill Meduza," the team said in another editorial statement. "The Ministry of Justice deemed us a 'foreign agent.' As a result, we lost our advertisers. It means that our funds are running out. Right now."

On April 23, the Russian Justice Ministry designated Meduza as a foreign agent, which means the journalists will have to mark every article they write as published by a foreign agent. They will also have to submit detailed financial reports every quarter.

According to the editor-in-chief, Ivan Kolpakov, on Monday many advertisers pulled out. Because of the financial urgency, Meduza launched a fundraiser on Thursday, asking donors to send money via a bank card payment, PayPal or crypto transfers in bitcoin, ether and BNB.

Meduza joins a small number of Russian organizations that accept donations in crypto, including one led by prominent politician Alexey Navalny as well as several human rights-related groups.

Bitcoin for 'enemies of the state'
"If people are afraid to send us money from their bank accounts, and they might well be, they can send us crypto," Kolpakov said, adding:

"The scale of political repression in Russia [is] so large these days that people might be worried about their personal data. People who went to political rallies are getting deanonymized by facial recognition systems and harassed by the police."

Kolpakov added that the list of cryptocurrencies will be expanded. For now, they chose  bitcoin and ether because they are the most popular, and BNB because it has the cheapest transaction fees. The team is also thinking of issuing and selling non-fungible tokens (NFT) to raise funds, Kolpakov said.

"If it was up to me, I would take all the donations in crypto," Kolpakov said. "We believe in crypto and blockchain, we believe it's the future of global finance. Plus, for many years, our readers have been asking for an option to donate crypto."

The donations have been flowing in. In the initial hours following the announcement of the fundraiser, Meduza received dozens of small donations, over 0.29 BTC and 3 ETH in total (or more than $23,800).

Meduza will contest the "foreign agent" status in court but the chances of winning are slim, Kolpakov said. So for now, the team is trying to buy some time and decide what to do next.

"Among other things, we're going to see if we can live off donations," he added.

The black mark
Meduza's troubles are part of a larger trend of recent police actions against journalists in Russia. On April 9, the police raided the apartment of a prominent investigative journalist Roman Anin. On April 17, Anin's colleague, Ekaterina Arenina, was detained after interviewing people for her story about torture in Russian prisons.

Over the past weekend, police also detained several journalists who reported on protest rallies against the imprisonment of the politician Alexey Navalny, who was demanding medical help while in prison. Student magazine editors were placed under house arrest last year.

In December, several individual journalists were branded as foreign agents by the state. Last July, former prominent defense reporter Ivan Safronov went to jail on treason charges.

Meduza is an online news outlet that provides news in Russian and English. It was founded by the core team of another Russian media outlet, Lenta.ru, in 2014, after editor-in-chief Galina Timchenko was fired by the owner for Lenta's coverage of Ukraine's 2014 revolution.

Many journalists left the publication in protest. When Timchenko and two other editors founded Meduza, some of those journalists joined the startup. The team has been operating from an office in Riga, Latvia, which is a short flight from Moscow. Core reporters are still based in Russia.

Meduza has joined the list of designated foreign media agents that includes Voice of America and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty as well as several journalists.

Meduza must now publish a notice of foreign agent status in a larger font than the main text of its articles. This week, Meduza started adding such notices at the top of every article and tweet, typing it in all capital letters on Twitter.

The law on foreign agents was passed in 2012, defining a foreign agent as an organization that is involved in political activities and receiving funding from abroad. However, there was no precise definition of political activity. Currently, 75 nonprofits in Russia, including human rights, election monitoring and educational groups, have this status.

In December, the law was amended so that individuals can also be designated foreign agents. Immediately after that, five journalists and civil rights activists were deemed foreign agents.

"For years, Russian authorities have used the 'foreign agents' law to suppress independent groups," Human Right Watch wrote in 2020. 

As Ether Pushes Ever Higher, Crypto Traders Plot Price in Bitcoin Term

ther (ETH), the native cryptocurrency of the Ethereum blockchain and the second-biggest overall, reached a fresh record high early Wednesday, widening its lead over market leader bitcoin (BTC).

The trend looks set to continue, with ETH/BTC (the ether-bitcoin price ratio) breaking out to a multi-year high in a sign of increased capital flow into ether.

Ether rose to $2,800, surpassing the peak price of $2,762 reached Wednesday, according to CoinDesk 20 data.

The cryptocurrency has rallied by 43% so far this month, decoupling from bitcoin, down 7%. The ETH/BTC ratio has jumped to 2.5-year highs above 0.050, confirming a major bullish breakout on technical charts.

"ETH/BTC has broken out after a multi-year consolidation, and the trend looks very strong," Pankaj Balani, co-founder and CEO of the Singapore-based Delta Exchange, said. "There are no further resistances here, and we expect to see ETH/BTC push through 0.10 eventually."

The implication is the ongoing capital rotation out of bitcoin and into ether is likely to continue over the coming months.

A report earlier this week from digital-asset manager CoinShares showed ether funds and investment products drew $34 million last week, while bitcoin funds lost $21 million.

"The demand is shifting," Meltem Demirors, chief strategy officer at CoinShares, told CNBC earlier this week, adding that capital is moving from one asset to another.

Raoul Pal, CEO and co-founder of Real Vision Group, also foresees continued ether outperformance.

"At this point in the risk cycle, and with Ethereum 2.0 coming (cheaper fees and less supply), I'm struggling to not sell all my BTC and move my entire core position to ETH," Pal tweeted earlier this month. "To be clear – I'm a massive BTC bull, but I think ETH is the better asset allocation for performance right now."

Developers expect the Ethreum 2.0 upgrade or the switch to a proof-of-stake consensus mechanism by the end of this year or early next year. After that, Ethereum founder Vitalik Butrin plans to implement a "sharding" upgrade in a bid to expand Ethereum's capacity to process transactions by splitting its database into 64 mini-blockchains. That may bring down transaction fees, bringing more network activity and stronger demand for ether.

While the path of least resistance for ETH/BTC appears to be on the higher side, it may not be smooth sailing, said Stack Funds' head of research, Lennard Neo.

"The breakout seen on the weekly chart is quite significant as the next resistance dates back to May 2018 at the 0.09 value," Neo said. "ETH/BTC may re-test former hurdle-turned-support at 0.04-0.045 before further gains unfold."

A potential bull market correction in bitcoin, the top cryptocurrency by market value, cannot be ruled out and will likely lead to a temporary pullback in ETH/BTC. That's because a bitcoin drop usually yields bigger drawdowns in ether and other alternative cryptocurrencies.

Bitcoin's bounce from recent lows near $48,000 has stalled near $55,000, and buyers are refusing to step in despite the U.S. Federal Reserve keeping to its pro-easing stance on Wednesday.

The weekly chart MACD histogram, an indicator used to gauge trend strength and trend changes, has crossed below zero, indicating a bearish reversal for the first time since March 2020.

"A break above $60,000 is needed to revive the bullish view," Balani said.

High-level Overview of Lisk Interoperabilit

We already revealed that the Lisk interoperability solution aims to enable general cross-chain messages. In this blog post, we now explain how this is achieved by providing a high-level overview of the Lisk interoperability solution similar to the online presentation given in the "First Glimpse at Lisk Interoperability" at the Lisk Updates from the Lisk Center, Berlin event from November 2020. Moreover, we can now unveil our updated roadmap that contains all the objectives of the blockchain interoperability phase.

Technical Solution
Our interoperability solution is based on the paradigm of cross-chain certification introduced in detail in the previous research blog post "Introduction to Blockchain Interoperability". Basically, cross-chain certification means that information from one chain is submitted to another chain utilizing a signed object called a certificate. Let us see more specifically how this will work in the Lisk ecosystem.

Cross-Chain Update Transactions
We will now consider the simplified case of two interoperable chains, where one is the sending chain and the other one the receiving chain. To send information from the sending chain to the receiving chain, the first step is to include a transaction on the sending chain. This transaction then emits one or more cross-chain messages which carry the relevant information that is supposed to be sent to the receiving chain. The cross-chain messages are then transferred to the receiving chain. However, we do not send a cross-chain message to the receiving chain right after the corresponding transaction was included. Instead, several cross-chain messages, possibly from multiple blocks or even rounds, are collected together and are put into a cross-chain update transaction, which is then posted on the receiving chain. This concept is also illustrated below in Figure 1. Cross-chain update transactions are in fact the main transactions facilitating interoperability in the Lisk ecosystem and our realization of cross-chain certification. Therefore, we also called the general technique "cross-chain update" instead of "cross-chain certification" for simplicity in the online presentation given in the "First Glimpse at Lisk Interoperability".

Cross-chain update transactions
Figure 1: The transactions t1 to t3 are included in the sending chain over the course of some blocks, where each one emits one cross-chain message, denoted by m1, m2, and m3. The cross-chain messages are put into one cross-chain update transaction, denoted by CCU, that is posted and included in the receiving chain.


The Lisk ecosystem will, of course, consist of more than just two chains. Therefore, the solution is also slightly more sophisticated than previously explained. That means, for example, that a cross-chain update transaction may contain several cross-chain messages that target different chains. This will be further explained in the sections below.

Note that there is no rule on how many messages must be collected before a cross-chain update transaction is created or for how many blocks one must collect messages before creating one. There is full flexibility, and any user could create a cross-chain update transaction whenever they want by taking all cross-chain messages that were not put into a cross-chain update transaction before.


Content of Cross-Chain Update Transaction
Cross-chain update transactions consist of the following three major parts:

The cross-chain messages.
A certificate.
Information about the current validator set of the sending chain.
We already described the first part, the cross-chain messages, above.

A certificate is an object containing information from a finalized block header that is signed by a large portion of validators from the sending chain and thus authenticates a finalized state of that chain. An authenticated finalized state is a requirement for accepting cross-chain messages on the receiving chain. That means a cross-chain message is applied on the receiving chain only if it was attested that the corresponding transaction on the sending chain belongs to a finalized state.

With the information about the current validator set of the sending chain, the receiving chain knows which validator set is eligible to sign the next certificate.

Neo N3 Official TestNet Launch

After 5 Preview versions, the first release version of Neo N3 (Neo N3 RC1) has been released on 16th March 2021. The most significant upgrade in this version is the integration of NeoFS system into the Oracle module. Numerous improvements and fixes have also been applied in this version for State Root service, Policy native contract, opcodes and etc.

NGD will perform the Neo N3 RC1 TestNet upgrade from UTC 6:00AM to 9:00AM, 25th March 2021. The TestNet might be temporarily unstable during this period. We are sorry for any inconvenience caused.

The comprehensive list of improvements and optimizations in this version:

NeoFS API Completion & Integration into Oracle
neofs-api-csharp is now completed and has been integrated into the Oracle plugin in this version. The NeoFS master nodes in this TestNet are now Neo-go nodes by NeoSPCC and will operate as a side chain. Neo nodes will interact with them through the NeoFS API. These Go nodes will be fully migrated to corresponding Neo master nodes in a later stage.

State Root Improvements
Since the last release, a number of new features and fixes have been added to the State Root service. A new P2P functionality has been added to include the ExtensiblePayload to send signatures. Many bugs are also fixed, such as fixing a faulty logic where the state root witness could be null, checking the magic before enabling state root console commands, and fixing hash calculation logic and etc.

New Opcodes
Two new opcodes POW and SQRT are added into the Neo contract system, which can be used to calculate the power and square root of a value, respectively. This addition will simplify the smart contracts development experience on Neo. Corresponding logic changes across the neo-core, NeoVM, and .NET devpack were also completed.

Other improvements and optimizations
Introduced the concept of side-chains to allow plugins to load with multiple NeoSystems
Added new interfaces on native contracts to record update history
Adjusted some system call fees to match resource requirement calculations
Separated CpuFee and StorageFee for clearer and more rational fee calculations

GET Protocol — The ticket NFT production line

getNFTs are rolling off the production belt!
After a full year of focusing on testing locally the first getNFT mints have finally hit the public ledger over the last weeks. Over the last 72 hours more than 35 000+ getNFTs have been minted by GETs 'playground' runner.
This runner is only the mocking the back-filling of 120 000 backlogged tickets in our system. The actual back-filling of the tickets will be done if the mocked back-filling is completed.
Isn't minting easy?
It is. However it isn't the mint that we are testing here. The process of minting and back-filling involves far more complex actions as only the minting transaction. Before a mint transaction is sent to the getNFT contract on-chain a lot has happend in the backend of both the ticketeer as well in GETs servers running the getEngine and getCustody. It is these processes that require attention and monitoring. The diagram below gives a rough overview of what is going on behind the scenes.

Diagram showing all the processes that occur for a blockchain transaction to occur. Every new ticket owner is assigned a fresh wallet address on the fly, this address will be the owner of the NFT. After a successful mint the ticketeers backend is provided the location of the NFT. This will allow ticket holders to view their smart ticket 'on chain' in the near future!

Better safe than sorry
The minting process requires several database writes and callbacks to databases of our ticketeer integrators. As the production databases serve thousands of people on a daily basis we need to be certain flusher doesn't disturb stability of these systems. Due to this we need to be very certain that our back-log mints and data-writes do not slow down or cause unexpected errors. So for no issues have been observed — steady as she goes!

Next week we'll start the back-filling the backlogged tickets using the live systems. This will cause the registration of more than 120 000 tickets and 200+ events!

getNFT blockchain privacy
When observing the getNFT ownership one might notice that each wallet at most owns 1 getNFT. This isn't because all the ticket holders don't have any friends or because they are overly compliant to covid laws. In the getNFT system each ticket lives on its own fresh wallet.

1 wallet, 1 NFT — it is only fair.
To ensure privacy getNFT does not recycle wallet addresses — ever. Meaning: 1 ticket — 1 owner — 1 wallet. Always.
If a user buys 5 tickets, these will be registered to 5 wallet addresses with 1 getNFTs each . Even though these wallets 'belong to each other' as they are seeded from a HD wallet — for an outsider observing the blockchain this connection can't be made (mathematically impossible to do so).
This means that for an outsider it is impossible to identify a user based on the amount of tickets owned — as this can be an identifying factor (one of many). No data is leaked — at all, at any times. There is no way a person can be DOXed — even if external data is included (like Facebook attendance data).

Privacy first
Privacy is a serious matter. The fact that with a blockchain all records are public domain and cannot be deleted on request makes it even more persistent. For example we would be technically unable to comply with a GDPR right to be forgotten request without lobbying for an Ethereum hardfork.

Transparency as a service — getScanner API
In the previous blog I shared some details on how anybody (with knowledge of blockchain explorers) is able to query the getNFT smart contract to get to know more about a certain event or particular tickets. Surely copying hashes in a clunky smart contract interfaces isn't how we envision the future of ticketing to be experienced.
Our growing blockchain team is working on a kick-ass ticket explorer. However, we do not want us to be the only ones serving up the blockchain data. One of the reasons the blockchain space is so vibrant and innovation is so fast paces — is due to the fact that all data and tools are accessible for anyone, anywhere without consent. Allowing anybody to build on the GET Protocol is one of our key objectives. Open sourcing the code base is only part of the solution. Ensuring that the ticket/NFT data is easily queried is maybe even more pressing.

Those wanting to use our getNFT assets or registered event data in their own app or site should not have to study the Solidity ABIs. Requesting data about a ticket should be as easy as doing an API call. This is why we are offering an (open sourced) node repo called getScan. The diagram shows the pivotal role these nodes will play in tying everything together.
Some example queries:
Fetching event data
Fetching ticket owner data.
Fetching ticketeer data.

We expect to publish the full documentation for using the getScan API next week!

V4 of getNFT contracts
A key point of using a blockchain as data-storage mechanism is that the data is immutably registered. No do-overs, no edits, no censorship. This 'blockchain feat' is pivotal in solving the inefficiencies in the ticketing sector — as these are caused fundamentally by distrust. This immutability does pose challenges from the continues development side of things.

Upgrading the immutable

With blockchain data written is immutably stored. Data can technically be deleted, but it will remain possible to lookup what its previous state was. The code writing the data is also persistent(by default). As GET is constantly improving and adding new features this immutability poses a challenge if one wants to incrementally improvement and add features.
When using the default smart contract deployment process, every change to smart contract code would result in a completely new smart contract address for getNFTs. Causing a wild growth in getNFT contracts. Surely this isn't viable — luckily there are several Solidity design patterns that allow developers to upgrade contracts while keeping persistent storage.
After a long period of research and testing we completed a up-gradable version of our getNFT Factory contract as well as the event metadata contracts. A diagram showing the architecture of our approach is shown below.

Cryptocurrency Adoption Passes Another Milestone Surpassing 100 Million Users

According to a new study conducted by Crypto.com, the total number of global cryptocurrency users has surpassed 100 million for the first time ever. The study, which measured the cryptocurrency marketplace's size using onchain metrics, survey analysis, and internal data, recorded 106 million cryptocurrency users in January 2021.

Compared to December 2020, the 106 million users represent a 15.7% increase in just one month. What's fueling the growth of the crypto market? According to Crypto.com's research, it comes down to bitcoin adoption momentum.

Eric Anziani, Crypto.com COO had this to say to Bitcoin.com regarding the research's findings:

Our study improves upon previously used methods to find a clear trend of growing cryptocurrency ownership. As more companies and merchants adopt cryptocurrencies as a treasury asset and means of payment, we expect 2021 to be a banner year for crypto mass adoption, bringing us ever closer to our vision of 'Cryptocurrency in Every Wallet'.

Bitcoin smashed through its previous all-time high, pushing its market capitalization past $1 trillion. The growth shows no apparent signs of slowing down either as sentiment around cryptocurrency increases, especially as JP Morgan and BNY Mellon will start offering digital payment methods. Not even two full months into the year yet, investors are piling 10-digit figures into bitcoin. Tesla bought $1.5 billion of bitcoin at the beginning of February, and investment website Motley Fool announced a $5 million investment just a week later.

Bitcoin isn't the only thing that's fueling the demand for cryptocurrency. Several other factors are at play too. Crypto.com's research attributes this rapid ascent to the growth of the decentralized finance (defi) market, the ability to buy, sell, and hold cryptocurrency through Paypal, and the institutional adoption of cryptocurrency are attracting new crypto users every day.

Defi Momentum is Growing
The defi market's momentum is significant given the increased demand for ethereum and other altcoins like Binance's BNB. The total market capitalization of coins locked in defi has grown from $690 million to over $11.7 billion, a significant number that's encouraging new investors to enter the market.

According to Crypto.com's research, ETH's growth rate was higher than BTC in November and December 2020; BTC's unique users grew by 1.5% in November compared to ETH's 2.8% growth. In December, ETH's change was nearly double that of BTC's: 2.8% compared to 1.2%.

How accurate are all of these numbers? A total number of 24 exchanges were included in the research, and while Crypto.com has updated and improved its methodology since its last report, it does admit these figures may be subject to some small caveats.

MoneyGram suspends Ripple relationship over SEC lawsuit

MoneyGram has suspended its relationship with Ripple Labs, citing the legal uncertainty surrounding the company. In its latest earnings report, the Dallas, Texas-based firm said it would no longer be using Ripple's XRP remittance solution until the payments firm sorts out its legal issues with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

MoneyGram partnered with Ripple in January 2018, becoming one of the first payments service providers to pilot Ripple's xRapid solution. xRapid allows companies to transfer funds across borders using XRP without the need for pre-funded nostro accounts.

Three years later, MoneyGram has suspended the service. In its 2020 financial results report, the company stated:

"In addition, the Company is not planning for any benefit from Ripple market development fees in the first quarter. Due to the uncertainty concerning their ongoing litigation with the SEC, the Company has suspended trading on Ripple's platform. In the first quarter of 2020, the Company realized a net expense benefit of $12.1 million from Ripple market development fees."

The relationship has been benefitting MoneyGram, with Ripple paying the company to use the XRP token. In Q4 2020, Ripple paid MoneyGram $9.2 million for "market development fees." Altogether, in 2019 and 2020, MoneyGram received $61.5 million from Ripple to continue using XRP.

MoneyGram becomes the latest company to drop Ripple's services following its lawsuit by the SEC. The regulator filed the charges in December, accusing Ripple of selling unregistered securities. Ripple has fought the charges, but this has done little for its clients as well as exchanges which have delisted it in their numbers.

In response to MoneyGram's revelation, Ripple issued a statement claiming the suspension was just temporary. The multi-year contract the two firms signed extends beyond MoneyGram's use of xRapid, Ripple stated.

It added, "We look forward to finding a path forward with MoneyGram and have confidence that there will be more regulatory clarity in the U.S. for the use of digital assets and blockchain technology at the end of this lawsuit – both of which MoneyGram has commented on publicly in the past about the benefits they have witnessed firsthand for their business."

Ripple and the SEC revealed in a recent discovery letter that a settlement is unlikely before the trial. The SEC revealed that Ripple had engaged in settlement talks, but the officials who had been involved had vacated their positions as the Biden administration took over.

Blockchain and Smart Contract Developer Waves Confirms Odyssey Hackathon was Held Online this Year, Shares Other End of Year Updates

Vladimir Zhuravlev, a Gravity Tech and Waves Association developer, notes that for several years, the Odyssey hackathon (held in the Netherlands) had offered opportunities for software engineers to collaborate on various projects.

Zhuravlev revealed that this year, Odyssey was hosted online for the very time (due to COVID). The event's team tried to ensure that the hackathon would be a unique experience for all participants. They introduced a 3D online arena that connected all 105 teams, jedis and challenge hosts in one virtual space, Zhuravlev noted.

He added:
"The Waves Association was honored to participate in the event in several aspects. First, the Waves protocol was suggested as a building block with support from Waves Jedis: Rob van de Camp and Inal Kardanov. Second, the Waves platform was used for issuing awards to winning teams. Non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for digital art were created on Waves and sent to participants as a special prize."

The Waves team took part in the hackathon as one of the 105 competing squads, Zhuravlev  confirmed. He also mentioned that the challenge that the team attempted to solve was provided by the Dutch police: Inclusive Safety Communities that "coordinate citizens in emergency situations." (Note: for more details on this update, check here.)

Waves has also teamed up with UNION for asset protection.

UNION will be providing its collateral protection product to various lending protocols that use Waves' Neutrino USD (USDN) and smart contract protection to the inter-chain communication protocol Gravity.

John Liu, CPO of UNION, stated:
"Waves' complete decentralized finance (DeFi) solution with a broad market reach is the perfect platform for building UNION's complete DeFi protection. We look forward to advancing the industry together in 2021 with an inclusive, safe, and accessible portal."

Sten Laureyssens, Strategic Advisor for the Waves Association, remarked:

"The [steady] growth of USDN allowed us to identify demand for advanced risk management and asset protection products. UNION's mission to offer full-stack DeFi protection that decreases the barrier to entry for retail, while advanced enough for institutional investors, is accurately aligned with our approach. As we step into 2021, our integration through Gravity will be a vital-for-growth milestone to reduce multi-layered risks in our ecosystem."

UNION and Waves will work on liquidity provision programs such as the UNN/USDN liquidity pool on Uniswap, a UNN/USDN pair on Waves.Exchange, along with support for the UNN/USDN pair on UNION's Geyser liquidity pool.

Additionally, UNION will be used in Waves' products based on the lending model. For example, users of these products will be asked to choose over-collateralization protection (OC) for "a premium." As noted in the announcement, "in the case of a liquidation trigger, should the OC ratio fall below a specific threshold, the UNN protection product will be called to fill the portion of the OC protected while the borrower pays the remaining difference."

UNION will also be working closely with Waves on issuing a smart contract protection instrument for Gravity early next year. The product will aim to offer additional security to the technology, "ruling out human factors, such as node collusion." Gravity currently utilizes "mathematically proven multi-party computation (MPC) security for its assets held in decentralized custody." UNION will offer "an additional protection layer for users of Gravity's cross-chain system," the announcement confirmed.

Deposits via Gravity, USDN-related (decentralized applications) dApps or future Waves lending protocols will "initiate a prompt to add a specific protection product for a premium or forgo the protection before finalizing the deposit." UNION will "render an intuitive integration and UI for the product, simplifying the asset protection process for Waves users," the announcement noted.

UNION is a full-stack protection platform that aims to lower costs and risks in DeFi by offering a modular infrastructure for the development of advanced coverage products and risk management tools.

As noted in a blog post by Waves Protocol:
"UNION's platform enables the creation of asset protection products based on organic market demand, ranging from discretionary smart contract coverage to complex derivatives on credit default risks and coverage for impermanent loss of liquidity providers. UNION's platform is composable and decentralized, offering secondary markets for protection and an inclusive no-KYC ecosystem."

Story from Markets After GME, Dogecoin and Bitcoin, Chinese Traders Are Betting What Will Pump Next

Rallies in GameStock (NYSE: GME) shares as well as dogecoin (DOGE) and bitcoin (BTC) are piquing the betting interest of traders in China as much as they are in the United States.

On Weibo, the popular social media platform in China, the highly active crypto community is speculating on which cryptocurrency will be next to get a major pump after dogecoin and bitcoin jumped in recent days.

"Were it not that Ripple was struggling with its lawsuit, the next token being pumped by the retailers in the U.S. could have been XRP," according to one Weibo account holder with nearly 40,000 followers. "Many newcomers to crypto only look at prices and names, and they do not care how many times this particular token has taken away people's money or whether it is highly centralized."

XRP Token Plunges Nearly 40% Following the Announcement of SEC Charges Against Ripple

Ripple's XRP has lost almost 40% of its value after the token price dropped from $0.51 on December 21 to $0.31 at the time of writing. The token's plunge appears to be the result of legal proceedings initiated against Ripple by the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). At the time of writing, the fourth-ranked crypto token had seen traded volumes of $4.85 billion recorded in 24 hours.

$1.3 Billion Lawsuit
As data on markets.Bitcoin.com suggests, the sell-off of the XRP token appears to have been sparked by Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse's warning that the SEC was about to launch legal proceedings against the company. A day later, the SEC announced the $1.3 billion legal action against Ripple and two of its executives for allegedly conducting an unregistered security offering.

Meanwhile, as the XRP token continues to plummet, an angry Garlinghouse has accused the US regulator of being biased against Ripple while appearing to give a free pass to BTC and ETH. In its determination, the SEC says the XRP is a security and therefore is subject to the dictates of the US Securities Act. Garlinghouse, who has previously threatened to exit the United States due to its regulatory approach, rejects the characterization of XRP as a security.

In his many very public attempts to push back against the SEC, Garlinghouse says the XRP token is a fully functional currency that offers a better alternative. He adds that alongside bitcoin and ether, "the two Chinese controlled virtual currencies" according to the company, XRP ranks as one of the most capitalized cryptos.

Crypto Community Reacts
However, the latter comment appears to have prompted a swift response by some bitcoiners and the ETH creator Vitalik Buterin. In his tweet, Buterin accuses Garlinghouse and his team of "sinking to new levels of strangeness." The ETH creator adds:
They're claiming that their shitcoin should not be called a security for *public policy reasons*, namely because Bitcoin and Ethereum are 'Chinese-controlled.'

Also weighing in on the controversy is Mike Novogratz, the CEO of Galaxy who says he "finds it strange that Clayton waited years to do this."

On the other hand, Ryan Selkis thinks the SEC is going to lose this case because it is "outclassed on legal." He adds that the classification of XRP as a security "further hurts the U.S. businesses while global companies will continue to make these markets."

Meanwhile, at the time of writing reports emerged that the Hong Kong trading platform OSL had suspended XRP services as a result of the SEC lawsuit.

Recent SolarWinds security breach may be greater threat to humanity than COVID-19

It is likely that the recent SolarWinds hack will become known as the worst cybersecurity breach in United States history—affecting the most sensitive government networks and critical U.S. infrastructure, including top agencies and thousands of the biggest international brands.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Since at least March 2020, an unknown hacking entity had gained access through an unsecured update server of a monitoring and management software made by SolarWinds called Orion IT. This allowed the attackers to gain access to any of the SolarWinds clients connected through the popular monitoring tool—including the National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile.

Believe it or not, it is a familiar story, one that is all too common during this tumultuous past year of pandemic lockdowns and our heavy reliance of the internet. A year that has introduced new vernacular into our vocabulary such as zoom bombings, spearfishing and clickjacking.

Year-over-year, cybersecurity budgets and spending continue to increase for both the private and public sectors. According to Gartner, Information security spending is expected to grow 2.4% to reach $123.8 billion in 2020.

Technology manufacturers and service providers have also responded with new security-featured hardware and software offerings—yet these "upgrades" do not seem too capable to impede the frequency or success of the cyber-attacks.

The truth is that 90% of all cyber-attacks are the result of human error—whether it is visiting the wrong website, trusting the wrong email, using weak authentication, ignoring updates, misconfigurations, and patches. When someone gains unauthorized access to a network, it is typically through a human-made mistake.

But can the human element of data-security be mitigated to help prevent mistakes and outside interference from occurring in the future?

Enter blockchain

Up until early 2020, the "blockchain as a solution" answer to many of today's data challenges had been an unrealized promise. Issues with scalability, misunderstandings about privacy, high transaction fees, lack of interoperability and an ever-changing ruleset by tinkering blockchain developers who are prone to disagree about how to overcome the challenges has prevented any significant adoption or global standardized protocol.

On a broad development level, there have been many great ideas on how to solve today's cybersecurity flaws with blockchain, including focused efforts on mitigating the human element and reliance on centralized third-part certificate authorities.

Some of these efforts utilizing blockchain technology for cybersecurity solutions include:

Secure Private Messaging
Improved IoT and Edge Device Security
Boosting or even replacing current PKI
Reducing DDoS attacks
Decentralized and Encrypted Storage
Provenance of Software
Verification of Cyber-Physical Infrastructures
Data Transmission
Unfortunately, all of these semi-matured efforts are currently left without any real ability to scale and meet the demands and needs of today's enterprise cybersecurity applications—they are just too expensive and inefficient to implement due to the blockchains they have been built on.

The good news is that recent innovative scaling breakthroughs in the original Bitcoin protocol is making these solutions possible today!

In February of 2020, the Bitcoin SV (BSV) blockchain activated the Genesis update which ushered in the return to the original, limitless, unbounded Bitcoin Satoshi Vision.

It is now entirely possible to take on these cybersecurity challenges with the BSV blockchain.

Back to SolarWinds

As I previously mentioned, SolarWinds used a compromised open-source library that allowed hackers to imprint and access "God-View" privileges into any of the client networks that downloaded the standard security update of Orion monitoring software.

As unsuspecting customers installed the update and malicious payload, their network opened the door to further undetected compromise and unauthorized surveillance—for months. The damage may not have stopped there, any other unsecured outside networks that an infected company was connected to such as vendors or partners could also possibly be compromised.

Worse yet, further malicious time-based payloads could have been deployed and be dormant in all of these infected systems—even after a thorough "clean up."

The total cost and consequences of this specific hack is completely unknown and to be quite honest, unfathomable—but it will certainly be considered the most expensive cyber-incident in global history.