Solana wallets targeted in latest multimillion dollar hack

AlexH

Users report that the Solana ecosystem is being exploited by crypto. They claim that their funds were taken from their trusty, internet-connected “hot” wallets, including Slope, Phantom, and TrustWallet.

According to OtterSec, the attack is ongoing and more than 8,000 wallets have been compromised so far. Numerous Solana addresses were linked to the attack, where those wallets accumulated at least $5 million worth SOL, SPL and other Solana tokens from unsuspecting customers.

Although the exact cause of Tuesday night’s attack was not known, it seems to have primarily affected mobile wallet users. The attacker was able to sign (ie. The attacker was able to initiate and approve transactions on behalf of the users. This suggests that a trusted third party service might have been compromised during a supply chain attack.

“We are evaluating the incident impacting Solana wallets and are working closely with other teams in the ecosystem to get to the bottom of this. We will issue an update once we gather more information,” a representative of Phantom, the largest Solana hot wallet, told CoinDesk in a statement. “The team doesn’t believe this is a Phantom-specific issue at this time.”

At this time, it is not clear if the vulnerability is restricted to the Solana Blockchain. TrustWallet and Slope users reported that they lost USDC on Ethereum and Solana.

Solana – fifth largest blockchain by total value locked according to DefiLlama – has seen a rise in popularity over the last year due to its fast transactions and low fees. The native token SOL dropped 4% within hours of the attack.

Hong Kong is ranked as the most crypto-friendly country in 2022

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The readiness of a country was determined by the number and proportionality of crypto ATMs to its population and geographic size, and the number and percentage of blockchain startups per 100,000 people.

Public acceptance is still key to crypto’s existence. However, governments must establish a support infrastructure to match the needs of the technology.

A country’s readiness for cryptocurrency adoption is determined by factors such as crypto ATM installation, pro-crypto regulations and startup culture. A Forex Suggest study found that Hong Kong was the most prepared country for widespread adoption of cryptocurrency, scoring 8.6. The United States and Switzerland have higher crypto-readiness scores than the island nation.

In order to determine a country’s readiness, the largest factors were the number and geographic size of crypto ATM installations and the number and percentage of blockchain startups per 100,000 people. Hong Kong’s small land mass was a major factor in Hong Kong’s ranking.

CoinATMRadar data indicates that 88% of global crypto ATM installations are located in the United States. Hong Kong, however, installed only 0.4% of all crypto ATMs worldwide. Because Hong Kong is a smaller region, residents can reach a crypto ATM within 4.3 miles (7 km) of their home.

The U.S., on the other hand has crypto ATMs installed every 168.3 mi (271 km).

The biggest barrier to mainstream adoption of crypto is crypto taxes. The top five countries with the lowest crypto capital gains taxes are Hong Kong, Turkey, Panama, Portugal and Panama.

Investor sentiment is a key factor in a country’s efforts at growing its crypto infrastructure. Investors from large economies such as Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom show the greatest interest in cryptocurrency, which signals healthy pro-crypto competition throughout the world.

Solana goes dark for 7 hours as Bots Swarm the ‘Candy Machine NFT Minting Instrument

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Solana stakeholders raced to fix the network Saturday night, after an “insane amount” of data flooded the proof of-stake chain, killing validators and grinding down production.

Bots had attacked the Candy Machine, a popular non-fungible token (NFT), minting tool. They created an unprecedented tsunami of traffic with four million transactions requests every second and 100 gigabits per second. This was a new record for the network according to one Solana Foundation representative.

This swarm drove validators from consensus for reasons that are not yet known. At 4:32 p.m., block production was impossible and the network went dark. ET. At 11:59 p.m. ET: The cluster was restarted at slot 131973970 by validators (coordinating through Solana’s Discord channels, and a Google Doc created in part by one of the validators).

Anatoly Yakovenko was the co-founder of validator. He claimed he was travelling during the fracas and credited them with leading the mainnet recovery. On Saturday, he was criticized on Twitter for being “MIA” in a network crisis.

Saturday’s hard reboot did not result in new-and-improved codes populating across the validators, unlike last September’s 17 hour outage. It simply picked up the network’s seven-hour-old failure.

Validators debated whether to temporarily block Candy Machine transactions while they prepared for the restart. Discord members debated whether such a move was censorship. It would not be effective if only two-thirds validators agreed to it. On Saturday night, few were able to opt in.

Others quickly moved to strengthen their defenses. At 11:36 p.m. ET: Metaplex, the key steward for Solana NFT infrastructure, and one closely connected with Candy Machine, tweeted that it would soon implement a 0.01 SOL “botting penal” to help NFT projects stop excessive traffic.

Solana ecosystem services such as Phantom wallet and Mango Markets, a decentralized exchange, struggled to hold up after the RPC node providers returned online.

SOL markets suffered a brief but severe drawdown due to the outage. CoinGecko reports that Solana’s native currency fell to $83.13 at the end of the outage. It then recovered to $89 around three hours later.

CoinDesk was told by a member that Solana core developers are still trying to figure out what happened Saturday and how the apparent botting attack overcame existing safeguards.

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Twitter Stock Rises 25% after Musk Purchases 9.2%, Dogecoin also jumps up!

AlexH

According to a recent filing with SEC, Elon Musk acquired more than 70,000,000 Twitter shares.

Twitter shares’ pre-market price soared by double-digits after news broke that Tesla’s CEO had purchased a 9.2% passive share in the social media platform. Dogecoin’s value also rose after the news was announced.

According to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission Elon Musk had taken a 9.2% passive share in Twitter as of March 14th. This stake was valued at nearly $3 billion before the news broke.

This means that he now has 73,486,936 shares in the social media giant. TWTR’s pre-market price jumped 25% from $39.31 (close on Friday) to almost $50 after this news broke.

Musk criticised Twitter’s lack of transparency and freedom to speech on March 26, which was after he purchased shares. Musk also tried to build a new platform at the time.

The price of Dogecoin felt the same effects as almost everything else that is even remotely related to Elon Musk.

Dogecoin was trading at $0.14, before jumping by almost $0.16 intraday shortly after the news broke.

Ted Cruz introduces companion bill to Emmer’s bill to exempt Fed retail CBDC digital currency issues

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Cruz supports a bill to keep the U.S. from “an insidious course akin to China”

Exas Senator Ted Cruz presented companion legislation to the U.S. Senate Wednesday for Minnesota Rep. Tom Emmer’s bill prohibiting Federal Reserve from issuing central banks digital currency directly to individuals. Emmer announced. January 18th was the date Emmer introduced his House bill. Cruz, a fellow Republican, introduced the House bill Jan. 18. This could speed up or slow down the bill’s passage by allowing it to be considered simultaneously in both chambers.

According to Emmer, who is co-chair of Congressional Blockchain Caucus’, his bill was motivated by concerns that a retail CBDC forcing consumers to open accounts at the Federal Reserve Bank could be used “as a surveillance tool that Americans shouldn’t tolerate from their own governments,” according to the lawmaker. Emmer stated in January that

He stated that centralizing financial information of consumers would lead to security problems.

Individual accounts cannot be opened by the Fed. In January, the Fed released an analysis paper on CBDC that detailed the disclosure issues and highlighted the need for privacy to be balanced with transparency to prevent criminal activity. According to the paper, the best form of U.S. CBDC was intermediated. This means that “the private sector would offer digital wallets or accounts to facilitate the management and payment of CBDC holdings.”

It would be possible to create a CBDC through intermediation without having to change the Fed’s authority. It would also transfer responsibility for identity verification (another essential CBDC quality) to a private financial services provider. According to the Fed paper, “The Federal Reserve doesn’t intend to issue a CBDC without clear support by the executive branch and Congress, ideally in form of a specific authorizing legislation.”

Cruz’s bill is a follow-up to Monday’s Democratic proposal in Congress to create an electronic dollar that’s not based upon blockchain technology. It would be issued instead by the Fed Treasury Department. This electronic currency would not be account-based but device-based.

Analysts predict another rally in altcoins, as Solana continues to rise in price

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The price of Solana has risen 11% in the last week, as the altcoin rebounded from its recent price drop. Investors are now embracing a bullish narrative because of Solana’s recent updates and partnerships.

The price of Solana could rise to $100

The price of Solana continued to rise as altcoins remained above $100. Analysts have observed a bullish momentum within the Ethereum killer. Solana has posted double digit gains.

The community is optimistic about the Solana price rise following the announcement of its partnership to South Korean gaming giant. Investors have been encouraged by the Solana ecosystem’s latest developments.

Solana has announced the launch of the “Solana Miami” event. This event invites the developer community, which will be held on April 5, to get involved in the altcoin network. Hacker House is part of Solana Miami. It allows Solana’s developer community to create offline applications with guidance from an on-the-ground expert.

Free admission is available to artists and merchants from Miami to exhibit their work to Solana.

Analysts evaluated the Solana price trends and predicted that the altcoin would continue its upward trend, at least $100 above. @TraderKoz thinks the Solana price trend is solid. The analyst is bullish about the Ethereum-killer