Osmosis, a decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Cosmos network, was halted just before 3:00 am EST on Wednesday after attackers exploited a liquidity provider (LP) bug to the tune of roughly $5 million. The bug was first identified in a Reddit post on the official Cosmos Network page. The user, Straight-Hat3855, brought attention to a “serious problem” with Osmosis (OSMO) that allowed users to arbitrarily grow LPs by 50% simply by adding and removing liquidity. The Reddit post was quickly removed, but not before malicious actors took advantage of the bug, which saw approximately $5 million removed from liquidity …

The Maiar Exchange, a decentralized exchange (DEX) native to the Elrond blockchain, has been temporarily taken offline after an attacker utilized an exploit and made off with roughly $113 million worth of Elrond eGold (EGLD). Minutes before 12:00 am UTC on Monday, the co-founder and CEO of Elrond, Beniamin Mincu, tweeted that he and his team were “investigating a set of suspicious activities” on the Maiar decentralized cryptocurrency exchange. Soon after, the DEX was taken offline, with Mincu reporting that the issue had been identified and an “emergency fix” was being implemented. In a Twitter thread posted almost 24 hours …

May was an incredibly challenging month for the cryptocurrency market as the majority of tokens booked heavy losses as a bear market was confirmed, but not every project dropped back to pre-bull market lows. Chain (XCN), a protocol designed to help organizations launch their own blockchain network or connect with other more established networks, has managed to rally more than 120% since May 19. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $0.0712 on May 11, XCN has reversed course to hit a record-high at $0.176 on May 31. The three reasons for the …

The persistent challenges faced by decentralized finance have been well documented by a handful of analysts and the recent collapse of the Terra ecosystem re-enforced the fact that something is critically wrong with DeFi. I think DeFi today is completely broken for 99% of the population. The promise of a more transparent financial system has been overtaken by greed. UST/LUNA is just the latest in a string of bad developments: — Peter Yang (@petergyang) May 11, 2022 Let's take a look at what experts say DeFi needs to do to have another revival. Improved usability To date, the promise of …

Regulators from Europe, the United States and elsewhere are busily hammering out details on how to designate decentralized exchanges (DEXs) as “brokers,” transaction agents or similar entities that affect a transfer and cooperate with each other. The U.S. called for multinational cooperation in its executive order on responsible digital asset development, as did the European Union with its recent Financial Stability and Integration Review. And that is just what’s publicly accessible. Behind the scenes, the whisper of regulation is getting louder. Did anyone notice that all the Know Your Customer (KYC) requirements have been laid on smaller centralized exchanges in …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Injective (INJ) has partnered with Wormhole to integrate “10 new blockchains” to its network. Injective is a Cosmos (ATOM) layer-2 decentralized exchange (DEX) that offers derivatives, token swaps and sports betting prediction markets. It is also focused on interoperability via cross-chain bridging, and currently supports digital assets from Ethereum (ETH), Polkadot (DOT) and IBC-enabled chains such as Cosmos. Injective Labs, the protocol’s developers, noted in a Wednesday announcement that the partnership will enable users to transfer and trade assets across any chain that is integrated with Wormhole. “The Wormhole integration will vastly enhance Injective’s capabilities with …

Crypto prices have been exploring new lows for weeks and currently it's unclear what it will take to reverse the trend. Despite the downtrend, cryptocurrencies within the Polkadot (DOT) ecosystem began to rally on May 24 and have managed to maintain gains ranging from 10% to 25%, a possible sign that certain sub-sectors of the market are on the verge of a breakout. Here’s a look at three Polkadot ecosystem protocols that have seen their token prices trend higher in recent days. Acala launches a $250 million aUSD ecosystem fund Acala (ACA) is the leading decentralized finance (DeF) platform on …

Web3 has brought a lot of excitement into the industry, as evidenced by the nearly $50 billion market capitalization Web3 tokens have grown in recent years. The very ethos of Web3 is one of its most attractive traits. It is an ecosystem free from barriers or intermediaries, welcoming to anyone from anywhere and open anytime. However, there is one massive problem: There is no infrastructure within decentralized finance (DeFi) robust enough to execute these large orders in an entirely decentralized manner, as the use of centralized exchanges contradicts the decentralized nature of the decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO. Let’s unpack …

The success of the Ethereum network has been both a major step forward for DeFi and one backward for scalability. Now, widespread usage of decentralized apps (DApps) is growing with the hype of NFTs and the metaverse, resulting in a significant number of transactions and, therefore, increased processing times. Ethereum's struggle with scalability and high fees has led to tremendous growth in DApps, users and capital on alternate chains. Right now, according to on-chain analytics, alternate chains make up more than 45.2% of the total on-chain value. Forging the path forward is a number of solutions, varying from new networks …

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) nip in the bud several issues concerning their centralized counterparts such as concentration of liquidity in the hands of a few players, compromise of funds in case of a security breach, closed control structure and more. One issue, however, that has refused to subside is front-running. Unscrupulous players are still finding ways to defraud unsuspecting traders. If you have received less than expected when placing a trade on a DEX, there is a pretty good chance of you getting hit by front runners. These bad actors exploit the automated market maker (AMM) model to make profits at …

The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-in), which falls under the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, issued a new directive on Thursday, forcing crypto exchanges, virtual private network (VPN) providers and data centers to store a wide range of user data for up to five years. Under the newly issued directive, crypto exchanges operating in India will be required to store customers’ names, ownership patterns, contact information and various other data. Crypto exchanges and VPN services providers are also required to report any cyber incident within six hours of its occurrence and must hand over the collected data to …

In mid-February 2020, the total value locked within decentralized finance (DeFi) applications first exceeded $1 billion. Fueled by the DeFi summer of 2020, it wouldn’t even take a year before it multiplied 20-fold to reach $20 billion and only another ten months to reach $200 billion. Given the pace of growth so far, it doesn’t seem outlandish to imagine the DeFi markets hitting a trillion dollars within another year or two. We can attribute this monumental growth to one thing — liquidity. Looking back, DeFi’s expansion can be defined in three eras, each representing another significant development in removing barriers …