Jimmy McNelis, the founder of Web3 tech firm nameless, says there are too many NFT projects rushing to market without proper smart contract testing — potentially leading to millions lost. Speaking with Cointelegraph, McNelis suggested that a lot of NFT projects often rush to market without fully simulating how its smart contracts will work, even skipping extensive audits in some cases. McNelis said an example of this was observed during the sale of the Akutars NFT collection in February 2021 — featuring 15,000 tokens that went up for sale on Winklevoss-owned NFT marketplace Nifty Gateway. McNelis said while the NFT …

Blockchain infrastructure platform Coinbase Cloud has officially rolled out its Web3 developer platform, allowing users to build new decentralized applications free of charge. The new developer platform, dubbed Node, allows users to create and monitor Web3 applications while accessing the Ethereum blockchain and indexers, the company disclosed Wednesday. While Node offers a tiered subscription model, the free plan includes access to advanced APIs that allow for the creation of decentralized applications and nonfungible token (NFT) applications. Coinbase Cloud claims that Node enables faster creation of Web3 applications while reducing both complexity and cost. This feeds into the platform’s broader service …

The DAO behind the decentralized finance (DeFi) platform Aave has accepted a proposal to reward members from Aave Companies with $16.28 million in retroactive funding for their role in the development of Aave Protocol V3. Voting for the proposal began on Sept. 6, and at the time of writing has already passed 667,000 votes in favor of the funding, more than doubling the 320,000 required. The vote is set to end on Sept. 8. According to the initial proposal, which was first pitched on Aug. 10, the Aave Request for Comment (ARC) seeked “retroactive funding” for work in developing the …

Digital asset custody platform Fireblocks has launched support for Solana, giving its thousands of users access to the developer network’s applications and infrastructure. Beginning Tuesday, Fireblocks users will have direct access to Solana’s various decentralized finance (DeFi) and Web3 applications — a move the company says will directly benefit “alternative asset managers” and “capital market participants.” “Thousands of businesses use Fireblocks to access novel Web3 products and services,” Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said in a statement. “Starting today, these businesses will immediately have access to the depth and breadth of the Solana ecosystem.” The Solana integration will come via Fireblocks’ …

The Ethereum Foundation has announced it will be increasing the network’s bug bounty payouts fourfold ahead of the blockchain’s transition to Proof-of-Stake. In a Wednesday blog post, the Ethereum Foundation said between Aug. 24 and Sept. 8, all “Merge-related bounties for vulnerabilities” will be quadrupled for white hats testing the network. According to the foundation, identifying “critical bugs” — those that have a high impact or likelihood of a high impact on the blockchain — will be worth up to $1 million. The bounty program also allows submissions for low, medium, and high risk bugs. • Merge Bug Bounty Bonus: …

While the upcoming ETH Merge is one of the most anticipated events in the crypto community at the moment, it's not free from hiccups. However, Ethereum developers are quick to respond to the issues that arise. Péter Szilágyi, an Ethereum (ETH) software developer, has announced on Twitter that they have found a regression that results in a corrupted state. He explained that it was probably one of the pull requests that was merged toward the new storage model or online pruner. In a later update, the developer highlighted that the problem will likely affect those who are running the release …

The Ethereum ecosystem continues to witness a flurry of activity that has individuals and organizations deploying token contracts, adding liquidity to pools and deploying smart contracts to support a wide range of business models. While notable, this growth has also been riddled with security exploits, leaving decentralized finance (DeFi) protocols vulnerable to hacks and scams. For instance, recent findings from crypto intelligence firm Chainalysis show that crypto-related hacks have increased by 58.3% from the beginning of the year through July 2022. The report further notes that $1.9 billion has been lost to hacks during this timeframe — a figure that …

Velodrome Finance, a trading and liquidity marketplace, announced the recovery of $350,000 stolen on Aug. 4. However, the occasion turned bittersweet when internal investigations pointed out the involvement of a prominent team member, who goes by the pseudo name Gabagool. On Aug. 4, one of Velodrome’s high-worth wallets — dedicated for operating funds such as salaries — was drained off $350,000 before it could be transferred to the company’s treasury multisig wallet. A subsequent internal investigation revealed the attacker’s identification, which allowed the company to recover the entire loot. Velodrome’s official statement revealed: “Much to our disappointment, we learned the …

The Ethereum Merge may be coming sooner than planned, after core developers announced a tentative Merge date of Sept. 15, which will see the blockchain transition to Proof-of-Stake. The Ethereum mainnet Merge date came into view after core developers such as Tim Beiko and Prysmatic Labs co-founder Terence Tsao agreed in an Aug. 11 developer call it would be when Total Terminal Difficulty (TTD) hits 58750000000000000000000. This was confirmed in a Github post titled "Tentative mainnet TTD" which was committed to by Beiko on Aug. 11. While the exact date and TTD could be still be changed, the successes of …

Two organizations have established a new partnership in their quest to establish an even bigger presence across South East Asia. The memorandum of understanding between Morpheus Labs and PingCap was signed on July 28. Morpheus Labs, which is incorporated in Singapore, says its goal is to ensure everyone can succeed when creating and implementing Web3 blockchain applications. It offers an industry-leading blockchain development toolbox that reduces the time and effort associated with rolling out DApps — and boasts a library of tried-and-tested applications that developers can build upon. Meanwhile, PingCap provides cloud-native, distributed SQL databases that are designed for real-time …

Animoca Brands co-founder and chairman Yat Siu has urged for more developers to enter the Web3 space, warning that without “choice” there can be no “decentralized environment.” Speaking to Cointelegraph during Korean Blockchain Week (KBW) 2022, Sui stressed that more developers need to come into the space to give consumers more alternatives when it comes to their platform of choice — which could be based on “best value” or one they most culturally associate with. “We need as many choices of Layer-1’s and Layer-2’s [...] or creative companies so that they [crypto users] have a choice in machine code from …

20 million JavaScript developers will now have the ability to write blockchain smart contracts and build applications on the NEAR Protocol, after rolling out JavaScript Software Development Kits (JS SDKs) on Monday. Speaking with Cointelegraph at the Korea Blockchain Week (KBW) on Aug. 9 (local time), NEAR founder Illia Polosukhin emphasized that the move will open up the niche field of blockchain development to a substantially broader audience: “There's about 20 million JavaScript developers in the world. Probably like every developer one way or another wrote JavaScript in their life. And what we allow you to do is to write …