Kategorie: Crypto Markets

• Clockwork is a Solana-based smart contracts automation tool that raised $4 million from Multicoin and other investors.
• The Devnet and mainnet nodes will be frozen on October 31.

Solana ecosystem platform Clockwork is shutting down its nodes on Devnet and mainnet on October 31, founder Nick Garfield announced on Sunday.

The smart contracts project, which raised $4 million from investors in a round led by Multicoin Capital, however says the code remains open-source for any developer looking to fork it.

“Clockwork was initially conceived out of a need for an on-chain automation primitive. To that end, the team and I feel successful in completing our original mission and proud of the adoption it has seen. Ultimately the reason we are stepping away now is simple opportunity cost. We admittedly see limited commercial upside in continuing to develop the protocol, and have a growing personal interest to explore new opportunities,” Garfield noted.

Clockwork’s automation tooling was designed to enable smart contracts functionality for payroll payments and such other transactions. Commenting on what’s next for the project, Garfield explained:

“For those who currently rely on Clockwork, we will do what we can to ensure continued service. Understand this process is an accelerated transition to full decentralization. Its success will depend on you and the will of the Solana community.”

Clockwork users looking to migrate to other platforms can look at projects such as the oracle as a service protocol Switchboard, RPC platform Helius and no-code automation service triggr.

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• The Optimism Foundation and Coinbase-backed layer-2 platform Base eye shared governance of OP Chains.
• Base will receive 118 million OP token spread over six years.

The Optimism Foundation and Base, a Layer 2 on the OP Stack, are looking to cooperate further in the quest to enhance security, scalability and decentralisation in the Optimism Collective – the Superchain.   

For this, the Optimism Foundation has outlined a proposal that could see Coinbase-backed Base receive a grant totaling 118 million OP tokens.

“This grant is meant to retroactively reward Base’s contributions thus far to scaling Ethereum and the OP Stack, ensure Base’s long term alignment and commitment to the ecosystem, and critically, give Base a meaningful voice in the system of Optimism Governance, to which they’ve entrusted the future of their chain,” the announcement read.

Optimism’s revenue and governance proposal also details a commitment that the Base team has to make with regard to distributing the greater of either 2.5% of its sequencer revenue or 15% of net on-chain profits, to Optimism Collective. The 118 million OP tokens will be spread over six years and come with a cap of 9% on votable supply.

Base and Optimism to share upgrades

The move to agree on a Base/Optimism Foundation collaboration comes after last month’s “Law of Chains” proposal that seeks to transition Optimism governance from focusing on just the OP Mainnet to all chains on OP Stack. This is what’s dubbed the Superchain.

The Foundation plans to have a governance vote on the transition in place in early 2024. On what happens next, it noted:

“Base and OP Mainnet will share upgrades, so the chains’ blockspace remains compatible, homogenous, and eventually interoperable in a Superchain future.  How those upgrades evolve is up to Optimism Governance.”

If the “Law of Chains” is ratified, some of the key steps to be executed will include upgrades across Base, the OP Mainnet, and other chains on OP Stack. The teams will also work on a decentralised Security Council and “Pessimism,” a cybersecurity monitoring tool.

Base launched on August 9 and is seeing growing traction with total value locked (TVL) up 9% in the past week to $183 million. DeFiLlama data shows Optimism currently ranks sixth among top chains with over $715 million in TVL.

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• Num Finance’s new stablecoin nCOP adds to the nARS and nPEN pegged on Argentina Peso and Peruvian Sol.
• Colombia is one of Latin America’s top remittances markets with nearly $6.5 billion of inflows.

Num Finance, a stablecoin issuer focused on the Latin America market, has launched a new stablecoin pegged to the Colombian Peso.

The new stablecoin is dubbed nCOP and will be issued on the Polygon network, Num Finance’s blockchain partner, and is designed to bring the benefits of borderless transactions to the Colombian remittances market.

“In Colombia, there exists a unique opportunity to “tokenize” remittances and offer them a yield in nCOP, based on regulated financial products. Currently, Colombia is one of the main recipients of remittances in Latin America, with nearly USD 6.5 billion flowing into the country. Num Finance aims to provide a new possibility for people to send and receive nCOP as remittances and get a yield on it,” Num Finance CEO Agustín Liserra said in a blog release.

Num Finance’s footprint in Latin America

nCOP will be an overcollateralized stablecoin pegged 1:1 to the Colombian Peso and will offer people in the region a robust, stable and secure channel to send and receive funds. The stablecoin will also enable companies to tap into real time settlements, bringing efficiency to cash management.

Num Finance will also offer a yield feature for nCOP, with token holders getting rewards from regulated financial products.

Other than the Colombian peso-pegged stablecoin, Num Finance also issued nARS and nPEN, which are pegged to the Argentine Peso and Peruvian Sol. 

The company launched in 2021 and raised $1.5 million in a pre-seed funding round closed in May. The capital financing was led by crypto project Reserve and attracted several investors including H20 Scouter Fund, Ripio Ventures, and Auth0 CTO Matias Woloski.

The post Num Finance launches stablecoin pegged to Colombian Peso on Polygon appeared first on CoinJournal.

• At press time, Ripple (XRP) was trading at $0.5149, down 1.64% in the past 24 hours.
• The XRP trading volume has dropped by 4.56% today as fears of XRP’s future continue.
• The Court allowed the US SEC to appeal the Ripple (XRP) case.

Investors appear to be liquidating their positions as Ripple (XRP) struggles to maintain growth following Judge Torres’ summary finding in the US SEC v. Ripple Labs case that XRP isn’t a security. Additionally, following a recent price decrease, a whale moved over 29 million XRP, worth over $15 million, to the Bitstamp cryptocurrency exchange.

According to a Whale Alert article on August 24, the whale transferred 29,300,000 XRP worth $15.13 million to the Bitstamp.

🚨 29,300,000 #XRP (15,130,884 USD) transferred from unknown wallet to #Bitstamphttps://t.co/DhcHkKNdzc

— Whale Alert (@whale_alert) August 24, 2023

Additional information raises the probability that this whale may be angling to sell its XRP holdings because it recently transferred another 14 million XRP to Bitso.

Although Ripple (XRP) has become a centre of attention after winning the case against the SEC, the cryptocurrency is facing an uncertain future after Judge Torres allowed the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to lodge an interlocutory appeal challenging the sale of XRP tokens. After the ruling, the price of XRP fell sharply and broke through important support levels of $0.6 and $0.5 even as some professionals hold that the appeal would not be a setback for Ripple.

The appeal case between Ripple and the US SEC is expected to start around the middle or end of May 2024 in the interim. This timetable is consistent with the SEC and Ripple Labs court notifications, as well as those of CEO Brad Garlinghouse and executive chairman Chris Larsen, who stated that they would not be available until the second quarter of 2024.

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• Kroll is acting as the claims agency for FTX in the ongoing bankruptcy case.
• Kroll is in contact with the affected individual.
• FTX is seeking to increase its crypto holding through selling, staking and hedging with the help of Galaxy Digital.

Defunct cryptocurrency exchange FTX has reported that its bankruptcy case claims agency, Kroll, had a cybersecurity breach that resulted in the exposure of limited, non-sensitive customer data of specific claimants. According to FTX, the situation is being actively monitored to ensure that funds, systems, and account passwords are not impacted.

The ailing cryptocurrency exchange, which is planning a relaunch, alerted its clients, lenders, and the general public of the data breach involving its claims agent Kroll on August 25 through the X platform (formerly Twitter).

Kroll in contact with affected individuals

According to FTX, Kroll is currently educating those affected by the cybersecurity incident about the precautions they may take to ensure their security. However, the insolvent cryptocurrency exchange made it clear that the systems and account passwords are safe.

Additionally, FTX’s debtors have opened a line of communication with Kroll and are closely monitoring the situation as it develops. Kroll has told the debtors that they handled the situation quickly and appropriately. Customers are urged to be vigilant about emails that could be fake or scams that pretend to be from companies going through bankruptcy.

Impact on the ongoing bankruptcy case

In the meantime, according to blockchain researcher ZachXBT, consumers of FTX are already receiving bogus emails and their personal data has been hacked.

A friend just received a phishing email to the email associated with their FTX account. pic.twitter.com/cWy3ykN4B3

— ZachXBT (@zachxbt) August 25, 2023

Celsius Network, a cryptocurrency lending platform in Chapter 11 bankruptcy proceedings also experienced a data breach that resulted in the exposure of customers’ email records and the breach has had a significant impact on the bankruptcy restructuring process.

While it is still too early to deduce the impact the Kroll data breach will have on the ongoing FTX bankruptcy proceedings, FTX has sought the services of Mike Novogratz’s Galaxy Digital to assist in selling, staking, and hedging its crypto assets so as to increase the crypto assets it intends to distribute to creditors.

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