This week in Crypto was maybe crazier than usual - from the second biggest exploit in the history of Ethereum to the King of Memestocks making a move into Web3 this week had it all.
And while markets seem to be consolidating under mounting pressure and no one really seems to know where to go next, NFTs and private rounds are going into a frenzy once again. Seemingly unbothered by the glooming fear of further corrections and impeding regulatory hearings in the United States and Europe, private investors are continuing to make their bets on the future of value transactions on the internet and beyond. All while more and more players from the traditional sectors in technology, media, and finance are looking at crypto as their next big bet.
Wormhole Exploit
On Tuesday, February 2nd an exploit of massive scale quickly spread through the Crypto Twitter community describing what some call the second biggest DeFi exploit in history. An unknown hacker managed to exploit a weakness in the code of Wormhole a bridge protocol on the Solana blockchain. By bypassing their validation for '“Guardian” accounts the hacker managed to mint 120.000 (yes thousand) wrapped Ethereum on the Solana Blockchain of which 93.750 he/she successfully transferred back to the Ethereum Blockchain. The 120.000 ETH has a value equivalent to around $325 Million, which would make it one of the biggest crypto hacks in history.
Wormhole quickly stepped up and ensured their community that the stolen ETH would be replaced to ensure 1:1 backing in the protocol. They also offered the hacker a $10 million USD bounty if he were to return the stolen ETH. Nevertheless, this once again opens up questions about the security of cross-chain bridges and the vulnerability that both the protocols and the users are exposed to. Just a few weeks earlier Ethereum Co-Founder Vitalik Buterin questioned the integrity and security model that comes with a cross-chain future because of the vulnerability and weakness that comes with protocols transferring assets across multiple different blockchains with different security and verification models.
If you want to learn how the hacker was able to exploit the weakness in Wormholes contracts read here:
Dune Analytics raises $69.420 million in Series B
The blockchain data analytics company Dune successfully raised $69.420.000 USD (No joke) in their Series B while being valued at over 1 Billion USD.
The round was led by hedge fund Coatue and brings Dune Analytics' valuation to $1 billion, confirming The Block's reporting from last month. Existing investors, including Multicoin Capital and Dragonfly Capital, also participated in the round.
Dune has big plans in place with fresh capital in hand. It looks to build a community of up to 1 million analysts, support more blockchains, build an API, and massively expand its team, the firm's co-founder and CEO Fredrik Haga told The Block.
Founded in 2018, Dune lets users create data charts and dashboards on metrics such as DEX and NFT trading volumes. The platform currently has 10,000 analysts and 100,000 pieces of analysis. Dune is accessible to the public for free, but it also has a paid product for customized data, for which it charges $390 per month per user.
Dune calls its community of analysts "Dune Wizards" and pays many of them for creating dashboards, said Haga. The firm plans to bring more analysts to the platform and reward them as there is an ocean of blockchain data still largely underutilized, according to Haga. "We think this open data opportunity will enable a new generation of analysts to find work in and add value in crypto communities," he said.
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This marks yet another chapter for the data analytics space in Web3 that is picking up steam as investors and developers are competing for the best companies, products in place to use the treasure trove that is Blockchain on-chain data.
Gamestop x IMX
On Thursday morning the NFT Layer 2 Startup ImmutableX announced yet another major new partnership with the gaming powerhouse and industry veteran Gamestop. Gamestop NFTs will be a marketplace and platform for developers and creatives to build on and will be powered by IMX and their ZK Rollups (which are built by Starkware). This will enable projects to leverage the platform and reach that a name like Gamestop brings while also benefitting from gas-free minting of assets (both fungible and non-fungible). In addition to their partnership IMX and Gamestop also announced a $100 million USD grants program for developers and projects building on top of IMX. Applications are open right now: $100 million IMX Grant Program
ImmutableX has managed to build an impressive portfolio of partners over the last few months including VeVe, Illuvium, Gary Vee, Superfarm but Gamestop is surely their biggest partnership and it seems like they are just getting started. Nevertheless, it is going to be interesting to see whether they can cement themselves as the dominant player in the Crypto Gaming Ecosystem and attract developers to their platform.
Loot moving to Starknet
The Loot team announced that they plan to release their Loot-Verse in Q2 2022 with most of the computation for in-game actions and data being on Starknet. They believe that the next 1M Players will need a cheap and secure transaction network. After experimentation with various L2 solutions, they decided that Starknet had superior data compression and composability.
Loot plans to build a Lootverse where you can use your items, bags, and characters and interact with a vibrant world and with your follow Loot community members while also ensuring that a huge new cohort of people can come into the Lootverse and experience the magic of NFTs without being restricted through paywalls, gas or complicated user flows.
Loot has always been pushing the boundaries of how to open community-focused development can look and they are continuing to push the boundaries by being one of the first projects to realize the opportunities that come with building on Starknet.
