Cristiano Ronaldo sued by crypto traders
Meanwhile, someone casually paid $3M in bitcoin fees, whilst Dorsey aims to decentralize bitcoin mining following $6.2M round
Welcome to Stay on-chain! Whilst the markets weren’t as volatile as the past weeks, on-chain activity has been thriving. Ethereum has been deflationary for days now due to high usage, whilst the Kyber Network exploiter takes an unprecedented turn in his negotiations.
In today’s edition:
Someone paid 83 BTC in fees
Cristiano Ronaldo has been sued by Florida investors
ATOM’s inflation rate shrinks
Wormhole Bridge raised $225M
Jack Dorsey to decentralize bitcoin mining
Binance to end support for BUSD
Reading time: 5 min
Finally, we're having a chill week. Nothing major happened in the market scene. Bitcoin is keeping its cool at $37K, spiking to $38,500. Ethereum is doing its thing, but BNB is underperforming, given the not-so-great vibes around Binance.
The star of the week? LUNC, yes, the same LUNA that collapsed with UST. UST also pumped an x5, shooting up from 1 to 5 cents (should be 1$🥲). Getting UST back to peg is just a dream; what’s happening now is pure speculation. The system's mechanics have proven to be broken, so unless you're a pro, think twice before going all in.
Yields are hanging tight, and DeFi’s TVL is keeping it steady. But if you hop on crypto Twitter, you can sense some FOMO vibes as the Bitcoin ETF is on the horizon.
Someone paid 83 BTC in fees for a single transaction
83.65 BTC (~$3M) paid in fees to transfer 55.77 BTC, makes no sense, right? Whilst many speculated it was simple, plain, human error, some others elaborated a way more complex theory. Following an 𝕏 account claiming to be the account owner, it turns out he lost the amount and wasn’t the one making the transfer.
The transaction was likely signed by bots lurking in the blockchain for easily exploitable seed phrases. As soon as he added the coins, they were gone. In fact, the transaction shows an RBF (replace-by-fee) request, meaning that the fee was originally slightly lower than 83.65 BTC and bots battled to front-run each other.
It seems that the affected user generated a so-called BrainWallet, a human-generated seed phrase that has a low entropy, being easily exploitable but at the same time easy to remember.
This is by far the largest fee ever paid to Bitcoin miners, followed by a 19.8 BTC transaction fee erroneously sent by Paxos and later refunded by the miner AntPool.
CR7 got sued
Cristiano Ronaldo is facing a lawsuit over his promotion of Binance, as per a recent class action filed in a Florida court by individuals claiming to have suffered losses because of it. In 2022, Ronaldo collaborated with Binance, launching his NFT collection. The lawsuit claims Ronaldo played a significant role in a "sustained and aggressive" promotional campaign for Binance, allegedly encouraging investments in unregistered securities.
Blasting surprise: The under-development RWA-focused L2 Blast secures $620M in TVL, locked until mainnet launch in February 2024, by promising an airdrop. The funds are controlled by a 3 out of 5 multi-sig.
ATOM’s inflation rate shrinks
The Cosmos governance has recently passed a proposal to reduce the maximum inflation rate of the ecosystem’s native token ATOM from about 14% down to 10%. Besides inflation as a whole, to achieve this, the proposal is looking to reduce the ATOM staking APR from about 19% to a lighter 13.4%, claiming that Cosmos is currently overpaying for securing the network.
Wormhole Bridge raised $225M
Jump Trading played a pivotal role in rescuing the crypto bridge after the Feb 2022 hack that resulted in the loss of 120,000 ETH. To replenish the stolen $325 million, Jump Trading stepped in, basically acquiring it.
On November 17, Jump took a step back establishing Wormhole as its own separate business. In a recent fundraising, Wormhole raised $225 million, reaching a valuation of $2.5 billion. Notable investors in this round include Brevan Howard, Coinbase Ventures, Multicoin Capital, and others.
Don’t answer strangers: apparently, the FBI has been sending out on-chain messages to exploiters to reach white-hat agreements where most funds are returned and the rest is kept as a bounty with no legal persecution.
Jack Dorsey to create a BTC decentralized mining pool
The Bitcoin startup Mummolin raised $6.2M in seed funding led by Dorsey, and others. The enterprise is set to support starting Ocean, a decentralized non-custodial mining pool — meaning it will pay block rewards to miners directly, either on-chain or using the Lightning Network depending on the amount.
The project aims to solve a centralization issue plaguing Bitcoin’s hash rate, as the four biggest pools — of which 3 are based in China, while the other in the U.S., both crypto-hostile countries — control ~ 78% of the hash rate.
Binance to end support for BUSD
Binance is ending support for BUSD on December 15 in favor of FDUSD, due to regulatory issues with Paxos and the lawsuit by the CFTC against Binance. Users can redeem BUSD until February 2024, but withdrawals will stop on December 31.
Kyber’s exploiter proposed a treaty following $47M hack asking to get control over the whole company — 𝕏/Screentimes
Sei blockchain to add Ethereum Virtual Machine support in V2 upgrade — The Block
Aptos launches an on-chain order book exchange backed by Dragonfly — 𝕏/EconiaLabs
Dydx will start distributing trading rewards — The Block
MicroStrategy bought an extra 16,130 $BTC for $593.3 million, averaging about $36,785 per Bitcoin.
Paradigm takes a step back on Blast. Backed, but not fully endorsed. — 𝕏/Dan Robinson
Velodrome and Aerodrome front-ends got both compromised — 𝕏/OfficerCIA
CZ steps down from Binance US board of directors, besides, he’s not allowed to leave the US until his sentencing on Feb 23
Philippines’ SEC to block Binance for operating an unlicensed business
Circle’s USDC stablecoin is now available natively on Cosmos
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Disclosure: Authors may own crypto assets named in this newsletter. Stay on-chain is meant for informational and educational purposes only. It is not meant to serve as investment advice. Please consult your investment, tax, or legal advisor before making investment decisions.