I’ve been reading today about ETH 2.0 and Layer 2 solutions to improve scalability on the blockchain, but what is there to do with ETH that’s makinf this an ussue? Is it withadrawal fees? I used to see people complaining about gas fees and transaction speeds nonstop, but at the same time, many say “Just…
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One of the major threats to businesses online, not only the crypto industry, is cybercriminals’ attacks. Even though the existing networks are supposed to be safe and secure, attackers often find loopholes to exploit them in the bid to steal investors’ funds. This is not new in the online world. There have been occasions when hackers even forced companies to shut down. The decentralized finance sector has seen a lot of growth in recent times, but the growing exploitation cases are becoming alarming. Many protocols have suffered such attacks amounting to losses to the tune of millions of dollars. The latest to record such an exploit is Vee Finance based on the Avalanche Blockchain. Hackers stole $35 million from this protocol a few days after its mainnet went live on the host network. Before reporting this incident, Vee Finance stopped all its transactions on September 20, 2021. The team suspected questionable activities in the network and had to stop rendering services to users. Vee Finance Lost Money In BTC And ETH The two cryptos that hackers stole are BTC and ETH. The total number of BTC was 214, while ETH was 8,804. Checking the value of both at press time, the amount was above $35M. According to what the team revealed, the hackers targeted a particular address through the trade contract address of the protocol. Related Reading | Will Fear And Greed Keep Bitcoin Buyers From The Halloween Effect? As soon as the Vee Finance team discovered this exploit, they stopped rendering the contract and also stopped all borrowing and depositing functions on the platform. However, the team hasn’t said much about the reason and how the hackers got access to the address. All we could gather is that they’re fixing the issue and attempting to facilitate a possible funds recovery from the criminals. In its statement, Vee Finance assured users that its goal is to protect their interests, and that’s what the team will focus on achieving. Vee Finance To Alleviate Mining Operations The recently exploited protocol is amongst the emerging DeFi projects that aim to improve the mining features of the sector. Vee Finance wants to boost processes such as leverage mining, liquidity mining, and transaction mining. September 14 was the day it went live on the Avalanche network. It also launched its liquidity mining feature the same day. Like many other DeFi protocols, Vee Finance also relies on Chainlink price feeds to get real-time value for digital assets on-chain. This is part of the benefits of using blockchain oracle solutions. Five days following the launch, the protocol garnered a total of $300 million in TVL (Total Valued Locked). Unfortunately, a few days later, the protocol lost $35 million to hackers. In recent times though, many other protocols on the Avalanche blockchain have recorded such losses. Related Reading | Mid-Cap Altcoins Hold Onto Highs Better Than Bitcoin And Ethereum Some of them include Zabu Finance, which lost $3.2 million to hackers, crashing its value to zero. But the Avalanche Blockchain has been growing recently, and even the native token, AVAX, is also rising in value. The AVAX Token is rising by 10% as per the chart | Source: AVAXUSD on TradingView Featured image from PYMNTS, charts from TradingView.com
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I was much more favorable to the defi narrative than the NFT narrative. With defi, the value came from the fact that the blockchain was performing desired real world functions of finance better than the traditional system. With NFTs, I mostly see just hot air and hype. What problem in society is NFTs solving? Other…
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Why didn’t we thought of measuring Chivo and Bitcoin adoption this way? Cero anecdotal evidence. Only facts, numbers, and reports from wherever we can get them. What do we know about the Chivo wallet’s Lightning node? What apps besides the government wallet are the Salvadorans using? Are they happy with them? Investor and blogger Kevin Rooke has a fresh take on El Salvador’s Bitcoin adoption and we’re here to summarize it. “I wanted a deeper understanding of how real people in El Salvador are interacting with Bitcoin, so I went off in search of other success metrics.” Related Reading | New To Bitcoin? Learn To Trade Crypto With The NewsBTC Trading Course However, since “the Lightning Network is private by design,” it’s hard to accurately measure “payment volumes and the flow of funds between various wallets and exchanges.” So, what did Kevin Rooke do? He looked everywhere else for hard data about Chivo and Bitcoin adoption. Let’s explore what he found. BTC price chart for 09/24/2021 on Exmo | Source: BTC/USD on TradingView.com The Chivo Ecosystem Is Growing Fast To measure the Chivo wallet’s adoption, Rooke used the official information provided by President Bukele. Not ideal, but not uncommon either. It’s easier to get stats about the Chivo Lightning node because you can check all the public info here. But wait, why is the Salvadorean government running a Lightning node? “Just like every other participant on Bitcoin’s Lightning Network, Chivo runs a Lightning node. Since Chivo is a custodial wallet, all Lightning payments that Chivo users send to and from other Lightning wallets will transfer liquidity to and from Chivo’s node.” Through those sources, what did the author find out about the Chivo ecosystem? At the moment, “Chivo’s node has 12.7 BTC of public capacity.” Which is 1,269,941,898 sats. The Chivo node “ranks 83rd among public Lightning nodes.” At the time of writing, it’s connected to 58 other channels, but this number changes daily. Back to the iOS App Store and Google Play Store, the Chivo wallet remains at the top of the popularity list, “beating all the most popular social media apps like WhatsApp, TikTok, and Instagram.” O bet you haven’t thought about this one, “By onboarding over 1.6 million users in just two weeks, Chivo is likely the most popular Lightning Network app in the world today.” What About The Other Bitcoin Apps? Are They Popular In El Salvador? Ok, granted. El Salvador’s government incentivizes the downloading of the Chivo wallet app with $30. That has to move the needle. However, when it comes to all the other Bitcoin apps, such an incentive doesn’t exist. How are they measuring up to other financial apps? This infographic says it all: El Salvador’s most popular apps for September 2021 | Source: Kevin Rooke “Salvadorans are already showing strong preference for Bitcoin apps over banking and remittance apps on a national scale,” as the graphic shows. To put it in numbers, “9 and 13 of the top 20 apps on the respective app stores” are Bitcoin apps. And Chivo is at number one. “Most of El Salvador’s banks and payment processors have user ratings of 2-4 stars,” that’s the traditional banking system for you. On the other hand, “Bitcoin related apps have user ratings of 3-5 stars.” Even though it’s still early, the facts are the facts. It should be noted that the Chivo app is at the lower end of that spectrum. Related Reading | How Big Is Bitcoin’s Lightning Network? The Answer Will Surprise You Besides that, Kevin Rooke identified a truth that might be obvious to some, but has to be said: “The millions of Salvadorans that have already been onboarded to the Lightning Network aren’t Silicon Valley nerds or early tech enthusiasts. They’re regular people that are making a conscious choice to use the Lightning Network because it saves them time and money.” And they don’t have to use the Chivo ecosystem if they don’t want to. That’s a fact. Featured Image by Ray Aucott on Unsplash – Charts by TradingView
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