The Weekly Wrap - 1st April 2022

Axie Infinity’s Ronin Network Hit by Exploit      

Over $625M Stolen in the Largest Exploit in Crypto History

On Tuesday, the Ronin validator node for Sky Mavis (the owner company of Axie Infinity) suffered an exploit which resulted in more than $600M worth of assets being stolen. The hackers utilised a backdoor ‘gas-free’ node (created to ease costs during high network activity) to forge transactions allowing 173K ETH and 25.5M USDC to be drained. The gas-free node was only intended to operate for a month, but was never properly deactivated - this is what allowed the attacker to bypass normal validation requirements. Almost all the funds remain in the attacker’s address.  

Some Ronin applications such as Ronin Bridge and Katana have been suspended while the exploit is investigated. $AXS has only dropped by 7% as a result of the news. $RON however (the token of the Ronin network) fell by 22%.   

NFT Owners Caught Out by ApeCoin Phishing Scam 

$1M Worth of NFTs stolen

In another crypto exploit this week, high-end NFT owners have been falling victim to a phishing scam exploiting the recent launch of ApeCoin. The $APE token (a legitimate airdrop project by BAYC creators Yuga Labs) was available by airdrop to any owner of a BAYC or MAYC NFT when it launched two weeks ago. The scammers hacked popular verified twitter accounts to promote a bogus link impersonating the Yuga Labs airdrop.

NFT owners who followed the link made their NFTs available to be stolen. Thus far, 35 NFTs have been stolen worth almost $1M in Ethereum collectively. Many token holders have expressed outrage that the scam links - which in some cases were being tweeted several times per second by the same account - were not flagged by Twitter’s automated spam detection system.    

Success of Aave’s ‘Version 3’ Causes 40% Price Increase 

Improved DeFi Functionality Causes $AAVE Price Rally

After the release of ‘version 3’ two weeks ago,  decentralised lending protocol Aave has seen 40% gains on its token price. The $AAVE token rallied from a price of $160 to $240, before stabilising at its current price of $228. 

The platform’s TVL (total value locked) also increased by around 10% over the last week to bring the figure to $14B. The ‘V3’ update optimised the platform’s lending system by allowing new forms of collateralisation, amongst other new DeFi features. In May 2021, $AAVE reached its ATH (all time high) with a price of $661.

Binance Partners With the Grammys for ‘Web3 Music Solutions’  

Centralised Exchange Giant Becomes First Crypto Sponsor of Grammys 

Binance - one of the largest centralised crypto exchanges in the world - has entered a partnership with the Grammy awards to help “bring Web 3 solutions to the Grammys community”. Little information has been provided by Binance regarding what the partnership will involve, but it was disclosed that the collaboration will not involve NFTs. 

Panos A. Panay - a spokesperson of The Recording Academy only stated that the deal will allow new avenues of monetisation to be explored by its members and partners. The move makes Binance the first crypto-related sponsor of the Grammy awards.