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Is your SOL safe? What we know about the Solana hack

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On this week’s episode of “The Market Report,” Cointelegraph’s resident experts discuss the latest updates concerning the recent Solana (SOL) hack.

To kick things off, we broke down the latest news in the markets this week:

Bitcoin realized price bands form key resistance as bulls lose $24K, significant whale activity between $22,000 and $24,800 adds to the complexity of the current spot market setup. Bitcoin (BTC) consolidated lower on Aug. 9 after familiar resistance preserved a multi-month trading range. When will we finally break out of this price range and make the move towards $30K?

Institutions flocking to Ethereum for 7 straight weeks as Merge nears: Report, “Greater clarity” around the Merge has driven institutional inflows into Ethereum products, according to a CoinShares report. Is the ETH merge finally around the corner and will it bring new all time highs to ETH or has the price already been factored into the current price?

Circle freezes blacklisted Tornado Cash smart contract addresses, Crypto data aggregator Dune Analytics said that, on Monday, Circle, the issuer of the USD Coin (USDC) stablecoin, froze over 75,000 USDC worth of funds linked to the 44 Tornado Cash addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control’s Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list. Could this mark the end for Tornado Cash or is there a way they can redeem themselves?

Next up is a new segment called “Quick Crypto Tips,” which aims to give newcomers to the crypto industry quick and easy tips to get the most out of their experience. This week’s tip: Have some funds ready to buy further downturns.

Market expert Marcel Pechman then carefully examines the Bitcoin and Ether (ETH) markets. Are the current market conditions bullish or bearish? What is the outlook for the next few months? Pechman is here to break it down. The experts also go over some markets news to bring you up to date on the latest regarding the top two cryptocurrencies.

After Marcel’s market analysis, our resident experts discuss whether your SOL is safe and the latest updates on the Solana hack. We also discuss why the network has been victim to so many hacks and downtimes. What exactly do these exploits mean for the Solana platform and if you should be worried.

Lastly, we’ve got insights from Cointelegraph Markets Pro, a platform for crypto traders who want to stay one step ahead of the market. The analysts use Cointelegraph Markets Pro to identify two altcoins that stood out this week: Radicle’s RAD and DigiByte’s DGB.

Do you have a question about a coin or topic not covered here? Don’t worry. Join the YouTube chat room, and write your questions there. The person with the most interesting comment or question will be given a 1 month free subscription to markets Pro worth $100!

The Market Report streams live every Tuesday at 12:00 pm ET (4:00 pm UTC), so be sure to head on over to Cointelegraph’s YouTube page and smash those like and subscribe buttons for all our future videos and updates.

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Tulip Protocol Officially Integrates Chainlink on Solana Mainnet

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Tulip Protocol Officially Integrates Chainlink on Solana Mainnet

Today, Tulip Protocol made the announcement that they have integrated Chainlink Price Feeds in order to better secure their yield aggregating platform that is running on the Solana mainnet. The team had previously stated their intention to integrate Chainlink Price Feeds, and at this point, the connection has been completely put into action. Chainlink is the premier decentralized oracle network in the world, safeguarding tens of billions of dollars in smart contracts. It has diversified its offerings across other blockchains, notably Solana, Fantom, Polygon, BNB Chain, and others.

In a recent blog post, the team behind the Tulip Protocol explained that they had integrated Chainlink to provide users with more confidence that leveraged positions will be liquidated equitably using extremely accurate price data and that the protocol will continue to be completely collateralized at all times.

According to Tomasz Wojewoda, Head of Global Sales at Chainlink Labs:

“We’re pleased that Tulip Protocol has integrated Chainlink Price Feeds on Solana, helping secure its yield aggregation protocol with highly robust, decentralized market data. With the high-throughput performance of Solana and the strong security guarantees of the Chainlink Network, Tulip Protocol is able to empower users with a performant and secure platform.”

Tulip Protocol Seeks To Take Advantage Of Solana

Tulip Protocol brings together lenders who receive a return on their deposits and borrowers who are interested in gaining access to leverage. Users who initiate leverage positions are responsible for maintaining a loan-to-value (LTV) ratio that has been previously established. The Tulip Protocol then uses the asset price data that is provided by Chainlink Price Feeds to verify that this ratio is accurate. If the value of the collateral falls below the threshold that was established by the protocol, then their position will be immediately liquidated to assist in guaranteeing that the lenders will be repaid.

Tulip Protocol intends to capitalize on Solana by giving users the ability to more regularly reinvest their income and grow their assets without having to pay exorbitant amounts of gas expenses. Chainlink oracles can now be natively integrated on Solana, making it possible for Solana-based applications to benefit from enhanced levels of security and transparency. Yesterday, OpenOcean made the announcement that they would be integrating Chainlink Price Feeds in order to help secure the limited order functionality on many chains. These chains include Avalanche, Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, and BNB Chain.

According to Senx, Co-Founder of Tulip Protocol:

 “We’re excited to be using Chainlink Price Feeds on Solana to help secure our yield aggregation platform. By leveraging the most secure and reliable on-chain data available, we’re able to provide our lenders and borrowers with greater assurances that liquidations are based on accurate price data, and the protocol will maintain a healthy loan-to-value ratio through all market conditions.” 

Allowing Stakers To Benefit From Higher APYs

Natives of the blockchain as well as newcomers to the technology are beginning to understand that decentralization does not necessarily equate to a secure platform. Given that Web3 services are currently disclosing their susceptibilities to attacks from both within and outside the network, further initiatives should be undertaken to improve the safety of user assets. Fortunately, a growing number of blockchain businesses are beginning to add various levels of security to their services in order to solidify the trust of their existing customers and attract additional investors in the near and distant future.

Tulip Protocol is the very first yield aggregation platform to be built on Solana, and it features auto-compounding vault techniques. The dApp was developed to make use of Solana’s blockchain, which has a low cost and high efficiency, hence enabling the vault techniques to compound frequently. Stakeholders are able to reap the benefits of greater APYs as a result, without the need for active management.

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Web3-Based ZepetoX to Build on Solana

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Web3-Based ZepetoX to Build on Solana

Singapore, Singapore , Aug. 09, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Today, the ZepetoX team (ZTX, ZepetoX.io) announced its foray into the web3 space, sharing its vision to build an open world that empowers creators and communities to build, play and earn.

ZepetoX is the crypto metaverse initiative jointly incubated by ZEPETO – Asia’s largest metaverse platform with over 320 million registered users – alongside leading global blockchain organizations including Jump Crypto.

As the sole blockchain project comprehensively backed by ZEPETO, ZepetoX will have exclusive ties to ZEPETO in terms of IP including technological, design, and content assets as well as bridges to facilitate user onboarding between the two platforms. ZepetoX’s blockchain development efforts will be advised by Jump.

“ZepetoX is our official venture into the blockchain industry. We feel that web3 opportunities should be advanced through a crypto-native approach, which is why we are excited to have Jump as a contributor to developing a new platform that would have exclusive connections to ZEPETO. Overall, we believe that ZepetoX can build the ideal web3 platform to not only bring blockchain to our existing users but also to expand our footprint in the blockchain space through various disruptive initiatives,” said Daewook Kim, CEO of Naver Z – the operating entity of ZEPETO.

“We are excited to support ZepetoX’s efforts aimed at onboarding new audiences into the rapidly growing crypto space. ZEPETO’s expertise and technological know-hows accumulated over the past years from building an immersive social platform will serve as a springboard for ZepetoX,” said Saurabh Sharma, Partner at Jump Crypto.

Building on the Solana network, ZepetoX will offer a web-based 3D open world with varying levels of gamification integrated as well as opportunities for users to monetize via ownership of digital assets and social interaction. Ultimately, ZepetoX aims to empower self-expression through customizable avatars and lands that can be equipped with NFTs from a rich collection of assets created by diverse creators, DAOs, or communities.

“I am thrilled to see IP powerhouses like ZepetoX choosing to build their metaverse on Solana,” said Anatoly Yakovenko, Co-Founder of Solana. “Projects like ZepetoX create new pathways for onboarding millions of users to web3.”

“Our global team brings a depth of crypto native experiences and our goal is to build on the foundation of ZEPETO to spearhead the adoption of blockchain among metaverse users, developers, and creators,” said co-CEO of ZepetoX, Chris Chang.

In the coming months, ZepetoX will launch its first land sale. The lands will be tradable on the ZepetoX marketplace, which will feature a variety of different NFTs as the open world project evolves. Further details on the sale will be available on the ZepetoX website in the coming weeks.

# # #

About ZepetoX: ZepetoX (ZTX) is a web3 company building an immersive content-driven platform for users to create, trade digital assets and enjoy social interaction. Founded in 2022, ZepetoX is the blockchain initiative of ZEPETO, widely regarded as the largest Asia-based metaverse platform boasting over 320 million lifetime users with over 2.5 billion virtual fashion items sold.

Contacts:

Vera: vera@ztx.foundation

News Via KISS PR Crypto Press Release Distribution Media Contact az@kisspr.com

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How Secure Is Solana, Really? Industry Analysts Weigh in – The New Stack

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Solana has popped up in the news frequently over the past several months in connection with a variety of outages and breaches, most recently a breach of Slope wallets that led to the theft of several million dollars’ worth of SOL.

Any concerns about the project’s reliability were compounded by a recent DeFiSafety report that gave Solana a technical risk score of 12 out of 100.

Still, as The New Stack’s Lawrence Hecht noted earlier this year, Solana’s project velocity is notable — the Cloud Native Computing Foundation recently listed it as one of the top projects in the open source community.

And Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko suggested on Reddit that some growing pains are to be expected, writing, “What no one wants to talk about on this space is that if something took 2 years to build, it’s going to take 2 years to stabilize.”

Amid all the noise, it can be challenging to get a clear sense of the security and reliability of the project itself.

Technical Risk

In a post summarizing his report’s findings, DeFiSafety protocol analyst Nick Sheaf warned, “Anyone who uses this chain subjects themselves to massive and at this point seemingly inherent technical risk and trust.”

Still, Sheaf wrote, “This is not to say that things won’t change: we know some of the biggest brains in this industry work on Solana. They just need to show the development process the respect it deserves.”

In the report, Solana’s total score dropped from 48 to 12 due to three incidents earlier this year: April 29 (a seven-hour outage when the network was flooded by an NFT project with a fixed floor), May 26 (Solana’s blockchain clock lost track of time), and May 31 (a four-hour outage due to a consensus failure).

Mohamad Abdulrazak, head of marketing at DeFiSafety, told The New Stack that in addition to those outages, transparency is also a key issue for the project, including lack of public data on archive nodes. “The thing about our scores is, we want to be transparent with everyone,” he said. “The space is open source — why can’t you be open on information?”

DeFiSafety’s scores, Abdulrazak said, are focused on raising standards of security and transparency, rather than an audit analysis of the code. “What we document, and then we give a score, is how they document the testing, security, oracles, and more,” Abdulrazak said. “Have they done or not, was there an audit performed by a third party? And is it a sufficient audit, such as a Token or Staking Audit?”

Overall, Abdulrazak said that Solana’s key strength lies in its low fees and transactions per second, due to its use of the PoH (Proof of History) algorithm. However, he said that advantage isn’t likely to last. “Everyone is tackling Ethereum on the gas fees at the moment, but once they merge, there will not be a miner fee to pay,” he said. “Everything will be done with [a] proof of stake network, which is more efficient, with less power consumption; and 90% of the issuance paid to miners will disappear.”

At that point, he suggested that Solana will no longer have much to offer. “They’re not trying to make something different,” he said. “Maybe they could say, ‘We’re not a copy of Ethereum because we’re not written in Solidity; we’re written in Rust’ — but they’re trying to do what Ethereum is projecting to do, which is faster transactions.”

Growing Pains

Still, Jessica Groopman, industry analyst and founding partner at Kaleido Insights, told The New Stack that Solana’s challenges aren’t all that unusual in this space. “It’s not particularly abnormal or atypical, in terms of the security issues, and certainly the transparency issues, across the Web3 space and even DeFi generally,” she said.

Some of that can be attributed to the rushed timeline Yakovenko pointed to on Reddit. “Startups, long before blockchain and crypto, have struggled with security, have prioritized other things, and have been beholden to venture capital levels of growth — demands to prioritize growth over everything else,” Groopman said.

However, Groopman said there are some changes that Solana can and should make moving forward. “This could probably apply to too much of tech: slowing down and prioritizing not just security, but governance and accountability and transparency, much earlier on, as first principles of how things are built, deployed, and reevaluated over time,” she said.

It’s not too late to do so. “Obviously, Solana is up and running — it’s not a brand-new tool — but that doesn’t mean that it can’t be evaluated, audited, and reconfigured towards that,” she said.

It’s important to keep in mind, Groopman said, that the Web3 space is facing an entirely new range of security threats. “If we were to draw a line between traditional security threats like phishing or endpoint attacks, versus Web3 security attacks like rug pulls or ice phishing or cryptojacking or even bridge exploits, it’s a whole new world — not just in terms of security mitigations, but also security risks,” she said.

That’s partially due to the fact that hackers no longer have to do anything to monetize stolen data. “When we’re talking about the financialization of IT architecture — as in millions or billions of dollars literally tracked by blockchain-enabled applications — that encloses significant value directly into the hack,” Groopman said.

And that makes it all the more important to address any potential vulnerabilities, adding weight to some of the concerns raised by DeFiSafety. “This is something that is fundamentally unique, in terms of what’s in it for bad actors, or even from a standpoint of human error — not going over code, not inviting third-party audits as much as possible, not being transparent,” Groopman said.

Selective Optimization

At the same time, Jared Klee, an analyst in residence at Futurum Research, told The New Stack that in looking at Solana, it’s crucial to consider the blockchain trilemma, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin’s idea that there’s an inevitable tradeoff between decentralization, scalability, and security. “So the question is, when you go to build a new system, a layer one network, what do you optimize for? And there’s no right answer to that,” he said.

Seen through that lens, Klee said, Solana simply picked a different focus from, say, Bitcoin or Ethereum. “They said, first, we’re going to be willing to give up on some of that decentralization — we’re willing to tolerate something slightly more centralized — and two, rather than have transaction fees go up, when lots of transactions get sent to the network, we’re basically just going to fall over.”

Stellar, Klee said, made a similar choice regarding optimization. “They gave up on availability and uptime — you can overwhelm the Stellar network,” he said. “You can continue to guarantee, even as the network falls over, that all of the nodes stay in sync, meaning that the ledger for the transactions that have been successfully processed — the transactional history — is the same across the entire network.”

Seen from that perspective, the issues regarding uptime raised by DeFiSafety don’t speak to security — they just speak to uptime. And Solana, Klee said, is never going to have the uptime of, say, an IBM mainframe. “That would be a different optimization from saying, ‘I can guarantee that transactions will always be cheap, and the ledger will always be consistent, but I’m willing to tolerate the thing falling over from time to time.’”

Operational Processes

Still, Klee said that Solana does have some shortcomings. “Where I think they’ve fallen down is they’ve traded off, short-term — I hope short-term — more centralization, not great documentation, not all the Ts and Cs that you would want, not all of the crossed t’s and dotted i’s in terms of getting stuff audited,” he said.

However, Klee said, the absence of some of those operational processes is unsurprising for such a fast-moving company. “Would I expect a two-year-old company to have them? Absolutely not. Would I expect something the size and value of Solana, supporting the volume of stuff they do, to have them? Absolutely. And so we’re kind of at this halfway point — we’ve got a bit of both worlds.”

At that halfway point, Klee said, any popular open source project like Solana has a lot of eyeballs examining it on daily basis, which is both a positive and a negative. “Over time, it becomes hardened, which is great, because you have more people looking at it,” he said. “Near term, you have more people looking at it so there’s a bigger chance of nefarious actors screwing things up.”

From an ecosystem standpoint, Klee said, it would certainly be better if Solana proceeded more slowly. “But let’s assume that Solana did that,” he said. “Someone else would fork the code, move quickly, scale up, raise the money, and just beat them to the punch. So I get why they’re pursuing this strategy. They took money off the table when it was available, and they scaled up per user demand.”

In the interim, Klee said, the issues observed by DeFiSafety aren’t particularly surprising. “Yes, I wish they would do it better — and yes, I understand the trade-off that they made,” he said. “It looks, feels, acts like a growing pain, and I expect it to be solved in a two-, three-, four-year timeframe — ideally faster, but realistically, they’ve got to support continually exponential user growth while they’re doing all the things it means to become a grown-up, hardened platform.”

Feature image via Shutterstock.

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