Smart Contracts
OpenSea smart contract upgrade to delist inactive NFTs on Ethereum
OpenSea, one of the most popular nonfungible token (NFT) marketplace, has rolled out an upgrade to its smart contract, a proactive measure to weed out inactive listings on the platform. As a part of the planned upgrade, all OpenSea users will need to migrate their NFT listings — currently hosted over the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain — to the new smart contract. The new contract is live! Start migrating your listings now: https://t.co/W1w9ciCK2D — OpenSea (@opensea) February 18, 2022 According to the OpenSea announcement, the NFT listings created before Feb. 18 will automatically expire within a week by Feb. 25 by 2 PM ET: “This new upgrade will ensure old, inactive listings on Ethereum securely expire and allow us to offer new safety features in the future.” Upon successful migration, the NFT...
How HashEx is developing new auditing methods to outsmart hackers, as told by founder Dmitry Mishunin
As the cryptocurrency market has grown, so too have the number of bad actors looking to exploit vulnerable decentralized finance, or DeFi, protocols, and projects for their own gain. Earlier this month, the Ethereum-Solana Wormhole token bridge suffered the biggest hack of 2022, with $321 million lost due to a signature verification vulnerability. Such exploits have gotten increasingly sophisticated over the years. But blockchain security firms like HashEx are keeping up the pace just as hackers upgrade their tactics. During the past few years, HashEx has audited more than 700 DeFi smart contracts that secure over $2 billion worth of investors’ funds. One notable project that utilizes HashEx is Trader Joe, a popular decentralized exchange on the Avalanche (AVAX) blockchain. In an exc...
Indian couple celebrates blockchain wedding with NFT vows, digital priest
A young couple from India used nonfungible tokens (NFTs) to digitize their love for each other till eternity over the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain. The recently married couple from Pune, India, Shruti Nair and Anil Narasipuram decided to take their court marriage to the next level by hosting a blockchain wedding. According to Anil, the husband: “I read some articles on how people in other countries were doing blockchain marriages and it motivated me.” Other prominent crypto entrepreneurs to follow the trend include Rebecca Kacherginsky, Coinbase’s staff product designer. Most people get married in a place of religious worship, on a beach, or in the mountains. Peter (@_iphelix) and I are NOT most people. We got married on the #blockchain. 1/7 pic.twitter.com/2ExexrlLbZ — Rebecca Kachergi...
What are flash loans in DeFi?
Similar to traditional loans, flash loans are expected to be paid back in full eventually. However, there are also marked differences. In typical lending processes, a borrower loans money from a lender. The amount is expected to be paid back in full eventually, with interest, depending on the terms discussed between the lender and the borrower. Flash loans operate on a similar framework but have some unique terms and premises: Use of smart contracts A smart contract is a tool used in most blockchains to ensure that funds do not change hands until a specific set of rules are met. When it comes to flash loans, the borrower is required to repay the full amount of the loan before the completion of the transaction. If this rule is not followed, the transa...
The life cycle of smart contracts in the blockchain ecosystem
The formation of a smart contract, freezing of the smart contract, execution of the smart contract and finalization of the smart contract are the four significant steps of a smart contract’s life cycle. It is different from the blockchain development life cycle, which begins with defining the issue you want to resolve with your blockchain product and ends with a minimum viable product. Create Iterative contract negotiation and an implementation phase make up the creation phase. First, the parties must agree on the contract’s overall content and goals. This is similar to traditional contract negotiations and can be done online or offline. On the underlying ledger platform, all participants must have a wallet. Its identifier is pseudonymous in most circumstances, and it is used t...
Avalanche eyes 60% rally as AVAX price breaks out of bull flag
Avalanche (AVAX) strengthened its case for a potential upside run towards $160 in the coming sessions as it broke out of a classic bullish pattern earlier this week. Dubbed “bull flag,” the pattern emerges when the price consolidates lower/sideways between two parallel trendlines (flag) after undergoing a strong upside move (flagpole). Later, in theory, the price breaks out of the channel range to continue the uptrend and tends to rise by as much as the flagpole’s height. AVAX went through a similar price trajectory across the last 30 days, containing a roughly 100% flagpole rally to nearly $150, followed by over a 50% flag correction to $72, and a breakout move above the flag’s upper trendline (around $85) on Dec. 15. AVAX/USD daily price chart featuring Bull Flag ...
Altcoin Roundup: Three smart contract platforms that could see deeper adoption in 2022
Decentralized finance (DeFi) dominated media headlines throughout 2021 and the sector, along with nonfungible tokens (NFTs), helped to initiate the mass adoption of cryptocurrencies. While high yields on staking and instant profits from flipping jpegs have proven to be very lucrative for investors, it’s important to remember that none of it would have been possible without the underlying capabilities of smart contract technology. The Ethereum network remains, hands-down, the most widely used layer-one smart contract platform in the crypto ecosystem, but everyone knows about the high fee and clogged network issues of the past few years. In 2021, competing networks like Avalanche and Binance Smart Chain enabled compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and this produced pos...
$33.5 billion worth of ETH ‘trapped’ in largest Ethereum contract
The single largest Ethereum contract containing 8,641,954 Ether (ETH) worth $33.5 billion is sitting idle because it cannot be spent or sent. A Twitter user highlighted the Beacon chain contract claiming it to be the largest Ethereum contract with billions of dollars worth of ETH “trapped” inside it. BREAKING: 8,641,954 ETH ($32 billion) trapped in single largest Ethereum contract and unable to be sent or spent. Will require hard fork that hasn’t been written or specified yet. Timing and terms of hard fork still unknown.https://t.co/xcXPwbS93v — Tomer Strolight | Not interested in your trades. (@TomerStrolight) December 14, 2021 The contract in question is an Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain staking contract launched in November 2020, and it cannot be spent without a hardfork. Beacon ...
Umbrella Network launches $15M oracle accelerator program
Decentralized oracle service Umbrella Network has launched a new accelerator program for projects looking to build data pipelines to the cryptocurrency market, a process that many within the industry believe is necessary to grow the emerging domains of blockchain gaming, DeFi and the Metaverse. The $15 million accelerator program intends to fund companies that are bringing new data solutions to the blockchain ecosystem, Umbrella Network announced Tuesday. Sam Kim, a partner at Umbrella Network, told Cointelegraph that his company is focused on funding projects within blockchain gaming, Metaverse, digital advertising, blockchain-based identity, sports and weather, among others. To date, projects in these and other fields have largely relied on centralized systems for running key compu...
