1confirmation Newsletter - Issue #78
Flash loans recently emerged as a tool that anyone can use to exploit arbitrage opportunities in Ethereum smart contracts. You no longer need any money to make millions exploiting inefficiencies. This is both exciting and scary and has caused many developers to work overtime in the past week.
On Valentine's Day, someone used flash loans to profit over 1000 ETH on a lending protocol called bZx. This was a wakeup call to the Ethereum community and it also tested smart contract cover issued by Nexus Mutual. Following the hack, Nexus paid out its first smart contract cover claims of over $33k to users who had cover on bZx's smart contracts and cover growth has exploded to over 14K ETH.
Required reading this week
bZx Hack Full Disclosure (With Detailed Profit Analysis) — medium.com
Peckshield provides a full disclosure of the bZx hack with an in-depth profit analysis.
@samczsun | Gitcoin — gitcoin.co
Sam Sun is an independent security researcher that does important work for the Ethereum ecosystem. Please consider contributing to his white hat hacking grant on Gitcoin.
Reading Between the Lines: SEC, Telegram, and Rule 144 — a16z.com Hidden in the SEC’s complaint against Telegram is an interesting nuance with potential implications for the broader private equity markets.
The State of Optimistic Rollup — medium.com
Daniel Goldman gives a snapshot of the nascent optimistic rollup development ecosystem and compares different projects’ approaches and technical design decisions.
Compound Governance — medium.com
DeFi platform Compound is launching the testnet for decentralizing the protocol's governance.
1confirmation portfolio reading this week
BitGo Acquires Harbor in Surprise Expansion Beyond Crypto Custody — www.coindesk.com Digital asset custodian BitGo is building a “full stack” security token services provider by acquiring tokenization platform Harbor, including its broker-dealer and transfer agent.
Polkadot Approaches Beta Launch - Claim Your Dots Today with Coinbase Custody! — polkadot.network
Polkadot is shaping up to be one of the most important main net launches of 2020.
Dai Integrated as a Payment Option on Coinbase Commerce — blog.makerdao.com
Coinbase Commerce has added Dai. Merchants around the world can now accept Dai as a payment for goods and services in minutes. This integration opens some of the web’s biggest shops, including those on Shopify and WooCommerce.
Cosmos Community Contributor Grants — blog.cosmos.network
The Cosmos ecosystem continues to grow.