The week is kicking off with a mixed bag for crypto. That goes for prices – Bitcoin (BTC-USD), for instance, is up on the day but struggling to retake $40,000 – and for news, too. Let’s catch up on the latest dramatic happenings in the New Digital World.
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NEAR’s Bridge Flips the Script on Would-Be Hacker
Aurora Labs is a group of developers from NEAR Protocol (NEAR-USD) focused on bridging to Ethereum. That’s a task that’s put other projects firmly in the danger zone… But Aurora Labs got to take a victory lap yesterday, when its Rainbow Bridge repelled a would-be hacker.
Hilariously, the attacker ended up losing 2.5 ETH (roughly $7,000) to the Rainbow Bridge’s automated defense system. “No bridged funds lost, attacker lost some money, bridge architecture was designed to resist such attacks, additional measures to be taken to ensure the cost of an attack attempt is increased,” as Aurora CEO Alex Shevchenko summed up the events on Twitter.
“I wish everyone who is innovating in the blockchain to pay enough attention to security and robustness of their products through all the available means: automatic systems, notifications, bug bounties, internal and external audits,” Shevchenko added later in the tweet thread.
Sounds like a smart plan to me! And elsewhere in NEAR Protocol: “The core team and the NEAR Foundation are both very solid,” wrote Luke Lango and Charlie Shrem for their Crypto Investor Network.
“The NEAR blockchain is fast, easy to use, and has super low fees” while offering several developer-friendly features, Luke and Charlie explained in their buy alert adding NEAR to the portfolio in March. It previously made the headlines last Monday, when it launched an algorithmic stablecoin – similar to TerraUSD (UST-USD) that’s surged in popularity lately.
But while bots worked in NEAR/Aurora’s favor this weekend… The same cannot be said for Solana (SOL-USD), unfortunately.
Solana Goes Down for Seven Hours
Solana has an NFT minting tool called Candy Machine that crashed Saturday after “bots reportedly submitted more than 4 million transactions a second,” explains Decrypt. And by “crashed,” I mean all of Solana went down.
“To combat this, we have merged and will soon deploy a botting penalty to the program as part of a broader effort to stabilize the network,” tweeted Metaplex, the creators of Candy Machine.
Solana validators also came together on Discord to reboot the network, Decrypt reports, and they ultimately got Solana back online after about seven hours.
But it’s not the first time Solana’s succumbed to a bot attack… And it’s not the only one being targeted, either:
On Wednesday, Cloudflare (NYSE:NET) announced that its “systems automatically detected and mitigated a 15.3 million request-per-second (rps) DDoS attack” on one of its crypto clients (which it did not name).
Cloudflare’s blog post noted that this is “one of the largest HTTPS DDoS attacks on record.” Roughly 6,000 different bots were involved, “from 112 countries around the world.” Naturally, this involved a lot of resources…but ultimately, “Cloudflare customers are protected against this botnet.”
Luckily for crypto projects, they are managing to shake off another threat lately: the regulatory hammer.
Crypto Heads To The Bahamas
Last week, developers and investors in the New Digital World came together in another tropical locale – this time, in Nassau, Bahamas.
In fact, the crypto exchange FTX (FTT-USD) – which co-hosted the conference – headquarters in Nassau full time. And “About 20 or 30 companies are engaged in conversations with us” to join them in the Bahamas, according to an FTX executive quoted in The Block last week.
FTX’s founder, Sam Bankman-Fried, is “the nexus of crypto so if you’re a VC or a trader, you need to be near him,” one conference-goer told The Block.
Most importantly for everyone, the Bahamas offer a friendly regulatory framework for crypto projects – and have since 2020. That road has been long and twisty for bigger governments like the U.S. and especially the EU.
Crypto miners, however, are enjoying some encouraging developments in New York. While the NY State Assembly did pass a two-year mining moratorium, that bill looks like it could die on the table. That’s because the NY Senate has it in committee – but has no hearings scheduled for the bill before the legislative session ends on June 2.
“It’s still possible for the bill to make it to the floor if the Democratic majority leadership decides to move it,” but the mining moratorium is highly controversial even among lawmakers, The Block reports.
Meanwhile, in the Metaverse…
The Sandbox (SAND-USD) just keeps racking up wins. While SAND prices did not escape the long “crypto winter” drawdown, the metaverse is still delivering head-turning headlines.
Most recently, “a range of LANDs went up for sale or auction” in the Sandbox metaverse on Thursday, “and the turnout did not disappoint,” our Ultimate Crypto team reported in their Saturday update.
“Among other impressive sales, one large plot ended up selling at auction for 626,666 SAND, which equates to about $1.47 million. ‘Metaverse’ hype may have cooled off slightly from last year, but demand and interest is clearly still present,” our analysts conclude.
Clearly, it’s not just Snoop Dogg who’s making plenty of coin (so to speak) in the Sandbox. Stay tuned and I’ll keep you apprised of further developments in the metaverse and the rest of the New Digital World.
On the date of publication, Ashley Cassell did not have (either directly or indirectly) any positions in the securities mentioned in this article. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer, subject to the InvestorPlace.com Publishing Guidelines. To have more news from The New Digital World sent to your inbox, click here to sign up for the newsletter.
