Crypto News, June 5, 2018: Green Day

Highlights: SEC creates a point-of-contact position for crypto issues, six-figures worth of EOS bugs, and tech proposals galore.

SEC Establishes Cryptocurrency Advisory Position

Source: SEC

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has named Valerie A. Szczepanik to a newly-created position responsible for “coordinate efforts across all SEC Divisions and Offices regarding the application of U.S. securities laws to emerging digital asset technologies and innovations.” Ms. Szczepanik currently heads the SEC Distributed Ledger Technology Workgroup.

Hacker Finds $120,000 Worth of EOS Bugs

Source: HackerOne

One ethical hacker has earned $120,000 in approximately a week through the EOS bug bounty program, identifying 11 critical security vulnerabilities in the EOS code. While the payout in the amount of time is impressive, the real takeaway here is the number of critical bugs in the source code of a mainnet supposedly launching any day now.

Mobile Gaming Platform to Integrate with Loom Dapp Chains

Source: Medium | Source Code - Github

Mobile gaming platform Cocos, one of Asia’s largest, has announced its SDK to integrate with the Loom dapp chains. The SDK will provide sample implementations as references and will aim to assist developers wishing to add blockchain back-end solutions to their games.

Enigma Proposes “Secret Voting” For Governance Protocol

Source: Enigma

In Part 3 of its “Enigma Solutions Series,” Enigma details Token-Curated registries (TCRs), essentially registries which utilize weighted voting, and proposes “secret voting” as a solution to vote manipulation. This would leverage “secret contracts” which mask input data to nodes, thereby never revealing individual votes while still providing a trustable aggregate result. This is the claim; it’s difficult to say whether their proposed solution actually solves the issue of vote manipulation.

ICON Launches Android Mobile Wallet

Source: Google Play Store

ICONex, ICON’s cryptocurrency wallet, has launched a mobile version for Android on the Google Play store. ICON plans to support iOS in the future, but does not have any specific dates yet.

Announcement: Liskecosystem.io

Source: Lisk

Lisk has launched Liskecosystem.io, a website showing upcoming Lisk ICOs. There aren’t many yet, but the project is just in the beginning stages.

Kinit App: Public Beta Details

Source: Medium

Kinit released further details about the development of its standalone KIN app today, sharing updates from the second phase of their private beta launch. They also announced that the public beta for the app will run from mid-July 2018 through Q3 for users in the U.S. The current private beta is focused on user verification and peer-to-peer transactions; the public beta will presumably look to test solutions to feedback from these experiments.

Decred Proposes Hybrid DEX Architecture Solution

Source: Decred

Decred has put out a proposal for a DEX which utilizes a hybrid architecture of a client-server model to host trading pairs with a peer-to-peer atomic swap node model. The proposal, the authors say, addresses user complaints with existing centralized and decentralized exchanges, such as transaction latency. The off-chain solutions outlined in the proposal may also address scalability concerns. It’s an interesting idea; we still have some questions, but the full proposal (linked above) is worth a read-through.

Hydro Snowflake Identity Management Proposal

Source: Github

While blockchain technology has offered many personal security and privacy innovations, identity management remains an unsolved problem. Hydro’s Snowflake solution proposes to solve this problem via tokenized identities and leveraging selectively-unmaskable metadata, giving the user discretion over when and to whom they reveal identity information. A well-executed identity-management solution has huge potential; we’ll be interested to see where this goes.

Announcement: EVRYTHING Blockchain Integration Hub

Source: EVRYTHING

Personal data management platform EVRYTHING today announced the launch of its blockchain integration hub as well as three strategic partnerships. OriginTrail, Tierion, and BLOCKv will partner with EVRYTHING to offer various solutions to consumer brands wishing to manage supply chains and other business operations with blockchain-based solutions. Read more about the initiative at the source link above.

Announcement: Ledger Desktop & Mobile Apps

Source: Ledger

Ledger has announced a launch date for its native desktop and mobile applications - June 9th, 2018. The new applications will feature support for multiple cryptocurrencies, a portfolio dashboard, and compatibility with multiple devices. Read more details and get the full feature list at the source link above.

Ledger Support for Monero: Soon™

Source: Twitter

Monero released the source code establishing infrastructure for full Ledger support. No dates for a final launch have yet been announced.

New Listings on Binance: AGI, QuarkChain

Source: AGI | QuarkChain

Binance opened trading for SingularityNET (AGI) at 8:00am UTC today. Trading for QuarkChain (QKC) opened at 4:00am UTC and came with a high risk warning due to the low amount of coins in current circulation. Read the full details in the source links above.

Bitfinex Targeted in DDoS Attack

Source: Bloomberg

Cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex has released a statement saying that “normal operations” had resumed following a DDoS attack on their website earlier today. Bitfinex stated that no user accounts or funding were at risk, and that trading operations were the only services affected. Bitfinex previously suffered a loss of $68 million in an August 2017 hacking.

Verge Attacks: An In-Depth Analysis

Source: The Abacus

By now, this shouldn’t be news to anyone: Verge has issues. We’ve reported fairly thoroughly on the ongoing XVG saga in the past week and won’t bore anyone with repeated details - however, if you’re looking for a comprehensive analysis with just the right amount of snark, check out the very well-written account linked above.

GameCredits & Komodo: Another In-Depth Analysis

Source: Medium

In a similar vein, yesterday we reported on a partnership between GameCredits and Komodo to upgrade their security protocol. The Medium article linked above provides a more in-depth look at the attack behind the decision and the solution Komodo offers.

Japanese Tech Company Aims to be Bitmain Competitor

Source: CCN

Japanese tech company GMO has released the B2, the first bitcoin mining rig developed entirely by a Japanese company. Retailing at $1,999, GMO hopes to supercede Bitmain as the primary supplier of mining rigs. Full specs of the B2 can be found at the source link above.

Canadian Sports Betting Platform Raises $4.5 Million

Source: Steemit

FansUnite, a Canadian sports betting platform, has raised approximately $4.5 million in private funding for their blockchain-based sports betting protocol. The project is being built on the Ethereum blockchain. Read more in their whitepaper.

Partnership: Binance & chhiliZ

Source: Wall St Hodl

In further sportsball betting news, Binance has announced its intention to invest in Malta-based chiliZ, a tokenized sports/e-sports platform. Both companies will look to capitalize on what they see as an upcoming opportunity in e-sports gaming. chiliZ raised $27 million in funding prior to Binance’s investment.

Publica Announces First Book ICO

Source: USA Commerce

Earlier this week we reported on Publica, a blockchain project for aspiring authors to get their books funded through readable pre-sale tokens. Today, Publica announced the first book ICO that will launch on their platform - Backpacker’s Guide to Europe, by New York Times bestselling author Matthew Kepnes. Publica has also released a mobile e-Reader app for iOS and Android, available at the source link above.

South Korean Hospital Accepting Cryptocurrency

Source: Business Korea

A Sourth Korean hospital will begin accepting cryptocurrency as payment for medical services. KMP Healthcare Seoul announced yesterday that patients wishing to pay in digital assets will be able to do so, utilizing a proprietary Life Care Global Coin (LCGC). The goal is to make Korean medical services more accessible to domestic and international patients.

Ripple Hires Former SEC Chair In Securities Lawsuit

Source: CoinDesk

Former SEC Chairwoman Mary Jo White will be part of the team representing Ripple (XRP) in an upcoming class-action lawsuit initially filed by a former investor. The lawsuit is focused on whether XRP is a security and is therefore in violation of state and federal policies.

Belgium Launches Anti-Scam Website

Source: CoinDesk

The Belgian government is supporting “Too Good to be True,” a news site aimed at educating the public about potential cryptocurrency scams, analogous to the U.S.’s HoweyCoins.com. The website includes a “checker” to confirm the validity of various other sites, but does not claim to be fool-proof.

Follow-Up: BTC Mempool

Source: Twitter

Following up from yesterday’s news, the potential issue with the BTC mempool has been resolved. The growing backlog has been attributed to cleanup rather than any malicious attack.

Steve Wozniak Has High Hopes for Cryptocurrency

Source: Chepicap

Apple founder Steve Wozniak reinforced his bullish stance on cryptocurrency in an interview with CNBC, saying that he agrees with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s statement that Bitcoin will eventually become the world’s single currency. He has previously offered positive sentiments on blockchain technology and Ethereum specifically.

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