Market Summary

Bitcoin Price: US$ 40,801.13 (+2.83 %)
Ethereum Price: US$ 3,055.56 (+2.26%)

The Gnosis Inferno & Down-to-Frax DAOs

• Axelar announces a grant program for web3 applications, including DAO platforms and cross-chain governance.
• Block Science publishes a governance assessment on Lido DAO.
• Compound reaches its 100th proposal!
• The Glenrose Hospital Foundation is applying for a grant from Decentraland. The grant includes a proposed metaverse gallery for NFTs.
• Metis finishes their test snapshot proposal, bringing community governance to the chain.
• Treasure DAO receives a proposal from Geishas and Gardens.
• Aave receives a proposal to add FRAX on Aave v3 (for Polygon, Fantom, and Avalanche) and considers renewing their Grant DAO for an additional two quarters.
• Frax Finance receives yet another partnership proposal. Badger DAO contributor Spadaboom invites Frax Finance to participate in the launch event for their new BTC treasury DAO, Citadel.
• Gnosis DAO gets questions from Do Kwon (or someone using his Twitter name) and talks about a sizeable SAFE distribution to GNO holders.
• Reflexer begins discussing the structure and consensus mechanism for their DAO.
• Sushi considers staking their TOKE.
• Terra receives a proposal from a TFL team member to allocate additional incentives to Orca, Solend, C98, and FantomMaker.
• Tracer DAO has asked Balancer to whitelist their Treasury Management Fund so they can lock BAL.
• Uma proposes another round of KPI Options for Pie DAO DOUGH staking.
• Gnosis DAO has begun discussing a drastic reduction in their token supply. 6.8m GNO is vesting from the original GNO sale. The team allocated this GNO to the DAO treasury. This proposal would lock and progressively burn this vesting GNO, reducing supply from 10m to 3m. The main motivation for this drastic burn is seemingly that it may attract new investors by removing the risk of this massive amount of vesting tokens coming to market. The post also posits that the burn would empower existing GNO holders, and better aligns the GNO supply with future requirements.

Terra Accumulates CVX, Liquidity Running Dry, Intro to Zeta Markets

• Convex is a yield optimization platform that allows depositors to receive boosted Curve yields without locking up CRV at the cost of a fee. To make up for this fee, CVX is given out as LP rewards.
• Terra has been a huge accumulator of CVX, growing to be the largest CVX held by a DAO in 4 months. Over the past 30 days, they have accumulated around 649k of CVX, pushing them ahead of Frax Finance to be the largest DAO holders of CVX. This comes as Terra has been using the 250M UST from the community fund to farm and stack CVX and CRV. This allows Terra to build up their own treasury of CVX and CRV to direct incentives towards their own pools and may allow them to taper Votium bribe spending.
• Furthermore, the creation of a new 4pool, consisting of UST-FRAX-USDT-USDC, will allow Terra and Frax to direct incentives towards the new 4pool. With Terra and Frax owning a significant sum of CVX, it is likely that they will direct significant incentives and create deep liquidity within the 4pool. The 4pool alliance also consists of Badger, Redacted, Olympus and Tokemak, which adds up to around 60% of all DAO-owned CVX that will be supporting the 4pool.
• The 4pool will drive up demand for both UST and Frax, and might also end the Curve/Convex wars as smaller protocols will find it tough to fight for rewards. This will also further strengthen the peg of UST and Frax.
• KP3R hasn’t given up just yet as they accumulated 530k CVX in the past 30D to incentivize their non-USD stablecoin pairs on Convex.

Market Insights – Where’d The Liquidity Go?

• We’ve been warning that USD strength is one of the biggest headwinds for markets, including BTC and crypto. As BTC struggles to keep its head above $40K, the US Dollar Index (DXY) just broke 100 for the first time in almost two years. The greenback is now on the verge of a multi-decade breakout as two of its major currency pairs (EUR and JPY) are both vulnerable of technical breakdowns of their own. The EUR and JPY make up ~70% of the DXY Index..
• Signs of liquidity deterioration can also be observed within BTC spot markets. This can be seen when looking at the relationship between the average BTC size order resulting in 10bps of slippage. Slippage is the difference between the expected price of a trade and the price at which the trade is executed.
• In very simple terms, the more liquid a market, the larger a position size can be before incurring slippage and vice versa. Over the last several weeks, we can see a decrease across most exchanges in the average size BTC order incurring 10bps of slippage. This could be a warning sign for spot market liquidity should this trend persist.
• It is also important to note that derivate markets are becoming increasingly more important in terms of market structure, notional volume, price discovery, etc. While these are completely valid points, it is also good to remember that a healthy market must be supported by both spot and derivative markets if it is to be sustainably healthy.

GMX AUM Grows, Opensea on SOL, Designs for Liquidation Mechanisms

• GMX is a spot and perpetuals exchange on Arbitrum and Avalanche. GLP is a basket of blue-chip assets, consisting of BTC, ETH, AVAX, and stablecoins. GMX utilizes GLP for spot swaps and levered trading, providing the best on-chain execution for both Arbitrum and Avalanche. This is thanks to GMX’s oracle pricing model that prices trades as if users were using a CEX.
• GLP is able to generate extremely attractive natural yields due to its high utilization and dual-purpose use of capital. The attractive yields grew GLP’s liquidity, expanding from $103M in AUM to $340M in AUM, a significant 228% gain from the start of 2022.
• GMX’s GLP pool continues to attract liquidity given its high yield of 33% paid in ETH + an additional 19% of esGMX on Arbitrum + 20% paid in AVAX + an additional 24% of esGMX. (esGMX = GMX that is vested over 1 year as long as you hold the underlying GLP position).
• One of the reasons GLP is able to provide such high natural yields is because it acts as the counterparty to all leveraged trading positions on the platform. This means as traders profit GLP will have to pay out, but if traders are unprofitable GLP accrues even more value on top of fees. Since leveraged trading is quite hard, GLP pools have made an additional ~$10M on Arbitrum and ~$1M on Avalanche.
• OpenSea finally launched its beta Solana marketplace on Apr 7 with an interface that is very familiar to most NFT traders. During the beta launch, OS stated that there will be limited collection coverage. The full launch will include a scalable way to expand coverage via the Metaplex collection standard. So far, Solana transaction volumes on OS have been relatively tiny with Magic Eden continuing to dominate on Solana. 
• Avoiding the occurrence of bad debts is the primary aim of a liquidation design, as unliquidatable collateral is a loss typically borne by the protocol or socialized among token holders/depositors. Other considerations such as improving the access of liquidation surpluses and tempering the severity of penalties may also alleviate an otherwise unfortunate experience. We believe that a good design should refrain from crippling borrowers with overly harsh liquidation penalties, minimize the cost of carrying out a liquidation, and ensure that there is sufficient liquidity to unwind these positions – especially during torrid market conditions.

GitHub suspends accounts of Russian developers linked to sanctioned firms

• Major developer platform GitHub has reportedly blocked more than a dozen accounts of Russian developers associated with organizations sanctioned by the United States government. 
• The sanctioned accounts include some of the largest banks in Russia — Sberbank and Alfa-Bank — alongside individual developers with links to the sanctioned firms. However, many individual accounts with no links or ties to sanctioned firms were also blocked in the process. Researcher Sergey Bobrov, who reportedly has no current links to any such firm, claimed on April 15 that his account was suspended and then restored.

Iran to stiffen penalties for illegal use of subsidized energy in crypto mining

• The Iranian government will increase the penalties for the use of subsidized energy in crypto mining. The move marks another step in tightening mining regulation in the country, which had faced energy shortages in recent years. 
• Citing the country’s Power Generation, Distribution, and Transmission company, the Tehran Times reported that the government plans to drastically increase the rates of fines for mining operators who use subsidized electricity on Saturday. The company’s representative Mohammad Khodadadi Bohlouli specified:
• “Any use of subsidized electricity, intended for households, industrial, agricultural and commercial subscribers, for mining cryptocurrency is prohibited.”
• According to Bohlouli, the fines for the use of subsidized energy in mining will rise by a minimum of three and a maximum of five times. A repeated violation might lead to the revocation of a business license and even the imprisonment of the offender.

Bitcoin average transaction fees lowest in two years at $1.04

• The average transaction fee per Bitcoin (BTC) transaction made a complete 360-degree over nearly two years to settle down at $1.039, a number which was last recorded back in June 2020. 
• The BTC transaction fee is the cost to transfer any amount of BTC, which is also directly proportional to the time it takes to validate and complete the transaction.
• As evidenced by data provided by Blockchain.com, the average BTC transaction fee saw a steady decline from an all-time high of $62.788 in April 2021 before coming down to an eight-month average of $2 in July 2021.
• Before April 2021, Bitcoin’s average transaction fees peaked in December 2017, standing at $54.638. The sudden spike in the transaction fees at the time mirrored the significant decline in the Bitcoin network hash rate. However, at the time of writing, the Bitcoin network hash rate maintains its newly attained all-time high of 248.11 EH/s.

Terra’s UST flips BUSD to become third-largest stablecoin

• The Terra blockchain’s algorithmic stablecoin Terra USD (UST) has flipped Binance USD (BUSD) to become the third-largest stablecoin on the market.
• UST is a United States dollar-pegged stablecoin that was launched in September 2020. Its minting mechanism requires a user to burn a reserve asset such as Terra (LUNA) to mint an equivalent amount of UST.
• According to CoinGecko, UST’s total market capitalization has surged 15% over the past 30 days to sit at roughly $17.5 billion at the time of writing. The figure currently places UST as the third-largest stablecoin after it flipped BUSD with a slightly lower market cap of $17.46 billion.
• The asset now trailing only behind industry giants Tether (USDT) at $82.8 billion, and USD Coin (USDC) at $50 billion. However, the gap is quite substantial at this stage.
• Despite flipping BUSD in terms of market cap, UST is trading in volumes well below its immediate competitor, with Binance’s stablecoin seeing $2.26 billion worth of trading volume over the past 24 hours compared to UST’s $431.79 million.

Beanstalk Farms loses $182M in DeFi governance exploit

• Credit-based stablecoin protocol Beanstalk Farms lost all of its $182 million collateral from a security breach caused by two sinister governance proposals and a flash loan attack.
• The problem for the protocol was seeded by suspicious governance proposals BIP-18 and BIP-19, which were issued on Saturday by the exploiter, who asked for the protocol to donate funds to Ukraine. However, those proposals had a malicious rider attached to them th ultimately created the sinkhole of funds from the protocol, according to smart contract auditor BlockSec.
• This latest security breach of a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol took place at 12:24 pm UTC. At that time, the exploiter took out $1 billion in flash loans from the Aave (AAVE) protocol denominated in DAI (DAI), USD Coin (USDC), and Tether (USDT) stablecoins. They used these funds to accumulate enough assets to take over 67% of the protocol’s governance and approve their own proposals.
• This case was technically not a hack as the smart contracts and governance procedures functioned as designed. Flaws in their design were exploited, which project spokesperson “Publius” acknowledged in a meeting on Monday when he said:
• “It’s unfortunate that the same governance procedure that put beanstalk in a position to succeed was ultimately its undoing.”
• At 11:49 pm UTC on April 17, Publius wrote that the project is likely lost since there is no venture capital backing to recoup losses, adding “We are f**ked.”

MetaMask warns Apple users over iCloud phishing attacks

• ConsenSys-owned crypto wallet provider MetaMask has sent out a warning to the community regarding Apple iCloud phishing attacks.
• The security issue for iPhone, Mac and iPad users is related to default device settings which see a user’s seed phrase or “password-encrypted MetaMask vault” stored on the iCloud if the user has enabled automatic backups for their application data.
• In a Twitter thread posted on Monday, MetaMask noted that users run the risk of losing their funds if their Apple password “isn’t strong enough” and an attacker is able to phish their account credentials.
• To fix the issue, users can disable automatic iCloud backups for MetaMask

AMC Theatres mobile app accepts Dogecoin, Shiba Inu and more

• AMC Theatres, an American pro-crypto movie theater chain, updated its mobile application services to accept Dogecoin (DOGE), Shibu Inu (SHIB) and other cryptocurrencies as payment across the United States. 
• AMC Theatres first started accepting crypto payments back on November 12, 2021, which allowed customers to purchase movie tickets online using Bitcoin (BTC), Ether (ETH), Bitcoin Cash (BCH) and Litecoin (LTC).
• On January 6, 2022, Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres, promised users via a tweet to include meme tokens DOGE and SHIB by March. While slightly delayed, Aron’s team delivered.
• In the announcement, Aron disclosed that the AMC Theatres iOS and Android mobile apps could accept crypto payments via integration with BitPay, a Bitcoin payment service provider. 
• However, the names of the other newly supported cryptocurrencies are yet to be revealed. To use the feature, users in the U.S. are advised to download the latest version of the mobile app.

Opera Crypto Browser is now available on iPhone and iPad

• Opera released a beta version of its Web3 browser with a built-in crypto wallet on Friday for iOS devices, iPhone and iPad. Opera’s Crypto Browser has been available for Mac and Windows desktop users, as well as Android mobile users since January. The mobile release is the latest step in its Crypto Browser Project, a Web3-focused initiative for facilitating navigation across decentralized applications (DApp), games and metaverse platforms. 
• According to the company, the main features includes the Opera Wallet with support for the Ethereum, Polygon and Celo ecosystems to buy, sell and transfer tokens. Users can also restore any Ethereum Virtual Machine- (EVM)-compatible wallet with the native Opera Wallet and integrate their existing assets and balances.
• On the browser’s homepage, users can see the latest top nonfungible token (NFT) sales and a news aggregator called “Crypto Corner,” with live updates about crypto asset prices and gas fees, as well as airdrops and even suggested educational resources.

Tornado Cash says it’s using Chainalysis oracles to block access from OFAC sanctioned addresses

• On Friday, Tornado Cash announced that it was using oracle contracts from Chainalysis to block wallet addresses sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control, or OFAC. The move comes after the U.S. Department of the Treasury linked North Korean cybercriminal Lazarus Group as an alleged perpetrator for the recent $600 million+ Ronin Bridge exploit. As told by blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, the hackers have sent approximately $80.3 million worth of Ether (ETH) through Tornado Cash. “Maintaining financial privacy is essential to preserving our freedom; however, it should not come at the cost of non-compliance,” said the Tornado Cash team. 
• Tornado Cash is a popular cryptocurrency mixture used to obfuscate the trail of transactions for privacy. The Chainalysis Sanctions Oracle can validate if a cryptocurrency wallet address has been included in a sanctions designation from the United States, European Union or United Nations. But Tornado Cash co-founder Roman Semenov later clarified that the instrument only blocks access to the decentralized application, or DApp, interface and not the underlying smart contract. 
• There have been traces of Tornado Cash in several controversial decentralized finance activities. In February’s $375 million Wormhole exploit, hackers experimented with Tornado Cash using stolen funds. The same month, the LooksRare team also partly used Tornado Cash to cash out over $30 million in crypto. A recent Rare Bears Discord phishing attack that nabbed $800 thousand in nonfungible tokens (NFTs) also involved hackers funneling the stolen funds through Tornado Cash. Reports also emerged that funds from a $33 million Crypto.com exploit were being laundered via the DApp. 

RAILGUN Brings Security and Interoperability to Multiple Chains through Ren

• As previously explored in this article about governance tokens, the RAILGUN project ensures maximum security and trustless operation by having separate DAOs controlling RAILGUN Privacy System deployments on separate chains. This model ensures there is never any need for manual bridging or for some entity within RAILGUN to take custody of tokens. No matter how temporary this custodianship may be on other protocols, or how secure thanks to multisigs, it is not compatible with RAILGUN’s ideals of trustless, decentralized operation.
• However, this does not mean that RAILGUN is lacking in options for interoperability. Use of the RAILGUN Privacy System is not limited by the governance system, and options for cross-chain utility and bridging are plentiful — especially thinks to the innovative solutions offered by the RAILGUN Project’s partners at Ren.
• Ren is a powerful tool for interoperability, as it allows assets from one blockchain to be locked in exchange for tokens on another being minted for the user. So Bitcoin can be locked and funds released as ETH, which could then be shielded on the RAILGUN Privacy System. Because tokens are held in a trustless custodial system and new tokens are minted on the desired chain, this can be performed without the need for manual bridging — so security is maintained.

Bitstamp asks users to update the source of their crypto, citing regulatory compliance

• Major global cryptocurrency exchange Bitstamp continues increasing compliance efforts by requesting its users to provide more data like their source of wealth.
• In an email notification to users on Wednesday, Bitstamp informed its customers about the ongoing policy upgrades on the platform, with the exchange seeking additional info about its clients, one Bitstamp user told Cointelegraph.
• The email reads:
• “We work closely with our regulatory partners to ensure we continue to be your trusted exchange. Towards this, we need your account information to be updated, to provide you with the latest products and crypto assets.”
• Bitstamp specifically requested users to update the origin of cryptocurrencies stored on the platform for regulation purposes.

Fitting the bill: US Congress eyes e-cash as an alternative to CBDC

• Stephen Lynch, a member of Congress who chairs the Task Force on Financial Technology, introduced the Electronic Currency and Secure Hardware Act on March 28, which would develop “an electronic version of the U.S. Dollar for use by the American public.” 
• Curiously, the specialists tasked with authoring the concept claim it isn’t a true CBDC because it would be issued by the U.S. Treasury rather than the U.S. Federal Reserve, the central bank system.
• Rohan Grey, an assistant law professor at Willamette University’s College of Law who helped draft Lynch’s bill, said in an interview that the Fed doesn’t have the statutory authority to create a CBDC or the capacity to maintain the retail accounts that would be required for it. Instead, he described the digital dollar as something replicating the privacy, anonymity and transactional freedom reflecting the properties of physical cash.
• He noted that it would neither use a centralized ledger (like most proposed CBDCs) nor a distributed ledger (like crypto) and maintain its security and integrity through its hardware. According to Grey, beyond that, giving the Fed the power to conduct the electronic surveillance of digital currency isn’t a good idea because of the potential for infringing on users’ privacy. He positioned e-cash as a third alternative beyond account-based CBDCs and crypto, which addresses concerns related to privacy and surveillance.

Bitcoin institutional buying ‘could be big narrative again’ as 30K BTC leaves Coinbase

• For Ki Young Ju, CEO of on-chain analytics platform CryptoQuant, institutional BTC buying “might be the big narrative” in the crypto space once more.
• Ki highlighted figures from Coinbase Pro, the professional trading offshoot of United States exchange Coinbase, that confirm that large tranches of BTC continue to leave its books.
• Those tranches totaled 30,000 BTC in a single day this week, and the event is not an isolated one, with March seeing similar behavior.
• Meanwhile, the major buyer story of the year — that of blockchain protocol Terra — continues. The Luna Foundation Guard (LFG), the nonprofit organization attached to Terra, has added around 2,633 BTC ($105.3 million) to its reserves over the past 48 hours.

Terraform Labs gifts another $880M to Luna Foundation Guard

• Terra blockchain developer Terraform Labs (TFL) has gifted the Luna Foundation Guard (LFG) 10 million LUNA, worth around $820 million at current prices.
• LFG is a nonprofit organization attached to Terra tasked with collateralizing the network’s algorithmic stablecoin, Terra USD (UST), to keep it pegged with the U.S. dollar.
• TFL’s latest announcement came on Thursday via Twitter, but it did not outline what the funds would go toward specifically. However, transaction data from Terra Finder shows that 7.8 million LUNA (roughly $630 million) was promptly transferred out of LFG’s reserve wallet on Thursday.
• Given Terra’s recent form, led by founder Do Kwon — who has the goal of accruing $10 billion worth of Bitcoin (BTC) to back UST’s reserves — many expect that some of the funds will go toward building its stash of digital gold. Another chunk of LUNA may be burned (a way in which the UST/USD peg is maintained.)
• Some additional AVAX could be on the shopping list as well, considering both TFL and LFG purchased $100 million worth of the coin last week.

Montenegro makes Vitalik a citizen, part of plans to promote it as a blockchain hub

• The Montenegrin government has begun fulfilling its pledge to become a hub for blockchain innovation by reportedly making Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin its newest citizen.
• Montenegrin news outlet RTCB reported that Prime Minister Zdravko Krivokapić recommended Buterin receive the privilege to help the southeastern European nation promote its efforts to become a blockchain innovation hub.

Robinhood CEO outlines how DOGE could become ‘currency of the internet’

• Robinhood CEO Vladimir Tenev took to Twitter on Thursday afternoon to explain how Dogecoin (DOGE) could become the “future currency of the Internet.”
• In a thread of 12 posts to his nearly 200,000 followers, Tenev outlined what steps need to be taken to transform the memecoin into a usable asset for everyday payments and transactions on the internet.
• Tenev began by drawing attention to the fact that Dogecoin’s transaction fees — roughly $0.003 per transaction — are already small enough to place the altcoin as a feasible e-cash frontrunner.
• He believes the block size and the block time of Dogecoin are the main areas that require improvement if the cryptocurrency is to become widely adopted.
• Dogecoin currently has a 1-megabyte block size and a 1-minute block time, which means that Dogecoin’s total throughput stands at approximately 40 transactions per second (TPS).
• In comparison, the Visa network has a throughput of approximately 65,000 TPS — meaning that DOGE would need to increase its total throughput by roughly 1,625 times in order to be on par with Visa. Tenev said that this isn’t a worry and can be solved simply by increasing Dogecoin’s block size limit from 1MB to 1 gigabyte and eventually to 10GB.
• Tenev finished the thread with a message to the developers of Dogecoin, urging them to focus on increasing the block size limit above all else.

Ripple CEO: SEC case is going ‘much better than I hoped’

• Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse is increasingly optimistic that the long-running case with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission will deliver a positive result for the blockchain-based global payments company. 
• Speaking on the main stage at Paris Blockchain Week on Thursday, Garlinghouse told attendees of the fireside chat that Ripple’s defense in the ongoing case was faring better than he expected:
• “The lawsuit has gone exceedingly well and much better than I could have hoped when it began about 15 months ago.”

MicroStrategy shareholders letter: We’ll ‘vigorously pursue’ more BTC buys

• MicroStrategy CEO Michael Saylor has proclaimed to the shareholders of his company that his firm intends to “vigorously pursue” its reserve assets strategy to buy and hold more Bitcoin.
• Saylor’s publicly traded company is the largest single-wallet holder of Bitcoin (BTC) in the world with 129,218 BTC, according to wallet tracker Bitcoin Treasuries. Those coins are currently valued at about $5.1 billion. MicroStrategy bought 4,197 more coins on April 5.
• By comparison, Tesla, MicroStrategy’s runner-up in the hodling race, owns 43,200 BTC valued at about $1.7 billion.
• In MicroStrategy’s 2022 Proxy Statement, which was filed with the SEC on April 14, Saylor praised his company’s ongoing success in being early to add BTC to its treasury and add value for customers and shareholders. MicroStrategy only paid about $3.9 billion for the BTC in its treasury, translating to a paper profit margin of $1.2 billion. Saylor wrote in the letter:
• “Our parallel strategy to acquire and hold Bitcoin has been a tremendous success.”

Animoca Brands to bet big on MMORPG blockchain games

• Animoca Brands, the parent company of The Sandbox, added Eden Games to its portfolio on Tuesday. Eden Games is a publisher of popular racing games including the Gear.Club and Test Drive series. Animoca hopes this acquisition will enhance its REVV Motorsport ecosystem of blockchain-based racing games on Polygon.
• On Wednesday, Animoca announced it is acquiring Darewise Entertainment, a Paris-based game studio founded by former Ubisoft executives and other AAA games industry veterans. Darewise is currently developing a new play-to-earn (P2E) massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, called Life Beyond. Animoca Brands agreed to a 70% stake in Darewise Entertainment, according to VentureBeat.

Quantum computing firm simulates adoption of crypto payments

• Multiverse Computing, a quantum computing firm with offices in Canada and Spain, has partnered with the Bank of Canada to run simulations on how the adoption of cryptocurrency might proceed as a payment method.
• In a Thursday announcement, Multiverse Computing said it used its equipment as part of a proof-of-concept project with the Bank of Canada to generate examples of how non-financial firms may end up adopting crypto. The quantum simulations used scenarios with 8 to 10 financial networks with more than 1.2 octillion possible configurations.
• Multiverse Computing chief technology officer Sam Mugel told Cointelegraph that the results were based around the adoption of Bitcoin (BTC) and Ether (ETH) in Canadian markets. According to Mugel, the simulations suggested “a high uptake of crypto in the short term” among non-financial institutions able to adopt digital assets for payments. 

North Korean Lazarus Group allegedly behind Ronin Bridge hack

• The United States Treasury Department Office of Foreign Assets Control Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons (SDN) list was updated Thursday to reflect the possibility that North Korean cyber-criminal Lazarus Group was behind last month’s hack of the Ronin Bridge, in which over 173,600 Ether (ETH) and 25.5 million USD Coin (USDC) was taken, Chainalysis announced by Twitter. The information was also confirmed by Ronin. 
• The hack, which took place on March 23, was worth over $600 million at the time. Discovered several days after the fact, it is one of the biggest robberies of its kind in history. The coin came from the play-to-earn role-playing game Axie Infinity developed by the Vietnamese studio Sky Mavis. The game’s developers have raised over $150 million in an effort to reimburse users affected.

Arweave permanent storage is now available on Avalanche

• We are pleased to announce that Arweave storage is now natively available on Avalanche.
• Arweave continues to be the staple solution for permanent storage in web3 applications. Any decentralized applications requiring truly long-term (or permanent) storage should use Arweave to store arbitrary amounts of data in its current, immutable form and be guaranteed its persistence and availability for well beyond 200 years.
• Users can now pay for permanent storage using Avalanche wallets and AVAX tokens. This opens a new design space for building truly decentralized applications on Avalanche, where everything from the UI to the smart contracts to the database is decentralized. Examples could include a full-stack decentralized social network, or an Avalanche version of Decentraland, only this time fully decentralized and immutable.