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Crypto News Summary: Binance Launches Oracle, UvToken and Team Finance Exploited, Blockchain.com Debuts Visa Card

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DeFi

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

Journalist

Sead Fadilpašić

About Author

Sead specializes in writing factual and informative articles to help the public navigate the ever-changing world of crypto. He has extensive experience in the blockchain industry, where he has served...

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Last updated:

January 8, 2024

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Exchange news

Binance has launched a decentralized Web3 oracle, Binance Oracle, a data feed network that connects real-world data to blockchain smart contracts, said a press release. Binance Oracle will enable smart contracts to run on real-world inputs and outputs, starting with the BNB Chain ecosystem. The early bird program has begun, and over 10 BNB Chain projects have already integrated with the oracle network. Binance Oracle is chain-agnostic and will eventually support more blockchains, the exchange said.

Security news

Multi-chain crypto wallet UvToken has been hacked for BNB 5,011 ($1.44 million) and the funds have been routed into crypto mixer Tornado Cash, according to security firms Ancilia and PeckShield. The incident happened on the BNB blockchain today. UvToken confirmed the hack and said that its “Eco Staking project” was attacked.
Decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity locker Team Finance has suffered an exploit with the attacker draining $15.8 million worth of tokens from the protocol, according to PeckShield. The hacker targeted the liquidity tokens under Team Finance’s custody. Team Finance confirmed the attack, saying that “$14.5M USD of tokens were exploited through the audited v2 to v3 migration function.”

Payments news

Blockchain.com, a platform to buy, sell, and trade crypto, announced the debut of its Blockchain.com Visa Card, with 50,000 waitlist sign-ups already at launch. Initially available to US residents, users can spend their crypto or cash within their Blockchain.com Wallet without fees and earn 1% back in crypto anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted, it said.
Crypto payments processor BitPay announced support for Polygon (MATIC). Consumers can buy, store, swap, and spend MATIC within the BitPay app later this week, said the press release. BitPay app holders will have access to spend other ERC-20 tokens on the Polygon Network. BitPay merchants will be able to accept Polygon payments from “the most popular” Polygon wallets, it added.

CBDC news

Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that the National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) will integrate its central bank digital currency (CBDC), the digital tenge, on the BNB Chain.

Regulation news

Hong Kong‘s government plans to allow retail investors to trade crypto on locally licensed exchanges, according to Bloomberg. A mandatory licensing regime for crypto trading platforms that is due to begin in March will allow retail trading, it said, citing unnamed sources. Details of the new regime are expected to be announced on Monday at a conference.

Blockchain news

Layer-1 blockchain platform Fantom announced the launch of Watchdog, a continuous smart auditing system. In collaboration with blockchain security firm Debaub, decentralized applications (dapps) developed on Fantom will benefit from automatic audits by the Watchdog system. The launch of Watchdog will bolster the security of dapps on Fantom, and also upgrade the quality and performance of Fantom-native applications, said an announcement.

Investment news

Fun, a blockchain software development company building applications that leverage decentralized wallet (dWallet) technology, today announced it raised $3.9 million in a pre-seed funding round led by JAM Fund, and joined by SOMA Capital, NOMO Ventures, and Great Oaks Venture Capital, as well as early-stage technology investor Cory Levy. It plans to use the funds to build a suite of products and applications on top of Odsy Network, a decentralized access control layer to Web3.
The Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), a software development company, has raised a total of $9 million in seed funding co-led by Steve Vassallo at Foundation Capital and Thomas Bailey at Road Capital. The funds will be used to launch and accelerate the expansion of Teleport, a decentralized ridesharing application powered by TRIP, a new protocol developed by DEC that will enable a host of mobility-based applications powered by the Solana (SOL) blockchain.
Web3 publishing protocol Koii Network announced its partnership with decentralized Q&A protocol Peeranha enabling users who submit responses to questions on Peeranha to receive KOII tokens every time their response is viewed, said a press release. Koii will also have a dedicated forum on the platform, enabling developers to earn tokens by helping one another use and build on Koii’s Decentralized App Development Stack. In the future, Peeranha community members will also be able to earn tokens by running nodes on a personal device to host the decentralized application itself.
Baicells, a provider of LTE and 5G solutions, and Helium Deploy, a blockchain-focused company and provider of Helium 5G Solution bundles, have announced a partnership that will see Helium Deploy invest $9.5 million in Baicells Nova430H DeWi radios, to meet global demand, said a press release.

DeFi news

Open-source research, development, and deployment laboratory Protocol Labs announced the launch of Filecoin Saturn, a data delivery network that will help scale the Filecoin network and make it more accessible to the general public, said a press release. The release of Filecoin Saturn enables anyone to download Saturn’s open-source software, run it on their server, contribute bandwidth to the network, and earn FIL.
The DFINITY Foundation, the not-for-profit developing the public blockchain Internet Computer Protocol (ICP), announced that ICP has integrated support for crawlers, which will allow dapps and websites on the blockchain to be found on search engines and cards of them to be generated on social platforms, said an announcement. Crawlers are programs used by search engines such as Google to collect content data so that they can index, rank, and render metadata from dapps. “The Internet Computer will be the first-ever blockchain to allow Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for dapps running 100% on-chain,” it said.