Crypto Startup Layer Secures $6M to Solve Smart Contract Limitations

A blockchain infrastructure startup, Layer, has successfully raised $6 million in a seed funding round. This project is led by 1kx and joined by Fabric Ventures, Arrington Capital and Stake Capital group. The company aims to utilize this money on advancing Ethereum’s Capability by innovating developer tools for full-stack dApps using web assembly.

Pioneering Blockchain Infrastructure

Layer, A company found by blockchain veterans Sam Cassatt, Jake Hartnell and Ethan Frey, aims to fix the limitations of contracts by forming more complex Decentralized Applications (dApps). This projects aims to solve surrounding smart contracts performance and scalability through the combination of blockchain security with off-chain services like AI agent and decentralized messaging server.

Sam Cassatt, co-founder of Layer Stated:

“We wanted to complete the full narrative arc of decentralized architecture, and give the world the tools necessary to build any application, with any performance requirements in this trust-minimized way.”

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Angel Investors and Layer SDK

Angel investors, including Sreeram Kannan from EigenLayer, Mike Silagadze from Ether.fi, and Paul Taylor, a former BlackRock executive also helped raise a funding of $6 million. These industry insiders are showing effort and support towards the release of “Layer SDK”, which will help developers to build full-stack blockchain applications with Ethereum as its base.

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Addressing Smart Contract Vulnerabilities

This project is about to be launched when concerns about vulnerabilities in smart contract are rising. Trugard Labs, a blockchain firm identified over 34,000 high-risk vulnerabilities in smart contract being used on various blockchains, including Ethereum and BNB chain.

Layer aims to minimize potential risks and improve Smart contracts functionability with enhanced security. This is a critical development in the growing decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem.

Users Are Encouraged to Secure Wallets After $52M Is Transferred to Ethereum in Radiant Capital Hack

Summary

A recent sophisticated hack at Radiant Capital led to the theft of $52 million worth of cryptocurrency assets. Radiant Capital advised customers to secure their wallets after the thief transferred almost all of the stolen money to Ethereum, according to blockchain security firm PeckShield. The platform is now working with cybersecurity experts and authorities to track and recover the funds.

PeckShieldAlert X (formerly twitter ) post.

Radiant Capital’s $52M Transferred to Ethereum

On Oct. 24, blockchain forensic firm PeckShield reported that a hacker associated with Radiant Capital had moved approximately $52 million in stolen crypto assets to the Ethereum network. The addresses connected to the hacker transferred nearly all funds from Arbitrum and Binance’s BNB Chain, totaling around 20,500 Ether.

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Details of the Radiant Capital Exploit

Radiant Capital, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lender, was targeted on Oct. 16 in a malware-based hack described as “one of the most sophisticated hacks ever recorded in DeFi.” Attackers compromised the hardware wallets of three Radiant developers, leading to losses exceeding $50 million.

User Advice: Remove Permissions from Your Wallet

Radiant Capital advised its users to use revoke.cash to remove permissions on impacted contracts in order to stop future misuse in the wake of the incident. With the words, “This is not optional—take one minute to protect your assets,” they gave users a list of compromised contracts and urged them to act immediately.

DeFi Space Sees an Increase in Crypto Hacks

PeckShield claims that losses from bitcoin hacking have escalated, with losses across numerous DeFi networks in September 2024 alone amounting to over $120 million.The growing security concerns in the decentralized banking industry were highlighted by the same thefts that affected other websites, such as BingX, Penpie, and Indodax. Radiant Capital continues to collaborate with cybersecurity experts and law enforcement to recover the stolen funds and improve company security.

Ethereum Engineer Criticizes Solana’s Potential as a “Global Backbone” Blockchain

In brief, According to Ryan Berckmans, an engineer and member of the Ethereum community, Solana does not have the infrastructure necessary to function as the cornerstone of an international financial system. Solana’s lack of decentralization, high bandwidth requirements, and technical limitations, he says, provide a more sustainable model than Ethereum’s Layer 1 and Layer 2 environment.

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Solana’s Shift from “Monolithic” to Layered Solutions

Solana initially promoted itself as a high-throughput, single-chain platform capable of handling global transactions. Since then, though, it has begun implementing Layer 2 (L2) solutions, renaming them “Network Extensions.” This change is more in line with Ethereum’s proven L2 approach, which has allowed a number of applications to create unique L2 appchains on the platform.

Technical Difficulties Preventing Solana from Developing a Global Backbone

Berckmans claims that there is an issue with Solana’s single-client strategy, which just uses the agave rust client. At least three independent customers with a balanced stake distribution are necessary for a robust global backbone. Firedancer, Solana’s second client, has had delays that have been made worse by a lack of research resources and protocol specification. Furthermore, the platform’s reach in areas with lower network capacity is restricted by Solana’s 10Gbps upload suggestion, which raises centralization issues. The outage history of Solana was also brought to light by Berckmans, who pointed out that the protocol-level fallback mechanisms required for continuing block production during finalization issues are absent from the system.

Decentralization and Market Share Concerns

Berckmans raised concerns about Solana’s decentralization, citing that around 98% of Solana’s initial token allocation went to insiders, in contrast to Ethereum’s 80% public sale. He also points to the emergence of zero-knowledge (zk) proof aggregation, which enhances L2 settlement capabilities, as a challenge to Solana’s reliance on Layer 1 execution scaling.

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The Benefits of Ethereum for Corporate Adoption

Solana’s market share will probably decrease if big companies like Coinbase, Sony, and Visa choose Ethereum L2 solutions, according to Berckmans. He claims that although Solana has performed exceptionally well in several domains, its structural flaws prohibit it from acting as the foundation of an international financial system.

Vitalik Buterin Calls Michael Saylor’s Bitcoin Comments ‘Insane’

Summary

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin directly criticized Michael Saylor, the chairman of MicroStrategy over his comment on Bitcoin’s recent activity. Buterin didn’t leave no crumbs and sharply called Saylor’s remarks “batshit insane” in a heated X (formerly Twitter) post.

Buterin Fires Back at Saylor’s Views

Vitalik Buterin took personal issue with the remarks made by Michael Saylor on his recent interview regarding bitcoin’s activity. The activity being the custody, where Saylor firmly believed that Regulated Finance Institutions. However, Buterin rejected this remark saying this goes against the decentralized ethos of crypto and calling out this action to be a push towards “regulatorty capture”.

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Crypto Leaders Side with Buterin

Several crypto famous leaders like Jameson Lopp and Eric Voorhees sided with Buterin. All of them shared the same view regarding involvement of third party on crypto space. Many believe this remark from Saylor as a direct contradiction to the whole concept of decentralization nature of blockchain.

Saylor’s Stance on Bitcoin Custody

In the interview, Saylor suggested the Bitcoin custody to be taken over by too Big to fail banks, believing it would protect assets from being seized. This seemed to contradict his previous vicious advocacy for self-custody. Just a year earlier, after the collapse of FTX, Saylor supported self-custody, stating that people should hold their own private keys. This hypocrisy surprised many, as he appears to favor institutional control over digital assets, a shift that Buterin and others find alarming.

Bitcoin, Ethereum Surge After Major Short Liquidations

Summary

Bitcoin and Ethereum are experiencing bullish momentum due to recent liquidation. Data provided by Coinglass states that over $138 million are in liquidation with $95 million coming from shorts position.

Ethereum Leads Liquidations and Gains

Ethereum showed exponentially good results at charts with $27.69 million in liquidation of which $23.84 million were from shorts position. This growth has also boosted ETH’s value by 3.1%, reaching $2,730. Ethereum’s trading value has also skyrocketed by 117% with grand total value of $17.4 billion as investors interest has been gathered. Notably, the largest single liquidation order was on Binance, worth $6.64 million in the ETH/USDT pair.

Bitcoin Follows Close Behind

Bitcoin saw $25 million in liquidations, with $21 million coming from shorts. This short squeeze helped BTC reach a four-month high of $69,460, though it corrected slightly and is now trading at $68,700. BTC’s daily trading volume spiked by 74%, climbing to $24 billion.

Broader Market Impact

The international crypto market has been on three-month high of $2.49 trillion. However analyst believe if this is to continue there’s a possibility of tides turning the other way, triggering sell-offs as traders and investors scramble to limit their potential loss. Conclusively, the surge of liquidation does shine a positive light on crypto space but further surge might cause potential problems.

Bittensor Unveils Smart Contracts with Full Ethereum Integration

Summary

Bittensor now has Ethereum compatibility, letting developers use Ethereum- based smart contracts on its AI powered blockchain. They also launched the Bittensor EVM Testnet, blending AI with DeFi for the first time.

Ethereum Compatibility has been successfully brought by decentralized AI network, Bittensor through Opentensor Foundation. It will allow developers deploy and interact with Ethereum- based smart contracts on subtensor blockchain by combining AI and traditional decentralized finance (DeFi). Additionally, the launch of Bittensor EVM Testnet on Metamask was also launched.

This upgrade was initially teased at a public talk at Token2049 by Opentensor Foundation, since then this upgrade was highly anticipated by the holders. Bittensor TAO token has more than doubled from $293 to $673 since Sept 15. However, TAO has retraced since and is currently holding at a price of $592.24. It has a 24 hour trading volume of around $141,876,845 and a total market cap of $4,357,275,100. This shows it is no where near backing off from the big market scene.

Daniel Cheung from Syncracy Capital is saying that he expects the Bittensor network to experience a big boost in economic activity soon. Furthermore, he expressed his beliefs in Bittensor potentially becoming top blockchain Layer-1 in the near future. People believe, the addition of EVM compatibility and smart contracts on Bittensor is a significant milestone, as it allows for a more interconnected DeFi ecosystem. TAO is also one of the most booming AI crypto currencies recently.

Ethereum Accumulation Addresses Double Since January 2024: CryptoQuant

Summary

The number of Ethereum (ETH) being held in accumulation has nearly doubled since January 2024, now crossing 19 million ETH. The high accumulation rate is due to approval of Ethereum Spot ETFs earlier this year.

Ethereum Accumulation Grows

According to CryptoQuant, Accumulation means holding Ethereum, where the holders aren’t actively spending or moving their assets. The number of said holders have grown significantly in 2024 for Ethereum. In January, the number of ETH being held was 11.5 million, but by October 18,this number reached 19 million ETH. Experts and Analysts believe that this number might cross 20 million by the end of 2024.

Ethereum ETFs Drive Interest

This rapid growth in accumulation is speculated to because by the approval of Ethereum Spot ETFs in early 2024, which boosted investors confidence. One CryptoQuant analyst noted:

“In early 2024, Ethereum Spot ETFs were officially approved, marking a new era. Regulations boosted confidence, making Ethereum mainstream.”

This has increased interest from both institutional and retail investors towards Ethereum.

Value of Accumulated Ethereum

Ethereum’s value in accumulated address is expected to hit $80 billion by the end of the year. This suggests that the value of Ethereum will reach $4,000. This would position Ethereum on par with some of the largest companies in terms of value.

Ethereum Holders in Profit

IntoTheBlock reveals that around 71% of Ethereum holders are in profit right now, with over 74% of holders having held their coin for over a year now.

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Source: IntoTheBlock

The steady growth in accumulation, coupled with rising prices, signals confidence in Ethereum’s long-term value.

Ethereum Struggles as Price Stalls Amid Market Volatility

Ethereum (ETH) is facing a rough patch as its price continues to stagnate around the $1,600 mark on September 5, 2024. The cryptocurrency, once a leader in the decentralized finance (DeFi) and NFT boom, is now grappling with a loss of momentum.

A mix of market-wide factors, including economic uncertainty, inflation concerns, and competition from faster blockchain networks like Solana, has led to a decline in both price and investor confidence.

For traders, Ethereum’s current trajectory serves as a reminder that the crypto market is in constant flux. ETH, despite being the backbone of DeFi and smart contract platforms, is now under pressure as investors seek higher returns and faster networks.

Rising competition from emerging platforms is challenging Ethereum’s dominance, forcing the network to innovate further and tackle long-standing scalability issues.

Even with these hurdles, Ethereum’s fundamentals remain strong. The upcoming advancements in Ethereum 2.0 could provide much-needed scalability and energy efficiency improvements, which could reignite investor interest.

However, in the short term, it’s clear that Ethereum is struggling to maintain its bullish momentum, and traders will need to watch closely for any signs of recovery.

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Ethereum Underperforms Against Nvidia, Bitcoin, and Meta

5th September, 2024, Wyoming

Ethereum (ETH) is one of the most prominent cryptocurrencies. However, it underperformed against Nvidia, Bitcoin, and Meta. Due to a lack of investment interest in ETH, the risk-to-reward ratio has declined forcing traders to look for better opportunities.

The underperformance has shaken Ethereum’s market supremacy. Traditional assets and other cryptocurrencies have performed better.

Nvidia with its AI connection has far surpassed Ethereum due to its rapid growth in technology. Now, it is a top choice for conservative risk investors.

Likewise, Bitcoin is a more secure asset that retains investors’ trust, leaving ETH behind.

These issues are not solely a result of market competition. Reduced sales and purchases, scalability issues, and uncertainty about ETH 2.0 have slowly pulled away investors.

Therefore, investors are currently evaluating their Ethereum positions, as well as investing in other assets with much better returns and risk management.

The shift underlines the necessity of knowledge and flexibility in the changing environment. The current situation proves that even the major players are not protected from the fluctuations in a market.

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Bitcoin and Ether Tumble as US Growth Worries Shake Markets

4th September, 2024, Wyoming

The crypto market has just fallen and has stirred a lot of turmoil! The cryptocurrency market underperformed pulling BTC and ETH down to 5% of losses.

Investors grapple with fears over the US economy. The Bitcoin price fell below $26000, whilst Ethereum was unable to maintain the $1600 level. This decline is due to fluctuations in the global market. Investors fear the slowdown of the US economy can badly affect risky favourites.

Altcoins weren’t spared either. Solana (SOL), Dogecoin (DOGE) and others were not spared, as the downtrend affected most tokens in the market. Overall market capitalisations suffered a decline and investors are supposed to seek safer options.

What’s behind the crash?

The lack of seriousness has been identified as weak economic signals from the US. Currently, the market remains restless as the Fed’s next step remains unknown and so does crypto.

This is indeed a rude awakening! Reminding everything is not always up in the crypto world. But there are downs too. However, the next move could make the difference.

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