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Robinhood Releases Zero-Transaction Fee Crypto Wallet

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Leading commission-free trading platform Robinhood has released its first Web3 wallet, which would be non-custodial- meaning users will have sole authority over the private keys which are in encrypted storage.

Prior to the announcement, on 16 May, Robinhood send out a teaser that came with a 30-sec video showing a bunch of apes lying around with bored expressions, suddenly coming across a giant screen that appears to transform them into a multi-planetary species.

Netizens were confused as to what the platform was up to.

Finally, on the next day, the exchange’s official Twitter handle along with the CEO of Robinhood Vladimir Tenev announced that it was building a self-custodial wallet. It will be offered as a standalone app but hopes that it will “feature the same simple and accessible design” as its main service.

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Robinhood Releases Zero-Transaction Fee Crypto Wallet 2

The wallet will extend the ability to store and trade cryptocurrencies, including many not available through the main Robinhood app with “no network fees” and will support NFTs and DeFi [decentralized finance] protocols.

Robinhood’s new non-custodial wallet would compete with Metamask, Coinbase

Even though, custodial wallets, like the one that Robinhood released earlier in 2022, are commonly seen as offering a more user-friendly introduction to the world of crypto, where there’s less risk of losing assets because of mislaid credentials.

But, among crypto enthusiasts, the phrase “not your keys, not your coins” has become a popular criticism of custodial wallets. Proponents argue that one who holds the private key should have full control of their digital assets.

The addition of Robinhood’s new non-custodial wallet might allow it to serve both kinds of customers.

The California-based fintech firm further stated that it’ll be launching its non-custodial wallet in beta “later this summer” and invites anyone interested in trying it out to sign up for its waitlist. A full launch is planned for sometime before the end of the year.

The new app puts Robinhood in a highly competitive market dominated by start-up giant MetaMask with the latest entrant being Coinbase which recently came out with its own self-custody wallet.

Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong proudly declared his firm’s product as the most downloaded, mobile self-custody wallet in the U.S. in a tweet Monday.

Coinbase Unveils Coinbase App, DeFi Wallet and Browser

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Coinbase, America’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, has made Web3 application capabilities, including a hot wallet and browser, available to a select group of its mobile app customers.

Select users will be able to use the app to access Ethereum-based decentralized apps (DApps) like Uniswap and OpenSea.

Eligible users will be able to trade on nonfungible token (NFT) marketplaces, make swaps on decentralized exchanges (DEXs), and interact with decentralized finance (DeFi) lending protocols to borrow and lend funds, according to Coinbase’s director of product management, Rishi Dean’s announcement.

Coinbase to ease up access to web3

Customers may exchange currency using a hot wallet in addition to using the mobile browser to access DApps. Unlike decentralized hot wallet technologies like MetaMask, the Coinbase hot wallet will be co-custodial. This means that the company will keep the wallet’s private key, which can also be maintained by the user.

The wallet and DApp capabilities are powered by multi-party computation (MPC) technology, which preserves senders’ and receivers’ privacy while ensuring transaction accuracy.

Sharing key custody, according to Dean, is a security strategy that protects customers from device-related concerns. “This means that even if you lose your smartphone, your Dapp wallet key is safe, and Coinbase may be able to assist with recovery through our live help,” he said.

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Coinbase Unveils Coinbase App, DeFi Wallet and Browser 4

The improved wallet functionality of Coinbase is positive for Web3 developers who may be having difficulty gaining new consumers to demonstrate their work. The exchange has around 90 million registered users, according to Statista.

This is the month’s second significant product launch. On May 4, the exchange debuted its long-awaited Coinbase NFT marketplace, which saw only $75,000 in sales volume from only 150 transactions on its first day.

Coinbase’s first-quarter financial report revealed that the exchange is struggling in a depressed market, with the exchange reporting its first net loss since going public last year.

Since Q1 2021, revenue has plummeted 27 percent to $1.1 billion from $1.6 billion, while monthly users have declined from 11.4 million in Q4 2021 to 9.2 million.

DeFi In The Spotlight: Indian Authorities Mulling 20% TDS

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Indian Tax regulators are reportedly exploring ways to bring income generated from crypto platforms operating outside India under the lens, sources familiar with the matter said.

According to a local news source, India’s Central Board of Direct Taxes [CBDT] is planning to impose a 20% tax deducted at source [TDS], an equalization levy on such transactions and interest income generated by Indians.

The new rules are targeted at those who have not submitted their PAN card details [Permanent Account Number], a unique ten-character alphanumeric identifier, an informed official revealed.

Speaking on the upcoming development, Girish Vanwari, founder of tax advisory Transaction Square noted,

“For the tax department tracking these transactions is very crucial. The government could slap a 5% additional tax in the form of an equalization levy on any transaction where one of the persons is not based in India and has not submitted their PAN card or other tax details. “

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DeFi In The Spotlight: Indian Authorities Mulling 20% TDS 6

After the stiff tax came into effect, many Indians were on the lookout for alternative platforms to earn income from digital assets. At a time when decentralized finance started gaining a foothold, the proposed move might jeopardize the already tax-burdened crypto industry.

If that wasn’t enough, India’s IT cell now demands customer records should be stored for at least 5 years.

Indian IT body turns its attention to Crypto Exchanges

In a recent development, India’s IT body has directed, virtual asset service providers, virtual asset exchange providers, and custodian wallet providers to maintain all information obtained from the Know Your Customer [KYC] process and financial transactions records for a minimum of five years.

As per the press release, the Computer Emergency Response Team or CERT-In can demand this information for the purposes of “cyber incident response, protective and preventive actions related to cyber incidents.”

The department said this will help “ensure cyber security in the area of payments and financial markets for citizens while protecting their data, fundamental rights, and economic freedom in view of the growth of virtual assets.”

“Any service provider, intermediary, data center, body corporate and
Government organization shall mandatorily report cyber incidents to CERT-In within 6 hours of noticing such incidents or being brought to notice about such incidents,” it added.

The new directions would go into effect from late June, it said.

Multiple DeFi platforms succumb to a $90M Exploit

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Not one or two but three DeFi platforms- Rari Capital, Fei Protocol, and Saddle Finance, came under a massive onslaught that resulted in draining roughly $90 million worth of crypto assets. Data provided by Whitehat hackers BlockSec. showed that multiple pools related to these platforms have been targeted.

Out of the three, Rari Capital, Fei Protocol suffered a combined loss of more than $80 million due to a typical reentrancy vulnerability, BlockSec shared via tweet.

According to experts, a re-entrance attack occurs when an execution of a smart contract gets interrupted in the middle and then initiated from the start once again, hence the term re-entered.

A good example of such attack was the DAO hack in June 2016, where over $60 million in Ethereum was stolen.

Cyber Security, Internet, Hacking

That said, Fei Protocol also confirmed the attack by saying that they are aware of the exploit on multiple Rari Fuse pools. For the time being, they have suspended all borrowing operations to prevent further exploitation of funds.

The author of the tweet has offered the hacker to keep $10 million from the stolen crypto as a bounty and return the rest of the funds that belong to their users.

If that wasn’t enough, the crypto community was woken up by another DeFi attack.

DeFi trio hacks- the latest update

Blockchain security firm Peckshield brought to light saying that automated market maker Saddle Finance was exploited in a flash loan attack, resulting in the protocol loss of about $10 million.

The hack was made possible due to the wrong MetaSwapUtils lib which was used for calculating the swap, it tweeted.

It also highlighted that the stolen funds from the 2017 @ParityTech Wallet Multisig hack were on the move as well.

Saddle responded by stating that the team is investigating the exploit and is pausing pool metapools withdrawals before adding that $3.8 million has been recovered.

Single-asset withdrawals are currently restricted, but balanced pool withdrawals are always possible. White hat hackers BlockSec Team were able to secure $3.8m. The team is in contact with them to return the funds.

The $90 million exploits on the trio platforms come exactly one month after the record-breaking $615 million Axie Infinity Hack carried out by the North Korean state-sponsored Lazarus group.

Beanstalk’s $182M Hack Exposes The Risk of Malicious Governance Proposal

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Beanstalk Farms, an Ethereum-based DeFi protocol suffered major exploitation to the tune of $182 million on 17th April. Blockchain security firm PeckShield was the first to identify the heist and reported that the attacker stole away at least $80 million in crypto, although the losses suffered by the protocol were much larger.

Beanstalk on its Discord server gave a brief outline of the attack that occurred. As per Beanstalk’s analysis, the attacker employed a flash loan on the lending platform Aave to manipulate the smart contract and amass a large amount of Beanstalk’s native governance token, Stalk.

With the voting power granted by these Stalk tokens, the attacker was able to quickly pass a sinister governance proposal siphoning all protocol funds into a private Ethereum wallet.

The attack caused the market for Beanstalk’s BEAN stablecoin to near annihilation. At the time of writing, the token was down by 77% from its $1 peg according to CoinGecko.

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In a post-mortem report, Beanstalk’s smart contracts auditor Omnicia said that the protocol experienced a flash-loan attack due to a flaw in its newly introduced Curve LP Silos that compromised the protocol’s governance mechanism.

But stated that the code exploited in the attack “has not been audited” by Omniscia “as it was introduced beyond our initial audits of the system”. Without mentioning whether funds would be reimbursed to users, the platform assured users that more news will be coming in an event scheduled for Sunday.

In a bizarre twist, Peckshield noted that the hacker appeared to donate $250,000 of the stolen funds to a Ukrainian relief wallet.

Beanstalk’s attack is the second nine-figure DeFi exploit in a month

The incident is the latest in a string of major decentralized finance [DeFi] exploits to occur in the past few weeks. Last month, Axie Infinity’s Ronin Blockchain was exploited for $625 million in an attack that U.S. officials found to have North Korea links.

In a previous coverage by TronWeekly, DeFi derivatives platform Deus Finance suffered an attack leading to the loss of over $3 million.  Attackers employed flash loans to artificially modify the prices on Deus’ offerings.

Uniswap Labs’ New Venture Arm To Fuel Its Web3 Ambitions

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Uniswap Labs, the creator behind the leading decentralized exchange protocol Uniswap has unveiled its own venture division. Announcing via Twitter, the new wing plans to onboard millions of users into the web3 economy, with the goal of unlocking universal ownership & exchange for all.

As stated in the announcement blog, the venture unit plans to inject capital at different stages and levels of the web3 stack, ranging from infrastructure to developer tools and consumer-facing applications.

In addition to that, the team behind the fund claims that it will actively participate in on and off-chain governance when relevant, collaborating with the communities that have formed around the protocols they invested in to support their evolution.

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However, the size of Uniswap Labs Ventures’ fund is not yet disclosed but has appointed Teo Leibowitz to lead the Ventures division alongside Chief Operating Officer, MC Lader.

Prior to launching its venture arm, Uniswap Labs has invested in 11 startups and projects such as Tenderly, MakerDAO, Aave, Compound Protocol, PartyDAO, LayerZero, and the Ethereum developer platform.

Venture capital [VC] firms focused on Web3 projects and crypto businesses are accumulating billions of dollars worth of assets under management as more capital is injected into the sector. The news comes after several venture giants like Sequoia Capital and Bain Capital Ventures, both launched their respective crypto-dedicated funds, this year.

That said, Uniswap has joined a growing list of crypto-focused entities that have formally deployed resources to investing in other companies in the space, including crypto exchange FTX and DeFi protocol Cake, which both recently launched venture funds.

Uniswap Ventures is a big deal for DeFi and Web3- Expert

DEX like Uniswap, which already has experience building in web3, can apply their expertise and lessons learned to other facets of the crypto market through their early-stage investments, this is what DeFi researcher Ryan Rasmussen of Bitwise Asset Management wrote in a tweet.

The leading decentralized exchange is the fifth-largest in DeFi by Total Value Locked [TVL], a metric that represents the value of crypto assets deposited on the protocol, according to blockchain data provider DeFi Pulse. It had $7.04 billion in TVL, around half that of the leading DeFi platform, Maker, as of April 11, DeFi Pulse shows.

Will 2022 be Ethereum’s make-or-break year?

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Ethereum is embarking on a new journey for a more scalable, secure, and sustainable network. The network after the completion of “The Merge” and the arrival of its new consensus mechanism represents a major milestone in its multi-year journey to bring Ethereum 2.0 live.

Some experts are pondering if 2022 will be the “make or break year” for the world’s second-largest blockchain network. Also, can the highly anticipated update to its network trigger a decentralized finance [DeFi] summer for 2022?

According to Ethereum’s website, the merge is scheduled to take place this quarter [Q2 2022]. That said, feverish excitement is building online. Data from Google Trends shows interest in the topic has hit a 12-month high, and the query ” Ethereum Merge” has been searched 100 times on March 28.

Ilan Solot of Tagus Capital Multi-Strategy Fund told in an interview that “FOMO [fear of missing out] is kicking for ETH pre-merge.”

Moreover, widespread coverage of the climate benefits has also contributed. The Ethereum Foundation claimed Ethereum 2.0 will lower carbon emissions to 0.07 kilograms per transaction [roughly 17,000 times more efficient than Bitcoin], making the altcoin the clear favorite for green investors.

What is the Merge?

Ethereum will transform from a proof-of-work [POW] consensus mechanism to a new proof-of-stake [POS] method through the merge.

The blockchain now operates two parallel chains -the legacy “Mainnet” [based on POW] and the new “Beacon Chain” [POS]. Once the two merge, it will migrate to the Beacon Chain, and staking will totally replace mining as the consensus mechanism.

Ethereum merge will reverberate the DeFi world

Analyst Kjetil Hove Pettersen of Kryptovault predicted that ETH will be more volatile than Bitcoin over the course of this year. “Focusing on ETH’s price jumps in the short term may grab headlines, but the real takeaway is the merge’s effect on the broader de-fi ecosystem.”

It is to be noted that Ethereum acts as the base layer for almost 3000 decentralized apps, altcoins such as Shiba Inu to Layer2 scaling solutions like MATIC to metaverse tokens like MANA.

The network also supports numerous non-fungible token projects [NFTs ], and decentralized autonomous organizations [DAOs]. With stakes running high on the merge, the global DeFi community is hoping for a smooth transition.

Ark Invest’s Cathie Wood Says Banks Are Losing Talent To Crypto

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Ark Invest CEO Cathie Wood has a word of caution for crypto skeptics. Speaking on the sidelines of the Bitcoin 2022 conference in Miami, the top exec said that cryptocurrency was created to stop reliance on legacy financial institutions. According to Wood, the Banks are already feeling the heat.

The leading investor who is one of crypto’s vocal advocates stated, “Banks have a big problem. They’re losing talent to crypto, so they’re having to raise wages to attract talent, and they’re losing business to DeFi. Lending and saving a lot of it is taking place in DeFi right now.”

As interest in decentralized finance or DeFi grows among investors, such applications could threaten the traditional banking world. There’s been a “share shift” when it comes to loans in DeFi, Cathie Wood said.

Cathie Wood, chief executive officer and chief investment officer, Ark Invest, gestures as she speaks during the Bitcoin 2022 Conference at Miami Beach Convention Center on April 7, 2022 in Miami, Florida.

Apart from that, Wood also pointed out political institutions are also starting to respond to crypto in a more positive way. “What we’re seeing is 180 degrees different today than it was a year ago,” she said.

Wood then took note of the shift in stance from U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who had previously expressed concern on crypto, citing its potential environmental problems and risk of illicit activity.

“I remember I was asked at the time and I basically said she hasn’t studied the technology and she hasn’t studied the instruments of the new asset class. Well, it seems like she’s been boning up,” Wood said.

Cathie Wood reiterated Bitcoin will top $1M by 2030

Harping on her January prediction Cathie Wood one of Bitcoin’s top evangelists said that BTC will scale by $1 million in 2030. It would come with a range of use cases, including as an insurance policy for people of means so that their wealth can’t be confiscated, she said.

Ark was the first public asset manager to gain exposure to bitcoin, in September 2015. Despite bullish narratives, Bitcoin on the price front remained in a correction phase falling by more than 8% in 7 days and trading at $42,533, press time. In the last 24 hours, the world’s dominant asset has registered a decline of 2%, according to coinmarketcap.

Inverse Finance Loses Over $15M In Oracle Manipulation

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Ethereum based DeFi protocol Inverse Finance [INV] revealed that an anonymous attacker has stolen $15.6 million worth of cryptocurrency. Detailing the incident, Blockchain security firm PeckShield, noted that the attacker exploited a vulnerability in a Keep3r price oracle which Inverse uses to track token prices.

Through a series of tweets, Peckshield experts summarised that the attacker manipulated the oracle into believing that the price of Inverse Finance’s INV token was unusually high, and then extracted multi-million-dollar loans on Anchor using the inflated INV token as collateral.

Drilling deeper, researchers at Peckshield observed that the attacker first withdrew 901 ETH [about $3 million] from Tornado Cash, cleverly removing any trail of its activity. The hacker then used DEXs such as SushiSwap to transfer the stolen assets which resulted in a sharp increase in the price of INV, thus tricking the Keep3r price oracle.

Inverse Finance’s “High Risk” Attack

Using the manipulated price of INV, the malicious actor then took out INV-backed loans on money market Anchor before arbitrageurs brought the price of INV back to normal levels. A representative from PeckShield called the attack a high risk due to the usage of $3 million worth of crypto to deceive the price oracle.

The attacker managed to remove 1,588 ETH, 94 WBTC, 39 YFI, and 3,999,669 DOLA. Although its difficult to track where the funds will end up, Peckshield noted that 73.5 ETH [about $250,000) still remains in the attacker’s original Ethereum wallet.

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Conceived in 2020, Inverse Finance is a suite of permissionless decentralized Finance [DeFi] tools that are said to be governed by Inverse DAO which is a decentralized autonomous organization running on the popular Ethereum blockchain.

Some of its major products include Anchor and DOLA. Anchor is nothing but a synthetic asset and a money market protocol that helps in facilitating capital-efficient lending and borrowing.

Inverse released a statement saying that it has temporarily halted all borrowing activities on Anchor, and is working with Chainlink to build a new INV oracle. The DeFi lender also announced that it plans to make a proposal to its decentralized autonomous organization [DAO] to “ensure all wallets impacted by the price manipulation are repaid 100%,” without providing any further details.

DeFi being defied through SEC’s new proposal

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The SEC’s new proposal leaves us wondering if Decentralized Finance (DeFi) businesses going to have a hard time in the near future. In light of recent events, it has come to our notice that the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has proposed revising what it means to be a securities dealer, a move that industry insiders believe will damage the decentralized finance business.

The proposal would broaden the definition of “dealer” to include individuals and firms who execute deals and supply market liquidity using automated and algorithmic trading technology.

While the proposal is purportedly intended at electronic dealers of US Treasurys — an issue the SEC has been grappling with since at least 2014 – a clause buried in the 200-page text states that the new rule would also extend to digital assets that have been considered securities.

Using Twitter, cryptocurrency attorneys raised the alarm, calling the proposal an “all-out shadow attack on decentralized finance (DeFi).”

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The proposal could very well generate all automated market makers (AMMs) and liquidity providers with total assets under management of more than $50 million under the SEC’s regulatory umbrella, making them subject to the SEC’s registration requirements – something that many, if not all, decentralized exchanges would be unable to do.

Any decentralized exchange that meets the proposal’s new standards but does not register with the SEC, Shapiro argues, will be labeled as unregistered dealer, which is a felony under securities law.

Going stealth mode on DeFi

Some lawyers have seen the inclusion of crypto as a single remark in the huge plan as an intentional attempt to cause confusion and doubt in the crypto markets.

Efforts to bring regulatory certainty to the market have faltered, leaving the SEC to rely on enforcement to govern the industry.

Many industry participants, including large exchanges like Coinbase, have attempted to remain compliant but have been faced with ambiguous requests from SEC Chairman Gary Gensler and his staff to “come in and register” with the SEC.

However, Monday’s proposal is being slammed as proof that the SEC’s offer was never serious.