In this week’s podcast episode, we speak with long-time crypto investor Qiao Wang. Wang is a partner at the DeFi Alliance and former head of product at Messari. Unlike many Bitcoiners who get into crypto because of their ideological views, or Ethereans attracted by the possibility of building decentralized apps, Wang had been a quant trader…

Last weekend Alpha Finance was hacked to the tune of $37m but this was a hack so specific and well-informed it was immediately assumed to have been an inside job. Have you ever wondered what happens when a hack goes down, or how a perpetrator can successfully escape with the money?

Cloudflare, the internet infrastructure provider, now supports Unstoppable Domains’s .crypto domain name resolution. This will allow billions of users to access web content hosted on decentralized storage like IPFS and routed using blockchain-based domains. By using Cloudflare’s DNS over HTTPS, and after a quick change of settings, crypto enthusiasts can sidestep individual browser requirements and…

ArmorFi’s CTO Robert Forster is partnering with bug bounty platform Immunefi to personally offer the equivalent of $320k to anyone who can find a critical smart contract bug in any Ethereum ecosystem project. The program, which is hosted on Immunefi and called the R Bounty, is designed to encourage responsible disclosure of critical vulnerabilities. The…

Reversible ICO (rICO)—the latest brainchild from Ethereum dapp developer and ERC 20 creator Fabian Vogelsteller—is a new model for ICOs (Initial Coin Offerings used to fundraise for start-ups) where investors reserve tokens instead of buying them outright. Returnable tokens This new fundraising mechanism allows investors to reserve and buy tokens over time, and “return” reserved…

Rai, a stablecoin for decentralization purists, is now live on the Ethereum mainnet. It’s not pegged to fiat, it’s not backed by fiat, and it’s designed to run completely by computer programs. If it had a physical bill it would carry the inscription, “in code we trust.” RAI is an asset backed only by ETH…

The field for fixed-rate lending protocols is becoming more dense as HiFi has joined the fray.  Like Notional Finance and Yield Protocol, HiFi is able to offer fixed rates by locking in a specific duration by which the loan will mature. The debt will be represented with a “yToken,” which refers to tokenized debt backed…

Vesper, a DeFi investment platform, came out of beta and launched its VSP governance token. Following a successful beta period with $28M in total value locked, Vesper aims to bridge the gap between traditional DeFi users and investment industry professionals who are new to the space. Users are able to choose to deposit crypto in…

Another week, another wild, Elon Musk-tweet driven, Dogecoin gyration. The latest one has chart arrows pointing down. But beyond what’s behind the most recent swing, let’s look at what’s driving the whole pendulum: hype. Irrational speculative manias have been present as long as there have been markets; they’re a part of human nature. But at…

DeFi’s central bank is piling on fees. MakerDAO backend and oracles engineer Nik Kunkel tweeted that if the current market conditions remain stable, the protocol would generate ~$71M in annual stability fees. Stability fees paid by Maker borrowers (similar to borrowing costs), are then burned by the protocol, indirectly benefiting MKR holders by reducing the…