As September draws to an end — it’s now time to look back at all of the notable activities, product updates and hotshot events that occurred within the InsurAce Ecosystem during the month of September 2022. We’ve listed new products, the team attended a few high-profile conferences and we also made another tranche of compensation payments to stakers who were affected by the TerraUST payouts. Keep reading to get all the juicy details
Crypto Markets Overview.
The Ethereum Merge dominated the crypto headlines in September. The most started with the entire industry counting down to Ethereum’s much-anticipated transition from Proof of Work to Proof of Stake. On the 15th of September, the Merge day finally arrived and the transition went through smoothly and successfully. Although it did not lead to a massive increase in the price of Ethereum as many expected.
Shortly after the Merge, the US-Fed announced yet another increase in Key rate, which led the crypto markets to shed some of the gains it accumulated in the early weeks of September.
Industry experts are bullish for the end of year rally, as bitcoin climbs steadily about the $20,000 mark.
Hacks & Exploits.
The last 3 months have seen outrageous volume and frequency of crypto hacks recorded. Over $200m was lost to hackers back in August, and In September that figure dropped slightly to below $180m. The Wintermute hack accounted for the lion’s share of the hacks with a $160m exploit uncovered. Kyber Network, Kera and Dogechain were among the platforms that suffered high-profile casualties during the month. Smart Contract exploits, Bug exploits, and Phishing attacks were the most common hack trends observed during the months.
Here are 5 of the profile hacks that occurred in September 2022.
- Wintermute
September 20, 2022, prominent london-based AMM, Wintermute was reported to have had digital assets worth around $160 million stolen from its crypto trading arm. CEO Evgeny Gaevoy, confirmed the hack in a series of tweets where he offered a 10% whitehat offer to the hackers. The firm, which provides liquidity across major crypto exchanges and trading platforms, remains solvent after the hack.
Root cause: Smart Contract Vulnerability
Loss: approx. $160M
Reference:Twitter Statement by CEO
- Kyber Network
September 2, 2022: KyberSwap, a decentralized exchange has been hacked for a total of 265K through a frontend exploit which involved a “malicious code” in its Google Tag Manager. Whale wallets were targeted and funds were drained to different addresses.
Root cause: Front-end hack
Loss: approx. $1.6M
Reference: Twitter Announcement
- Rug Pull Finder
September 5, 2022: Rug Pull Finder’s NFT contract was exploited due to a flaw in their smart contracts, allowing 2 people to mint 450 NFTs instead of one per wallet.
Root cause: Smart Contract Vulnerability
Loss: 450 NFTs
Reference: Official Twitter Announcement
4. Gera
September 7, 2022: According to the official announcement by the GERA team, GERA token’s security was compromised due to a private key leak resulting in hackers transferring the ownership of the GERA token’s smart contract deployer to another address.
Root cause: Private Key Compromise
Loss: $1.48M
Reference: Twitter Announcement
5. Dogechain
September 11, 2022: Hackers minted 9.7m Doge and transfered 316K worth through a cross chain bridge Anyswap
Root cause: Smart Contract Vulnerability
Loss: approx. $600K
Reference: Twitter Announcement
However, on InsurAce, no claimable event was triggered during the month.
Stablecoins:
In the Stablecoins sector, September was quite eventful, mostly for the right reasons. MarketCap grew slightly from $149bn in August to $150.7 billion at the end of September, representing 15.41% of the total cryptocurrency market cap.
There were no major de-peg events. However, we recorded some landmark events that may have significant impact on the crypto industry at a macro level.
- Binance Introduces Auto-Conversion for Rival Stablecoins including USDC
From Sept 29, Binance stopped supporting the trading of some stablecoins and introduce the new Auto-Conversion feature which will now see stablecoins such as USDC, USDP, and TUSD be auto-converted in BUSD. USDT remains unaffected at the moment, but observers expect that, with time only BUSD will become the only existing stablecoin in the BNB ecosystem
Reference: Binance Official Announcement
- Global Regulators Announce Intentions to Regulate the Stablecoin Industry
In September the governments of the US, UK and EU released new documents specifying varying approaches to regulate Stablecoins. Most notably, the US SEC has announced plans to ban “Endogenously” created stablecoins i.e. Algorithmic stablecoins. No legislation has been passed yet, but it is expected that the first set of laws may be enacted as early as Q1 2023.
Reference: GlobalStablecoin Reports
- EURO-pegged Stablecoins Cross $500m
Since the beginning of 2020, the Euro-based stablecoins have been growing in global adoption and the crypto world begins to move towards diversifying from the USD. In September 2022, the market cap crossed $500m for the first time. A short list of 100% Collateralised euro-backed stablecoins include: Tether’s EURt, Stasis EURS and Circle EURO Coin.
Reference: GlobalStablecoin Reports
- Fintech Firm Blackfridge launches First GBP (British Pound) backed Stablecoin
Blackfridge, a fintech company, based in the Isle of Man has launched the first British-regulated Stablecoin fully backed 1:1 by the British pound sterling. The Poundtoken, also known by the ticker “GBPT”, allows direct GBP users to directly access to digital asset markets, DeFi protocols and also facilitates frictionless real-time settlements.
Product Updates
- Listings
Ola Finance, StellaSwap & Hubble Protocol were among the new DeFi protocols that were listed on the InsurAce platform in the month of September 2022.
- Cover Wordings Updated
We also update our Cover wordings to reflect new market realities and uphold our transparency standards. You can read full details here.
Announcements:
MVB-V — The MVB program has now drawn to a close… Thank you to Binance Labs and the BNB Chain network, we look forward to continuing our close relationship.
EVENTS:
- Token 2049 in Singapore — Between 28-29 September, the InsurAce team led by CEO Oliver Xi and CMO, Dan Thompson, attended the TOKEN 2049 Event, hosted in Singapore.
Watch the video here to catch a glimpse of how it went down.
Some of the prominent Guests who spoke at the event included Ethereum Founder, Vitalik Buterin, Dan Morehead. (Founder and CEO, Pantera Capital), Kathleen Breitman (Co-Founder, Tezos) and a host of others.
- Mainnet in New York — Between September 21-23, 2022 the InsurAce team joined up with the creme de la creme of the Blockchain industry as they converged on New York for this year’s edition of the Mainnet Event hosted by Messari. And the InsurAce team will be there to participate actively, in what promises to be an impactful event.
We provided blow by blow updates of these events on our social media pages.
Looking Ahead – October 2022.
We’ve got so many exciting plans lined up ahead for October.
We’ve got our v2 tokenomics in the works, we are adding some new product offerings, partnerships, and possibly some new exciting details on the InsurAce Marketplace that we are currently building.
In terms of Events, we’ll be in Bogotá, Colombia for DevCon. The Ethereum developer conference event will be held between Oct 2022 11th to 14th. It promises to be another impactful one. If you’re interested in attending, you can get your tickets here. We’ll keep you posted as always.
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