TUSD lost its peg to the dollar
On January 15, the stable cryptocurrency TrueUSD (TUSD) lost its usual parity with the US dollar, falling by 1.3% to $0.984. This event came as a result of significant trading volumes of TUSD on the Binance cryptocurrency exchange.
Last week, reports surfaced of problems with TUSD's real-time reserve confirmation, raising alarms among the cryptocurrency community about insufficient asset backing. According to information from Protos, the stablecoin's security mechanism revealed several errors in the API and failed to accurately calculate the dollar value of its collateral assets. Moreover, TUSD has traded nearly 8% away from its target price on the Poloniex exchange over the past few weeks, while its price on Binance has remained relatively stable.
The Polygon Foundation is accused of embezzling 400 million MATIC
On January 15, the Polygon Foundation moved 400 million MATIC (approximately $340 million at current exchange rates) to the Binance exchange, according to ChainArgos researchers. According to Polygon tokenomics, the project was supposed to allocate 1.2 billion MATIC (12% of the entire supply) for staking, but instead only 800 million MATIC was sent to the corresponding smart contract. The remaining 400 million MATIC were transferred to the Binance 33 address. 300 million MATIC was then sent to an unknown wallet that had previously received 467 million MATIC from "Matic: Marketing & Ecosystem". After this, all 767 million MATIC were moved to various wallets on Binance.
ChainArgos discovered several smart contracts that control the movement of assets. The first of these, the “protocol of transfer of rights,” automatically released the funds. The second smart contract, which is owned by the Polygon Foundation, allows you to manage project reserves and other funds. This allows the fund to control most of Polygon's fund flows. ChainArgos researchers suggested that such movements could affect the price of MATIC, causing sharp fluctuations in the rate.
Tether refutes UN accusations that USDT is a favorite of criminals
The USDT stablecoin has become a target of interest for scammers and money launderers, according to a report by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, as reported by the Financial Times. Analysts note that USDT is attractive to illegal activities due to its “fast and irreversible” transactions and lack of controls in the cryptocurrency market.
Tether expressed disappointment in the UN assessment and claims that their cooperation with authorities and law enforcement around the world was not taken into account. They emphasized that they provide more transparent monitoring than traditional banking systems. Tether also expressed their willingness to help the UN better understand blockchain technology.
Dencun update for Ethereum launched on Goerli testnet
The Ethereum team launched a test update of Dencun (Cancun-Deneb) on the Goerli network, but was unable to complete it as planned. The upgrade includes EIP-4844, including the Proto-Danksharding option, which is designed to improve network scalability using a new transaction type for big data (BLOB). This is expected to reduce fees for L2 solutions based on Rollups technology.
Full rollout of the update failed, possibly because around a fifth of customer operators had not updated their software. According to the schedule, the Dencun update should take place on the Sepolia testnet on January 30 and on Holesky on February 7. The hard fork is planned to take place on the mainnet around the end of February.
X-account hacks continue
Hackers hacked several accounts, including Rocket Pool's X-accounts for liquid staking, the VeChain project, and the account of the head of the analytics company Arkham, using them to promote fraudulent schemes. On the VeChain page, the attacker posted offers for the distribution of VET tokens, promising double the amount if users send between 100,000 and 5 million coins to the specified address.
The account of Miguel Morel, the head of Arkham, was compromised on January 17 using SIM swapping, and the hacker managed to post a fraudulent post before the account was restored.
Also on January 17, a hacker hacked into the Rocket Pool account and published a message about a critical vulnerability in the protocol’s smart contracts, urging users to transfer funds to an updated version for security purposes.
Solana Mobile announced the second version of the Web3 smartphone
Solana Mobile has unveiled Saga Chapter2, the second version of its Web3 smartphone, which is now available for pre-order at a price of $450. Solana claims that pre-order will only be available for a limited time, after which the price of the device will increase.
Dispatch of orders is planned for the first half of 2025. To attract interest in the device, Solana launched a referral program, offering users points for each invited pre-order, with the opportunity to win prizes. However, the company acknowledged that if consumer interest is low, the project may be delayed.
Solana Mobile has not revealed the specifications of the device, but given its affordable price, it is speculated that the Chapter2 may be less powerful than the previous model. Let's remember that the original Saga launched in May 2023 at a price of $999, but in August the price was reduced to $599.
An unknown person paid a network commission of 4.03 BTC
On January 16, an unknown sender paid a fee of 4.03 BTC (equivalent to $173,148) for just one Bitcoin transaction. This news was noticed by the Whale Alert service. The transaction amount itself was only 2.9 BTC. This unusual incident sparked discussion in the community. Some believe that this could be user error and have suggested that the transaction be removed from the mempool. Others, however, do not exclude that an attempt at money laundering could be behind this.
