The week passed quietly for the crypto community, Vitalik Buterin was reflecting on the prospects of the zk-STARK protocol, Tether announced a reduction in loans, and programmers continue to invent new ways to simplify the process of paying with cryptocurrencies.
Fiat transfers between the EU and Africa using the Lightning Network
Despite the crypto winter, companies continue to develop the crypto industry and jointly create new solutions. So CoinCorner and Bitnob are working together to create a tool for cross-border payments between Europe and Africa using the Lightning Network.
African bitcoin app Bitnob plays an important role in helping Africa communicate with the rest of the world. Using Bitnob's "Send Worldwide" feature, users in Europe can send EUR and GBP to recipients in Africa. It is then automatically converted to Nigerian Naira (NGN), Kenyan Shilling (KES) or Ghanaian Cedi (GHS).
With the new tool, funds sent using Send Worldwide will first be converted to BTC and sent on the Lightning network. As soon as Bitnob receives the funds, it will immediately convert them into local currency and deposit them into the recipient's specified account.
FixedFloat was among the first to support Lightning. Our guide to using the Lightning Network.
Trust Wallet adds in-app cross-chain swap functionality with THORChain integration
Trust Wallet has announced its integration with THORChain, which provides in-app cross-chain swaps. THORChain is a decentralized liquidity protocol for the free exchange of assets. Users can now make cross-chain swaps between $BTC , $ETH, $BNB and $BUSD directly on the Trust Wallet mobile app. Trust Wallet does not charge any fees for performing cross-network swaps.
Vitalik Buterin called the zk-STARK protocol very promising
The co-founder of Ethereum believes that the zk-STARK zero-knowledge proof protocol is promising and in 10-20 years will be no less important than the blockchain. Vitalik Buterin stated this during a conversation with Mask Network founder Suji Yang at the NFT Taipei event.
Buterin assured that zk-STARK is an extremely powerful privacy and security technology that can solve blockchain scaling and privacy issues. zk-EVM is a layer 2 transaction verification solution that will help make Ethereum faster and more scalable.
Tether will cut secured loans to zero
The world's largest stablecoin issuer, Tether, has announced that it has stopped disbursing funds from its reserves, saying it is “extremely important to restore confidence” in the cryptocurrency market. Tether confirmed that its collateralized loans are over-collateralized and covered by "extremely liquid assets" and also added that the firm will be liquidating those loans during 2023.
Earlier it was reported that Tether issued secured loans in the amount of $6.1 billion, which threatens the USDT collateral. Despite the fact that Tether stated that there were no risks due to the full provision of all loans issued, the company as a result decided to refuse to issue funds.
Crypto exchange Gemini suffers from data breach
On December 14, 2022, cryptocurrency news outlet Cointelegraph published a report claiming that "5,701,649 lines of information relating to Gemini customers" were lost in a data breach that included "Gemini customer email addresses and incomplete numbers telephones".
On the same day, Gemini published a blog post on protecting customers from phishing incidents, citing a third party responsible for the breach. "Some Gemini clients have recently been targeted by phishing campaigns that we believe are the result of an incident at a third-party vendor," the trading platform's blog post reads.
This case is not the first in the crypto community, in 2020, the manufacturer of hardware wallets Ledger leaked user data. Last year, 325,000 customer data was leaked as a result of the Buyucoin hack.
Solana lost 97% of developers
The number of developers in the Solana ecosystem peaked on January 9 when the number of developers reached 2453. Since then, their number has been decreasing dramatically. Token Terminal data is based on the number of individual GitHub users who made more than 1 commit to the GitHub project repositories in the last 30 days.
The developers of the Solana ecosystem disagreed with the data of the aggregator, calling them biased. The official Twitter account stated that more than 25,000 unique developers work on projects daily.
FTX founder at Fox Hill prison
Bankman-Freed was arrested on Monday by Bahamas authorities after US officials charged him with several charges, including fraud and money laundering.He is being held at Fox Hill Correctional Facility in Nassau, where he is expected to remain until February after a judge on Tuesday denied him bail and ordered that he remain in custody pending extradition to the United States. Fox Hill Prison is known for harsh conditions due to overcrowding, poor nutrition and inadequate sanitation, as well as being infested with rats and insects in large numbers.
Cryptocurrency fan from Switzerland implanted himself with a chip for crypto payments
The Swiss IT-person with the pseudonym F418 decided to permanently connect with the Lightning Network payment technology. He implanted himself with an NFC contactless payment chip. This required surgery. We do not recommend following his example, as this carries risks of infection, inflammation, etc.
The first attempt to install the chip was unsuccessful, but the programmer did not give up and made a second attempt. F418 assures that he does not feel any discomfort, and among the advantages of implanting a chip in his hand, he notes the fact that he now does not need to get a card or a smartphone at the checkout of the store.
