I entered the Gotchiverse - Here's what happened...
First up, apologies. I originally started this article back in March to coincide with Aavegotchi's Alpha Launch Play Drop, however, life got in the way and my writing was put on the back burner. Whenever I did manage to find some spare time, I found myself drawn back into the Gotchiverse instead of writing. Now, I am coming out the other side, a new member of the single mum club, and experiencing my first bear market. Fun times!
Unexpectedly, I found a harbour from the storms of the last few months, a place I could escape to, and a way to minimise the downward pressure on my portfolio: Aavegotchi and the Gotchiverse.
What is Aavegotchi and the Gotchiverse?
To keep it simple, Aavegotchis are NFTs with a twist. The Gotchiverse is the name of the metaverse where you can play the recently launched game.
Aavegotchi's can be interacted with, Tamagotchi style, to increase their Kinship values and boost earnings. They can be collected, upgraded, and traded. Aavegotchi's generate interest for their owners as they are loaded with interest-generating assets (aTokens) from Aave. How much you earn can be boosted further by equipping wearables that can be bought or won in a raffle.
If you want to have your own Aavegotchi, they can be purchased in the Gotchi Baazaar, or you could buy a Portal and summon one from it. GHST is the game currency you need to shop in the marketplace, and the coin has been doing well since its launch, even in these recent times. If you're feeling lucky, you could also pick up a Drop Ticket for the next raffle and win one.
In the Gotchiverse, Aavegotchis become playable avatars. Players can currently explore The Citaadel, collecting Alchemica as they go. Alchemica is an in-game currency that is needed for crafting and upgrading. It consists of green FUD, red FOMO, blue ALPHA, and purple KEK. GLTR is another token that is earned through providing liquidity, and it can be used to speed up upgrades. FRENS can be earned by staking GHST and converted to raffle tickets. You can also buy raffle tickets in the Baazaar. Landowners can craft installations on their land, both decorative and functional. GLTR can be earned through providing liquidity and is used to speed up upgrades of installations.
Players can own parcels of REALM land, they come in three sizes, and can be built on and now decorated. Land is where Alchemica can be channelled by your Gotchi, and where soon you will be able to build installations to harvest and collect the Alchemica embedded in your land.
Aavegotchi is being developed by PixelCraft studios, based in Singapore, and is hosted alongside Aave. The game is on Polygon which makes it secure, fast, and cheap to play. Check out the comprehensive roadmap and litepaper for future plans and more detail. The Aavegotchi Wiki is a fantastic resource if you want to deep dive into the details, tokenomics, lore, and more. https://wiki.aavegotchi.com/en/roadmap https://docs.google.com/document/d/1hUHF29F3_tByWd8ezSphYEE0gPJYg3K5CN1K-X3_WK8/edit#heading=h.diix7kqkl8ck
The next major steps for the game include farming, opening the lands outside the Citaadel walls to explore, and lickquidators to battle.
Gotchi Lending
If you don't have (or can't afford) to buy a Gotchi, there is still hope. This is a game built for playing, and it's no fun if new players are priced out of existence. This is where Gotchi Lending comes in. You can safely borrow a Gotchi, for as little as 1 hour, and play the game yourself. There are Gotchis that are free to rent, but they are hard to catch unless you are a member of a guild. I usually rent for 0.1 GHST or less (about 10c currently) but I have seen prices as low as 0.05 GHST. This is the only game I know of that has such a fair and cheap point of entry for new players, and I love it. Gas fees are paid in MATIC and are wonderfully low too.
Crafting, the first decorations raffle, and moar
There is a frenly community to be found when you enter the Gotchiverse. Discord and Twitter communities are active, and devs are accessible and constantly shipping new updates. There are Guilds you can join for a more social experience and to help you on your journey. The marketplace in the Gotchi Baazaar is thriving with land, Gotchis, wearables, raffle tickets, and now decorations on offer.
While Gotchi's have been around since 2020, the Gotchiverse is new. April 2022 was the Alpha launch of the first stage of the playable game. The Play Drop ran for a month and had Alchemica raining down from the sky. It was awesome. Since then, aaltars for channelling have been released, and there's been even more Alchemica raining down. In April, the first decorations, LE Golden Tiles, were released for players to craft. Aaltars became upgradable in May.
A raffle was held at the beginning of June to commemorate the first release of Aesthetica (decorations) including flowers, campfires, gnomes, and more. More limited-time craftable decorations were launched on June 15th with grass and rugs. Grass has a set time frame for crafting before it's gone forever. The LE rugs, however, do not - the ability to craft them will be 'pulled' when the devs feel like it! Crafting Wednesdays will continue every week with new limited edition items for players to craft. The Gotchiverse is light-hearted and fun, it's a welcome relief.
There are events aplenty coinciding with the gradual release of the Gotchiverse and full gameplay. The next major event is the upcoming GBM-style land auction (that's a bid-to-earn auction in case you haven't heard of this awesome concept check it out). The last auction was a major success and allowed many players to earn enough through bidding to actually buy their own parcel of land! I can't wait to try this out for myself.
And there is plenty more to come, which is another reason why I'm pushing myself to write this article. If I leave it any longer, there will be too much to put into it! The devs keep shipping new items, upgrades, and functionality, giving me more reasons to play. The current bear market is not slowing them down at all.
TLDR
Aavegotchi is an NFT that combines the worlds of DeFi and GameFi. It's Fun-to-Earn!
My Journey
I first heard about Aave and Aavegotchi in 2021, and already, the price of the NFT/DeFi ghosts was out of my league. And the playable game was nowhere near launch yet either. Since then, things have only gone up. I heard about their game launch and alpha season and checked again, and surprise surprise, it was even more out of my league. Then, I read this Publish0x article about Gotchi Lending and learned that I could borrow an Aavegotchi to play. I liked the sound of this. https://www.publish0x.com/aavegotchi/aavegotchi-brings-scalability-to-nft-gaming-gotchi-lending-n-xdgemnj
Gotchi Lending
So, I jumped over to the Gotchi Lending page, connected my wallet and there was one available for no GHST upfront, but I'm on toddler duty so tonight's not the night. I try again in the morning, but no free Gotchis are available. I looked again later and there was one, so I clicked to borrow. Clicked approve, aaaand the transaction failed. The network was busy though, the Play Drop was in full swing and everyone it seemed was looking to rent a Gotchi and get in on the action.
I tried again, but another fail. I changed my Metamask gas settings, tried again; nope. I repeated this process too many times, thankfully Polygon gas fees are so low, but my free Gotchi wasn't turning out to be free. It was comforting in one way to see that so many people were excited about this game.
I looked at the list of available Gotchis again, there were a few for 0.1 GHST (around 15 cents at the time). I didn't mind paying that to try out the game, plus I get to keep a percentage of my 'earnings' from the game, so I was curious to see if this really was Play-to-Earn. I had 0.60 USDC sitting in my wallet, so I went and swapped it for some GHST and tried again.
I found another cheap Gotchi, CZ Binance was his name, and I hit that borrow button, approved my spend, and boom - I got it. A 3-hour rental with a 30% for me deal. Not the greatest split, but my impatience was getting the better of me, and I just wanted to see what this was all about. I checked out my Gotchi, and looked at its stats. Petting him was an option too, but that costs gas. I'll wait till I have my own.
The Gotchiverse
Next, I clicked to enter the Gotchiverse at verse.aavegotchi.com, connected my wallet, and I got in. https://verse.aavegotchi.com/
When the game loaded, I could see a digital Tron-like world, with a grid, some ghosts, and not much else. I'm in the heart of the Citaadel. A message pops up from the bottom of the screen - Rejoice, 629 Alchemica has been dropped. I don't see anything. I zoom in and see even less. I try moving around, controls are simple WASD controls. I float around and see some other Gotchis running around, some standing still. Where is the Alchemica?
The Play Drop
Another pop-up proclaiming an Alchemica drop (seems to be happening every minute) and most of the visible Gotchis start running around and then stop. I decide to just sit somewhere unpopulated for a minute, another drop message, and a green square appears near me. I run to it, (not that quickly, my Gotchi isn't the fastest) and as I walk over it, it disappears. Now I have 1 FUD. And that is the basic gameplay for collecting Alchemica. I stay zoomed out, can see more of the world and more chance of seeing a drop. The next drop, I don't move fast enough. Then, I see a red square sitting there, I run for it, yes. 1 FOMO in the bag.
You can move faster on roads, so I found a nice wide patch of road with not many Gotchis around, waited for a minute, and two green squares appeared near me. I run and hooray, I got them. So, I have three hours to collect as many of the four Alchemica as I can, this is easy and surprisingly fun. While initial gameplay is basic, racing against other Gotchis in real-time is fun and challenging. And the gameplay is expanding constantly, there seems to always be something new happening in the Gotchiverse.
Everyone else's Gotchi seems faster than mine but that's probably more my internet's fault. I try a new area with not many ghosts around, except one that hasn't moved for a while, maybe they're taking a coffee break. In the next drop, a blue square appears right next to them, they don't move, so I run and success, I got a piece of ALPHA.
I have 3 of the 4 now, purple KEK is the rarest of the drops. I've only seen one so far. I keep going, it's a bit of a grind but I don't really mind. I kinda like retro graphics and it's easy on the brain. Just collect Alchemica every minute. There were around 1400 players online while I was playing, if you didn't collect a drop in the first 10 seconds after they drop, forget about it - they're all gone. Though, I did find one lucky piece of ALPHA that dropped behind a light post that no one noticed, yay for me.
I changed my location every 10 minutes or whenever I'm bored of the area. There are patches of red, green, blue, and purple around; the natural land features and rivers of Alchemica. They slow you down a lot when walking over them but can be rewarding too. At the top of the map, you can see the citadel walls and a few statues. I hang around here for a while and the drops were good, I even got my first KEK. So now, I have the full set of Alchemica tokens, but I only get to keep 30% so I needed to find more.
Once I had around 25, I decided to withdraw them through the portal to see what it was like. This is how you claim your Alchemica, and you can find them with the mini map. I zoom in when I'm at the portal, lots of Aavegotchis are hanging around here. An 'e' appears when I'm in range, I click it and a Metamask approval appears (sign this to prove you're human), and then back to the game. An in-game message appears, 'Alchemica Withdrawal initiated'. A minute later, 'Alchemica Withdrawal initiation approved', and then 'Alchemica Withdrawal successful'. The coins are transferred to my Gotchi Pocket, and I can see the split between myself and the owner. Easy. Back to the game, rinse, and repeat.
I had no idea what they'd be worth at the time, but seeing as their only current use was to build the first craftable installation, the LE golden altar, and players need a lot of Alchemica to do this, I figured it wouldn't be a bad token to have. In early April 2022, they became tradeable on Quickswap, so I didn't have to wait long to see. Aavegotchi plans to have its own DEX, but it hasn't launched yet.
And who knows, if these rentals work out for me, maybe I'll one day earn enough to have my own Aavegotchi. But I digress, back to the game.
Towards the end of my 3 hours, the game got a bit laggy, it was frustrating not having my ghost respond to my movements and I missed a few drops because of it. Most likely due to my internet connection and vintage mac getting tired after all that time. As the countdown timer entered the last 10 minutes, it changed to yellow, last 5 mins it changed to red. I didn't want to lose my haul, so I went to the portal and withdrew again. I want to make sure it completes before the 3 hours are up. And then my time was up, I jumped back to the landing page.
BUT my borrowed Aavegotchi is still in my list of Gotchis. Hmmm, maybe it takes a few minutes to return to its owner. Nope, I checked the FAQ, and the owner needs to recall it manually. Which means bonus time! Until the owner claims it back, you can still use it - BUT beware, it could be recalled at any moment along with any Alchemica you haven't thrown in a portal. Turns out, my owner wasn't that quick to recall, and I could have gotten a couple of extra hours of gameplay.
So, that's how it went. I borrowed a Gotchi for 0.1 GHST for 3 hours (and could have played for an extra 2 hours at least, but my toddler and laptop had other ideas). When Alchemica became tradable, I checked my earnings and my first journey in the Gotchiverse earned me a fiver. To me, that's not bad for a game, and it feels sustainable too.
And now...
Since the Gotchiverse launch, I keep being drawn back to play again. I haven't managed to score a 'no upfront cost' Gotchi since, but there is nearly always a 0.1 GHST or less Gotchi available to borrow. And each time I have played, I have earned more than I spent borrowing a Gotchi. Even with all the market crashing that's been going on, that still stands true. It has been a welcome relief to escape the market doom and gloom and spend time in a thriving and happy metaverse where the biggest issues are like 'Should I buy a LE Golden Tile or craft a LE Rug'. It helps that GHST is backed by a bonding curve and is therefore more stable, and it's working. GHST is performing well during this bear market, and it's refreshing to be in a community that isn't all 'wen moon?' and such.
The Gotchiverse is changing before my eyes too. The emptiness is disappearing. At launch, there was a starfield, superimposed with a grid containing empty parcels of land, roads, Citaadel walls, and the rivers and outcrops of Alchemica. Then altars started appearing, followed by the 3 LE golden tiles. Now decorations are live and landowners are personalising their parcels and it's cool to see. And speaking of seeing, the game now allows you to zoom out almost enough to view an entire spacious land parcel. Being able to view more allows you to appreciate the natural features of the land and landowners decorating much more and is just another example of the endless upgrades and features that keep coming since launch.
The future looks promising for Aavegotchi. I don't know what the future holds for GHST and Alchemica tokens, but there is no denying that the value of Aavegotchi's has grown over the years, and I imagine REALM land will follow suit. Land sounds valuable to me (NFA), and a humble parcel can currently be snapped up for around 80 GHST. A great entry point into the game. You can channel Alchemica at your free to build altar every day, and very soon, you will be able to farm FOMO, FUD, ALPHA, and KEK from it with Harvesters, or rent it out to other players.
I have fallen down the Gotchiverse rabbit hole and there's no looking back for me now. I have land in my sights and dream of an Aavegotchi to call my own. I bought my first NFTs last week - 2 purple flowers: one for me and one to flip. It's already gained 100%! I am staking the Alchemica I've found and a small amount of GHST to earn GLTR. I've already harvested my earnings a few times and been able to play for free as a result. I'm also staking GHST for FRENS so that I can enter the next raffle.
Aavegotchi can be time-intensive, or a set-and-forget type of passive income by depositing your Gotchi in the Gotchi Vault or Gotchi World. DYOR but these are great options for Gotchi owners who want passive income, or a short break from petting and managing their Gotchi. Land can also be managed through these services. There's a host of community-built resources to check Gotchi channeling activity, maps, bazaar prices, and much more. https://www.gotchivault.com/ https://www.gotchi.world/
I would love to have my own Gotchi, but it's going to take more than just playing to do that anytime soon. Flipping items in the Baazaar looks promising so far, and I plan on crafting some LE purple grass with my collected Alchemica this week. Again, it'll be one for me and one to sell. I'll let you know how it goes. Aavegotchi's Gotchiverse is a P2E game that is fun and rewarding, and I never thought I'd say it, but I'm hooked. I love the style, the community, and the vision for the game. Watching it take shape, and playing as it grows is a welcome distraction from the current bear market too.
So, what do you think? Have you tried playing Aavegotchi? What are your thoughts on the game? Are you loving the recent updates as much as I am? Let me know, I'd love to hear about your experience in the Gotchiverse.
*Originally published on Publish0x
How I doubled my wealth in Upland
It was during Publish0x's last Upland writing contest that I discovered this game, and seeing as it was actually free to start playing, I dived right in. But it wasn't until I harnessed the power of Discord that I managed to grow my wealth significantly. This is my Upland journey so far.
Upland is a relatively simple game.
• Sign up with a referral link. If you use Publish0x's link here, it will give you 6000 UPX, which is double your starting amount. Very useful if you want to keep the game 'free'. The standard referral link here will reward you and me by splitting the value of your first purchase once you reach Uplander status. https://discover.upland.me/publish0x_2022 https://r.upland.me/3HWP
• Buy some FSA properties, aim for 3 or more if you can. (FSA properties are designated 'Fair Start Act' and are reserved for players with Visitor or Uplander status. Detroit is a good place to start at the moment as there are plenty of cheap FSA properties still available. Bright green is an FSA property for Sale, Blue is one you own.
• Keep some properties to earn UPX from rental income (around 14%) and visits to your properties by other players (sends).
• Sell some to make a profit.
• Complete collections to boost your rental earnings. Collections come with a once-off completion bonus that can be very useful for growing your Upland wealth and expanding your property empire.
• Buy more properties with your earnings. Sell and hold as desired to build your property portfolio and watch your wealth grow.
And that's it. The basic gameplay of Upland: Buy properties, sell for a profit, earn rent, then buy more. At least for now, Upland is continuously expanding.
So, that's what I've been doing.
I grinded through my visitor status, logging in every day (or close to it) to ensure I didn't lose my UPX and properties. There were definitely a few days where I missed the 7-day login bonus when I shouldn't (glitch or shadiness? - I can't decide), but I persevered and made it to Uplander status. Now, I don't have to login in every week to claim my earnings, but I want to. Why? Because Upland has recently introduced a new daily login bonus; sign in for 7 consecutive days and you can win a Spark reward. This is a great change to the game as Spark is essential for building on your properties and previously wasn't easy to earn.
I started playing in Chicago and bought 3 properties with my initial 10,000 UPX. I completed the newbie collection (very easy as you only need to own one property to complete this one). The UPX bonus from this was 800 UPX. Very welcome on my journey towards 10,000 UPX and Uplander status. The collection also boosts my earnings on that property 1.1 times. I had a look through the other collections and saw that the Chicagoan collection only required 3 properties to complete and boosts earnings 1.28x with another one-off bonus. Currently, this collection rewards with 500 UPX (the rewards and holding periods have changed this year), and at the time had no holding period so I pulled my property out of the Newbie collection and put all three into the Chicagoan collection. Thanks to these bonuses and my rental income, it wouldn't be too long before I reached Uplander status.
Then, I was just logging in and regularly claiming my rental earnings. Not very exciting, so I put a property up for sale and was happy to find it sold quickly, for 15 000 UPX. Nice, that property only cost me around 3000 UPX. Now I could buy some more properties, I decided to aim for the 'King of the Street' collection; three properties on one street. I found a street that had FSA properties available that were cheap enough to allow me to buy three and immediately bought them. Another bonus and my net worth and monthly income jumped. I was very happy with how things were going. But I still wasn't making much daily, my properties were cheap and the income reflected that.
And that's how it stayed for a while. I didn't have enough to buy anything new and wasn't interested in selling what I already had. I also didn't want to add any fiat, I want to see if I can make something out of nothing but my time with this game. Then in September 2021, I harvested my income and finally, I made it to Uplander status. Woot woot. The messages announcing my eligibility were a welcome sight. No more essential daily logging in anymore. I upgraded immediately, which I shouldn't have, because a week or so later an event started that would have rewarded me with some Spark for leveling up during it. Alas, no Spark for me, but the shiny new Uplander certificate was nice to have all the same.
I kept logging in and claiming my earnings, keeping an eye on the email updates and any new events. I wanted to branch out to another city but knew the current options weren't affordable to me. Then Los Angelos was released and I thought, new city, new FSA properties - why not give it a go? Well, I'll tell you why; LA is expensive in the metaverse too! After spending around 1700 to travel to LA I was sorely disappointed to find that I couldn't afford anything. And then news come out that nearly all the FSA properties were sold out anyway, a major bummer.
Thankfully not long after that, news arrived that a new city, Detroit, was being released to cater to new players, one that is cheap and has loads of FSA properties to start your Upland journey with. This was good news for me (and many others), so I started saving my UPX for the day of release. It was going to be tight, my UPX balance and rental earnings were not growing as fast as I had hoped.
As the big day approached I started thinking about the travel costs. I tried to find information on how to travel from Chicago to LA but couldn't find anything easily. There are no direct flights or trains between these two cities. I was a little frustrated with how difficult it was to find such simple information but eventually made it to a Youtube video that had a travel map for all the cities. But it didn't have the costs. The video mentioned that the discord community was strong and helpful so I decided to join to ask the question.
Discord is an amazing resource and many crypto and blockchain projects have active communities here. It can be a little tricky to sign in (it made me feel tbh), join and verify yourself for each group as they are all different - but it was definitely worth it.
I asked my question on costs for traveling from Chicago to Detroit and was quickly answered by a helpful Discordian who I'll call Chad. The cost - 1,850 UPX. This would leave me with around 600 UPX when I arrived. Not a great amount. I said as much in the chat but Chad reassured me that there were properties available in that price range. With this news, I said I was on my way. I thought that would be it. I came for information and received my answer.
But then Chad offered to help me to get some more properties when I landed. I was intrigued.
Obviously, my first thought was - How am I being scammed here. So I asked how they could help me. Turns out, the person I was talking to was an Upland Executive status player, which means they have a net worth of between 10,000,000 – 100,000,000 UPX net worth, and can no longer buy FSA properties. As I am only a lowly Uplander, I can - and this is the money shot. New players can buy very desirable properties that wealthier players cannot until they are resold.
Chad checked in with me as I was traveling between cities, it takes around 30 minutes to make the journey. This made me think that their offer was genuine as they weren't being pushy or making wild claims or anything. When I landed, I let them know and found out what the deal was.
My UPX balance was too low to buy anything useful, so they offered to sell me one of their properties for 600 UPX and then buy it back off me for 30,000 UPX. All I had to do was buy one FSA property of their choosing and sell it to them. This sounded ok. All the risk (and UPX) was on Chad, the worst-case scenario was that I would be stuck with whatever property I bought off them. But, I was getting it at a super discount so I agreed. Chad sent me a screenshot of the property I should put in an offer for, I searched for and found it in Upland and sent an offer. Not long after, the offer was accepted. Shortly after that, Chad sent me an offer for 30,000 UPX. I accepted and a few minutes later, the deal was done and I had UPX to spend. Yay.
Chad then sent me the details of the property they were interested in, saying that this looked like a good street to buy on for me too. I went and immediately purchased it and then waited for Chad to make an offer on it. They did, and the deal was finished. Chad now had their new FSA property, and I was a lot wealthier. Seeing as Chad was willing to risk 30,000 UPX on getting a property on this street, I felt like it would be a shrewd move to buy some too. I bought three. It was a wonderful feeling seeing the confirmations that the properties were minted on the blockchain and now belonged to me. It also allowed me to complete the 'King of the Street' collection. I still had some UPX left but stopped shopping to make sure that I would have enough to travel to the next new city that is released.
The best part? The street I purchased on was Grand Boulevard which was revealed as a Limited Collection street a week or so later. I couldn't believe it. Not only did Discord Chad help me to purchase more properties, doubling my net worth and turning my rental income into something nice to see, but their hunch that it was a good street was spot on. I never expected to fill a limited collection like this on Upland. Goodbye 'King of the Street' and hello to the more exclusive 'West Boulevard' collection. The earnings boost on these three properties is 1.87, plus the one-off collection bonus of 3,400 UPX. Score. Of course, I bought more property with this bonus UPX which allowed me to fill the 'five properties in one city' collection. Now all but one of my properties is in an active collection.
Now, when I log in to Upland I am happy with my rental income. My Grand Boulevard properties also are doing surprisingly well with visits. While the send fee in Detroit is low at 15 UPX (and I have all my properties set to the lowest), the extra income is appreciated. I can also see my balance growing at a reasonable rate too, it won't be long before I can buy more properties and this has made the game fun. I was questioning the point of it before now, but after discovering the community on Discord and growing my Upland portfolio to 10 properties with 3 active collections, I get it. Now, I can rest assured knowing that if I ever need help, there is a Discord community that I can turn to. And I still need to fill that 'King of the Street" collection again.
And this is just the early days of the Upland metaverse. Buying and selling property has been the main focus, but now that buildings can be built on your properties and shops are being opened for Block Explorers, things are getting interesting. I can't wait to see what's going on in the Upland metaverse in another year's time.
So, to cut a long story short - the best way I found to grow your wealth in Upland is to get involved in the Discord community. You never know, maybe you will come across a friendly Uplander that will help you to grow your wealth too.
*Originally published on Publish0x for the Upland Wealth Building Competition https://www.publish0x.com/journeys-in-the-cryptoverse/how-i-doubled-my-net-worth-in-upland-xdgolzl?a=nXe0VmRNbx
Binance Times: Midweek News
Binance Suspends Deposits & Withdrawals on Ronin Network Temporarily https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/0f87dac819d14c22ba801654109b3bdd
In response to the unprecedented Ronin Network hack, Binance has temporarily halted trading with the Ronin Network. Withdrawals of Wrapped Ether (WETH) on the Ethereum Network have also been paused along with converting WETH for ETH. Binance and other CEXs (Centralised Exchanges) are working with Ronin, Axie Infinity, and law enforcement as the investigation into this mind-boggling hack continues.
Honestly, I cannot understand how this has played out so far. For starters, this is now the largest hack in crypto history with around $625 million USD worth of ETH (173 600) and USDC (25.5 million) taken. This is big enough news on its own, **BUT** **no one noticed for 6 days!** WHAT?
How could the team behind Ronin Network or Axie Infinity not notice? If a user hadn't complained that they couldn't withdraw their ETH from the bridge, **when** would they have noticed?
This hack has highlighted the obvious issues with having only 9 validators, and only requiring 5 of those to reach consensus to approve a withdrawal like this. Four of the validators belong to Sky Mavis and were comprised by the same back door that allowed the hacker to gain the fifth validator. The fifth was operated by the Axie DAO but wasn't even supposed to still be there. It was created to help during a time of high gas fees back in November 2021 and was only supposed to be active for a month. BUT after the month passed, whitelist access wasn't automatically revoked, so, the hacker was able to take advantage, and here we are today. A very expensive lesson in housekeeping.
Ronin network released a community update following the hack on March 29th, with updates on the 30th. https://roninblockchain.substack.com/p/community-alert-ronin-validators?s=w
**Updated Key Points**
We are in the process of conducting a thorough investigation; working with Chainalysis to monitor the stolen funds and Crowdstrike to handle forensics and the setup of surveillance tools.
While the investigations are ongoing, at this point we are certain that this was an external breach. All evidence points to this attack being socially engineered, rather than a technical flaw.
We are committed to ensuring that all of the drained funds are recovered or reimbursed, and we are continuing conversations with our stakeholders to determine the best course of action.
Ronin network states that all user AXS, RON, and SLP are safe, but with the bridge drained of ETH and USDC how are users going to cash out? $625 million USD worth is a lot. If my maths is right, that's 0.03125% of the entire crypto market! Ronin also increased the number of validators required from 5 to 8 out of 9 around eleven hours **before** the official announcement.
In my view, a successful hack in crypto is only half the battle, the other half is cashing out without being caught. No easy feat with blockchain transparency. Ronin network has said that they are looking to recover/reimburse all the lost funds. With that in mind, it seems that Ronin and Axie Infinity are hoping/relying on the hacker not being able to achieve the second step and returning some, most, or all the stolen funds. $625 million is a bit much to reimburse. Most of the funds are still sitting in the hacker's wallet. https://etherscan.io/address/0x098b716b8aaf21512996dc57eb0615e2383e2f96
While the investigations are ongoing, at this point we are certain that this was an external breach. All evidence points to this attack being socially engineered, rather than a technical flaw.
I'm not sure how there can be no technical flaw when a validator RPC node was not closed when its use was finished. Or how the 4 Sky Mavis validators were compromised. And what does 'socially engineered mean? Lots of questions, what happens next will be interesting to see.
Earn Wednesday https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/9e139cc6838d4bc88fabfc39bc482c59
The latest (30/03/22) high-yield offerings for Binance's Earn Wednesday are out, there are some great opportunities on offer this week.
120 day Locked Staking products for ONE (15.79% APY), NEO (13.56% APY) WAVES (10.89% APY), and ALGO (8.24% APY) are on offer with nice low minimum staking amounts. https://www.binance.com/en/staking
Flexible Savings products have been added for WAVES (5% APY) which will tie in nicely with the locked staking offering. https://www.binance.com/en/savings/?_dp=L21haW4vbGVuZGluZz9mcmFnbWVudEluZGV4PTA=&#lending-demandDeposits
Locked Savings products for LUNA and SAND (both 10% APY) have also been added. These are only locked for 7 days so unless you have much more than the minimum required, it's probably not worth pulling out early from other locked products. https://www.binance.com/en/savings/#lending-fixeddeposits
Liquidity Farming is now offering UNI and SUSHI pools. There are now 4 UNI Pools for BTC, BNB, BUSD, and USDT ranging from 5.71% (BTC) to 13.20% (USDT). The same pairs are on offer for the SUSHI pools and current yields range from 17.36% (BNB) to 22.07% (BTC). https://www.binance.com/en/swap/liquidity?_dp=L21wL2FwcD9hcHBJZD1iOXpNQkNaRXVZNG5YZFoydjRaOGZMJnN0YXJ0UGFnZVBhdGg9Y0dGblpYTXZiWEF2YkdseGRXbGthWFI1TDJsdVpHVjQ=
Remember, providing liquidity is a high-risk activity, the yields will fluctuate daily, and your rewards are affected by the volume of trade in said pools. Plus, impermanent loss is a thing that you must take into consideration when you decide to withdraw.
**In other news**
The Klaytyn (KLAY) network upgrade and hard fork was completed this morning (31/03/22). This is version 1.8.0 and release notes can be found here. https://medium.com/klaytn/klaytn-v1-8-0-release-notes-7e609e3c0661
The Tezos (XTZ) network upgrade will be happening tonight around 1 am UTC and should take about an hour. Deposits and withdrawals will be suspended during this time. More information on the upgrade can be found here. https://forum.tezosagora.org/t/ithaca-2-psithaca2/4206
**Referrals**
If you are not already signed up to Binance, there are currently a couple of referral codes you can choose from.
Binance has launched a new Lite referral mode today (31/03/22). $100 USDT cashback vouchers rewards are on offer along with an additional $130 000 USD prize pool in cash vouchers. To successfully qualify, new users need to click the referral link here and use my Lite referral ID: CPA_00ZLZOEZO5). New users will have to complete KYC within 7 days, AND deposit $50 or equivalent within 14 days of their registration. USDT cashback vouchers refund the equivalent of the spot trading fees you incurred in USDT daily, while the voucher is valid. https://www.binance.com/en/support/announcement/e211617fcd94476f91a88e969b8e88e3 https://www.binance.com/en/activity/referral/offers/claim?ref=CPA_00ZLZOEZO5
Standard referrals are also available, this referral will reward you with a lifetime discount on spot and futures trading fees. If this sounds more appealing to you, please click here and use my referral ID: 121442089. https://accounts.binance.com/en/register?ref=121442089
And that's all for this Midweek edition of the Binance Times. Thanks for reading.
*Originally published on Publish0x https://www.publish0x.com/the-binance-times/binance-times-midweek-news-xmmzwqw?a=nXe0VmRNbx
@Forin
