The Weekly Wrap: Wormhole hack, Miami CityCoin, NFTs

1. Wormhole hacked

The Facts:

• Solana tanks as its cross-chain bridge Wormhole was exploited for 120’000 wrapped ETH (~ $322 million).
• The hackers took advantage of a bug in the Solana VAA, a bridge function to verify assets.
• Wormhole serves as a safe bridge for users to transfer ETH from Ethereum to Solana.

Why it’s important:

• Shortly after the incident, the Solana team sent an on-chain message, offering a $10 million reward bounty for the return of the tokens.
• The second largest DeFi hack to date could impact Solana even without being a direct attack on the network.
• Permanent absence of the ETH backing the wETH could impact collateralized token loans and network specific protocols such as Solend.

2. Miami CityCoin payoff

The Facts:

• The city of Miami received its first payout since they announced the mining of CityCoins in August 2021.
• CityCoin is a smart contract on the Stacks network allowing users to mine their city’s coins.
• Miami has already generated more than $22 million since its launch with its latest disbursement of $5.25 million.

Why it’s important:

• The city praises the project that creates resources for Miami through innovation, rather than taxation.
• It’s yet to be determined how the city commission will use these funds, but it demonstrates how cities and governments can leverage innovation to not only fund their operations, but also let citizens participate at the success of the city itself.

3. NFTs

The Facts:

• The monthly volume on OpenSea topped $5 billion as floor prices and total sales volume of popular projects such as Azuki, Bored Ape Yacht Club, CloneX and Mutant Ape Yacht Club continue to increase steadily.
• While the crypto market is still in recovery mode, NFT marketplaces like LooksRare and OpenSea have generated roughly $100 million in daily total volume.

Why it’s important:

• To see a stable development in NFT demand can show stability and also anticipation of speculators as they diversify their exposure during and after the market slump earlier this year.
• Many popular projects have shown an innovative approach on how to further evolve their NFTs by offering upgrades or use cases to further improve user experience.

In other news

• India to tax cryptocurrency gains and more. (via Washington Post)
• Bitfinex hack funds moved from 2016. (via Coindesk)
• Galaxy Digital ESG. (Galaxy Digital)

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