Today in Crypto: Ethereum Foundation Doubles Bug Bounty to $500K, Oasys Partners with SBI VC Trade, The Graph Integrates with Banxa, Tether’s Excess Reserves to Increase by $700M in Q1 2023

Get your daily, bite-sized digest of cryptoasset and blockchain-related news – investigating the stories flying under the radar of today’s crypto news.
__________

Ethereum news

• The Ethereum Foundation doubled the maximum bug bounty to $500,000 for identifying related vulnerabilities ahead of the upcoming Shapella upgrade. Fredrik Svantes, a security researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, said in a meeting to “go ahead and start looking for more vulnerabilities as the max bounty payout for Shapella-specific issues is now up to half a million dollars.” He announced this in a tweet as well, while the bug bounty site will be updated to reflect the new info “soon”, Svantes said. The upgrade is scheduled for release on the mainnet on April 12.
• Matter Labs, the developer of zkSync, an Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible zero-knowledge-proof-based scaling solution, opened access to its Layer 2 network zkSync Era to the public today. This is the launch of the first zkEVM on the Ethereum blockchain. “We’ve completed robust testing, multiple tier-1 security audits, public contests, and bug bounties. We’ve added independent monitoring and risk mitigation mechanisms. Now developers, projects, and users can build on and bridge funds to experience the power of zkEVM,” said the announcement. 

Wallet news

• Gaming-optimized blockchain Oasys announced its new partnership with SBI VC Trade, the crypto solutions arm of Japan’s SBI Group. The Oasys network will support the SBI Web3 wallet, which has been operational in Japan since January this year, offering an automated exchange of users’ crypto assets for Japanese yen, said the press release. “Additionally, Oasys and SBI VC Trade are exploring various collaborations, including the listing of OAS tokens, a partnership with SBINFT Market, and liquidity provision with B2C2,” it added.
• Layer 1 blockchain Fantom launched the newest version of its native wallet interface, fWallet. With the new wallet, said the announcement, users can bridge assets between many chains, swap assets, have greater control over their staked FTM token, and create Fantom decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) governance proposals directly from the wallet.

Payments news

• Decentralized infrastructure protocol The Graph announced an integration with Banxa, an on-and-off ramp solution for Web3, to allow users to pay with fiat to access blockchain data organized by The Graph, offering direct access to blockchain data without the need for users to engage with centralized exchanges or platforms, said the announcement. “The integration also marks the first use of Banxa’s new OpenRamp product, which enables fiat payments to directly interact with smart contracts, opening up a broad array of use cases and more fluid crypto experiences,” it added.

Stablecoin news

• Paolo Ardoino, CTO of USDT issuer Tether, said that the company’s excess reserves will increase by $700 million in the first quarter of 2023, taking Tether’s total equity to $1.66 billion by the end of the month. This is the current estimation, said the announcement, “given the first quarter of 2023 ends 31 March, and which is already progressing as positively as Q4 of 2022.” While a portion will be reinvested in strategic projects, most of it will remain in the backend of the company, they added. 

CBDC news

• The United Arab Emirates expects to complete the first phase of its central bank digital currency (CBDC) strategy over the next 12 to 15 months, which includes proof-of-concept work for domestic CBDC issuance covering wholesale and retail usage, the Central Bank of UAE (CBUAE) announced on Thursday. The CBUAE also revealed an engagement with cloud platform G42 Cloud and US-based blockchain firm R3 “as the infrastructure and technology providers respectively for its CBDC implementation.”

DeFi news

• Coreum, an enterprise-grade layer 1 blockchain developed by the Coreum Development Foundation, has officially launched today. Per the press release, since its devnet launch in 2021, the Coreum blockchain has gained attention with features such as smart tokens (natively issued, customizable tokens on the Coreum chain, wrapped around smart contracts), ISO20022 Compliance (a single standardization approach used by all financial standards initiatives), and Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) Interoperability (a protocol for interoperability between different ledgers, where all blockchains connect to and communicate with each other via the IBC).

Mining news

• Bitcoin miner CleanSpark said that clean energy accounts for more than 90% of its energy mix, while the use of large-scale immersion cooling allowed it to reduce e-waste and increase the efficiency of its mining machines by up to 85%, according to its latest ESG and Corporate Responsibility Report. “Mining campuses provide “spinning reserves” that facilitate utility companies’ ability to work with the fluctuating supplies that come from renewables while improving the performance of baseline power production facilities such as nuclear plants,” it added.