Month: July 2023

Experiments show AI could help to audit smart contracts, but not yet

While artificial intelligence (AI) has already transformed a myriad of industries, from healthcare and automotive to marketing and finance, its potential is now being put to the test in one of the blockchain industry’s most crucial areas — smart contract security. Numerous tests have shown great potential for AI-based blockchain audits, but this nascent tech still lacks some important qualities inherent to human professionals — intuition, nuanced judgment and subject expertise. My own organization, OpenZeppelin, recently conducted a series of experiments highlighting the value of AI in detecting vulnerabilities. This…

Grayscale resolves lawsuit with Fir Tree over proposed changes to Bitcoin Trust

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Grayscale Investments has reached an agreement with New York-based investment firm Fir Tree Capital Management over its Bitcoin Trust. According to a July 11 announcement from Fir Tree, Grayscale agreed to provide additional documentation related to its Bitcoin Trust (GBTC) after Fir Tree filed a lawsuit in December 2022. The complaint against Grayscale aimed at having the asset manager stop plans to turn its GBTC trust into a spot exchange-traded fund (ETF) and provide documentation on its relationship with Digital Currency Group, Grayscale’s parent company. Fir Tree claimed that roughly…

BIS gives CBDCs a thumbs up, crypto the middle finger in reports to G20 ministers

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In preparation for a meeting of the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors this month, the Bank for International Settlements Innovation Hub (BISIH) submitted two reports — on cryptocurrency and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) — on July 11. The reports reached very different conclusions about the related technologies. The BISIH report on crypto is the shorter of the two publications at 24 pages. It provided a short overview of the crypto ecosystem of cryptocurrencies, stablecoins and decentralized finance (DeFi), followed by a laundry list of “[s]tructural flaws and…

IMF sees climate change, DAOs, CBDC as threats to Marshall Islands, urges reforms

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The Republic of the Marshall Islands (RMI) has completed its annual talks with the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The country is expected to see gross domestic product (GDP) growth this year, the IMF concluded, in a recovery from the impact of COVID-19 and the contraction of its fishing industry. Climate change and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) remain a threat, however.  The RMI is spread across more than 1,000 islands in the Central Pacific region. It has an average elevation of six feet above sea level and a population of about…

Anthropic launches Claude 2 amid continuing AI hullabaloo

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Anthropic, an artificial intelligence (AI) and “public benefit” company, launched Claude 2 on July 11, marking another milestone in a year full of seemingly nonstop progress from the burgeoning generative AI sector.  Introducing Claude 2! Our latest model has improved performance in coding, math and reasoning. It can produce longer responses, and is available in a new public-facing beta website at https://t.co/uLbS2JNczH in the US and UK. pic.twitter.com/jSkvbXnqLd — Anthropic (@AnthropicAI) July 11, 2023 According to a company blog post, Claude 2 shows improvements across nearly every measurable category. Perhaps…

Coinbase Goes to Court Against the SEC

“Like all securities, an economic arrangement can qualify as an investment contract only if it involves an ongoing business enterprise whose management owes enforceable obligations to investors. Absent such obligations, the contract is just an asset sale,” Coinbase argued. “Because no such obligations are carried in the transactions over Coinbase’s secondary market exchange, and because the value that Coinbase purchasers receive through these transactions inheres in the things bought and traded rather than in the businesses that generated them, the transactions are not securities transactions.” Source

Billionaire Investor Tim Draper Still Thinks the Price of Bitcoin Can Reach $250K

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“It’s a great system, it’s great currency, it’s a great way to operate,” he said. “I can’t wait until I can raise a fund all in bitcoin, invest it all in bitcoin, have my portfolio companies all pay their employees and suppliers all in bitcoin and have taxes all paid in bitcoin, and have the waterfall all fall into people’s bitcoin wallets. Because then there’s no accounting, there’s no auditing, there’s no bookkeeping, it’s all done on the blockchain. It’s all honest and it’s all straight.” Original

Aptos (APT) Network Voting to Enable Fungible Assets with Network Upgrade

One change, AIP-21 would enhance the network’s capabilities when it comes to tokenized securities, real estate, in-game currencies and other fungible assets. Although Aptos already supported on-chain token issuance, its existing standards could not keep up with “creative innovations” like restrictions on who can own an asset, according to a proposal description. Source

Multichain Executor has been ‘draining’ AnySwap tokens: Report

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A person is using the Multichain Executor to drain tokens associated with the AnySwap bridging protocol, according to a July 10 report from on-chain sleuth and Twitter user Spreek. The report follows outflows of over $100 million from Multichain bridges that occurred on July 7, which were reported by the Multichain team as “abnormal.” The Multichain Executor address has been draining anyToken addresses across many chains today and moving them all to a new EOA pic.twitter.com/gqDaXMBl96 — Spreek (@spreekaway) July 10, 2023 According to Spreek’s July 10 report, “The Multichain…