Blockchain Blawg

The Hack Earlier this month, a hacker executed a massive crypto heist on PolyNetwork--a decentralized finance (DeFi) platform. The hacker was able to steal more than $600 million in crypto from thousands of users on three separate PolyNetwork blockchains (Binance Smart Chain, Ethereum & Polygon) and involving more than a dozen cyptocurrencies. In other words, this hack was * major *. The PolyNetwork protocol operates on multiple blockchains and allows users to send/receive tokens across these different blockchains using various smart contracts (also known as "bridges"). The hacker exploited a vulnerability in one of these smart contracts which maintains significant amounts of crypto to maintain liquidity and this allowed him to overwrite instructions and redirect all crypto funds to himself. From there, the hacker attempted to move the stolen crypto into various liquidity pools.   The Blacklist The hacker was successful in moving some of the crypto. But shortly after the...

It would appear that the international hacker and cyberattacker association recently convened and decided they wanted to go for broke (or strike it rich) on widespread chaos and discord in the lives of everyday, ordinary, non-wealthy people. What decisionmaking tree leads one to conclude that attacking, oh I don't know, AN OIL PIPELINE is a good idea?? Water supply? Hospitals?! It is disturbing, to say the least, and much of the effort to thwart these attacks is being placed on private industry. I could pen a separate post on reasons why this particular burden shouldn't be borne mostly by private industry, but it suffices to say that it's not too late to switch out the Space Force for the Cyberspace Force.  I have several bones to pick with these nefarious actors. My biggest gripe is that they cause pretty significant disruption in the lives of innocent people--and I'm not just talking about the disruption of services. There is a seeping distrust, anxiety and/or paranoi...

Congress always has a lot on its plate--particularly before it heads into its annual August recess. And this year is no exception. There were the heartbreaking hearings about the events that unfolded on January 6. There was also a lot of scrambling to figure out a short-term solution to the expiration of the eviction moratorium. There was the Senate resolution establishing Hip Hop Celebration Day (August 11) and Hip Hop History Month (November 2021) (I love hip hop but who asked for these things...?).  And then there was the unveiling of the Senate's massive $1.2T infrastructure bill . The bill has a lot  in it. The proposed legislation has some things that one would expect to see in an infrastructure bill, such as improvement projects for roads, rails, pipes, broadband, etc. There are some other more surprising or interesting initiatives, such as the pilot program testing out national motor vehicle per-mile user fees. And then there's what some are calling the "cryptocurr...