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The Whopper, which was first introduced in 1957, was a quarter-pound, oversized burger on a vast five-inch bun that cost a reasonable 29 cents.Large corporations can be cruel and uncaring. They often claim to care about their employees, but sometimes the reality can be quite different. This is the story of Kevin Ford, a cook and cashier at Burger King who had worked tirelessly for over two decades. To celebrate his remarkable feat of never taking a sick day, Burger King decided to shower him ...
DurwinSomeone crashed the entire Onion market in America, made millions, walked away scott-free and starte…
We learnt that perfect monopoly can cause catastrophic damage to any economy, even the onion market.A tiny man who rocked America with Onions History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. You want to learn something, anything? Look back in history and it will surprise you just how eerily relevant it can be even in modern times. With the advent of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Tech titans and startups, you get all sorts of happenings like Tulip Mania, recessions, Feds stepping in, market manipulations a...
DurwinThe youngest self-made billionaire just bought Forbes.
Austin Russell is an American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar specializes in lidar and machine perception technologies, mainly used in autonomous cars. Luminar went public in December 2020, making him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 25.Wha’s up with billionaires and news media? In a stunning turn of events, Austin Russell, the youngest self-made billionaire of 2021, has made headlines once again by acquiring a majority stake in Forbes ma...
CEO of StartupX | DeFi, NFT, Crypto, Web3.0 Builder | Co-Founder at IxSA | Director of Startup Weekend Singapore | Sustainability Champion
DurwinBurger King gave candy to a worker has worked for more than 20 years.
The Whopper, which was first introduced in 1957, was a quarter-pound, oversized burger on a vast five-inch bun that cost a reasonable 29 cents.Large corporations can be cruel and uncaring. They often claim to care about their employees, but sometimes the reality can be quite different. This is the story of Kevin Ford, a cook and cashier at Burger King who had worked tirelessly for over two decades. To celebrate his remarkable feat of never taking a sick day, Burger King decided to shower him ...
DurwinSomeone crashed the entire Onion market in America, made millions, walked away scott-free and starte…
We learnt that perfect monopoly can cause catastrophic damage to any economy, even the onion market.A tiny man who rocked America with Onions History doesn’t repeat, but it rhymes. You want to learn something, anything? Look back in history and it will surprise you just how eerily relevant it can be even in modern times. With the advent of Bitcoin, Cryptocurrencies, Tech titans and startups, you get all sorts of happenings like Tulip Mania, recessions, Feds stepping in, market manipulations a...
DurwinThe youngest self-made billionaire just bought Forbes.
Austin Russell is an American entrepreneur, founder and CEO of Luminar Technologies. Luminar specializes in lidar and machine perception technologies, mainly used in autonomous cars. Luminar went public in December 2020, making him the world’s youngest self-made billionaire at the age of 25.Wha’s up with billionaires and news media? In a stunning turn of events, Austin Russell, the youngest self-made billionaire of 2021, has made headlines once again by acquiring a majority stake in Forbes ma...
CEO of StartupX | DeFi, NFT, Crypto, Web3.0 Builder | Co-Founder at IxSA | Director of Startup Weekend Singapore | Sustainability Champion
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I just wrote an article about Solana’s outages, hacks and promise of being an Eth-killer.
Seems like there are more troubles beneath the blankets.
Apparently, 2 brothers, Ian and Dylan Macalinao, faked a dozen different identities and built Saber Protocol to boost the TVL of Solana.
Saber was the biggest DeFi App on Solana.
TVL is the total value locked and a commonly used indicator on how large and successful a blockchain is.
More value locked into the blockchain means more users and more activities hence more growth and life.
So it makes sense to pump up the TVL of a blockchain so as to send strong signals to the market that the blockchain is growing and market has confidence in it.
Higher TVL of Solana leads to higher prices of the Sol token, boosting valuation tremendously.
“The Macalinao brothers’ operation with Saber was seemingly undertaken with explicitly deceptive intent: “I devised a scheme to maximize Solana’s TVL: I would build protocols that stack on top of each other, such that a dollar could be counted several times,” Ian Macalinao wrote in the unpublished blog post.”
In simple terms, the developers created a way to count the money multiple times, manipulating the TVL to be much higher than it actually was.
They were counting assets multiple times across different services and protocols that looked different but are actually the same thing.
How big was it?
Solana TVL was $10.5B.
Saber protocol had $7.5B at its peak.
Simply put, 3/4 of Solana’s TVL could have been manipulated and falsely reported.
What did they do wrong?
Well, they faked their identities.
That’s quite common in web3, where you are essentially unknown till you are properly doxxed.
They also create entire protocols and built services to attract money.
This created fake signals of a large and growing base of users and total value, but were actually quite misleading.
This happens all the time in the crypto space.
Creating hype, generating signals and sending indicators to the market that something is going to moon.
And when people buy into it, you dump the tokens on them and make away with a tidy profit.
In this case the Macalinao brothers actually spent extra effort to game the system and build protocols on top of protocols to execute their plan.
It was a well-devised, patience and very calculated move.
Building a protocol is not easy at all.
Coupled with the fact that Solana is one of the hottest chains with surging number of users, complexities and problems exponentiate.
You got to respect the Macalinao brothers hustle and hardwork in this long con (if this is indeed true).
Now, they are moving Saber to Aptos, another layer 1 blockchain.
To rinse and repeat?
Let’s just hope not.
How will this hurt Solana?
Will people still trust the Macalinao brothers?
How can we prevent such things from happening again?
Can anonymity and web3 coexists peacefully?
Those are the questions we have to wrestle with for web3 is grow stronger.
-
Is anonymity a good thing in Web3?
-
#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #web3 #strategy #blockchain #tvl #solana #sol #saber #sunny #eth #btc #crypto #hackers #Macalinaobrothers
I just wrote an article about Solana’s outages, hacks and promise of being an Eth-killer.
Seems like there are more troubles beneath the blankets.
Apparently, 2 brothers, Ian and Dylan Macalinao, faked a dozen different identities and built Saber Protocol to boost the TVL of Solana.
Saber was the biggest DeFi App on Solana.
TVL is the total value locked and a commonly used indicator on how large and successful a blockchain is.
More value locked into the blockchain means more users and more activities hence more growth and life.
So it makes sense to pump up the TVL of a blockchain so as to send strong signals to the market that the blockchain is growing and market has confidence in it.
Higher TVL of Solana leads to higher prices of the Sol token, boosting valuation tremendously.
“The Macalinao brothers’ operation with Saber was seemingly undertaken with explicitly deceptive intent: “I devised a scheme to maximize Solana’s TVL: I would build protocols that stack on top of each other, such that a dollar could be counted several times,” Ian Macalinao wrote in the unpublished blog post.”
In simple terms, the developers created a way to count the money multiple times, manipulating the TVL to be much higher than it actually was.
They were counting assets multiple times across different services and protocols that looked different but are actually the same thing.
How big was it?
Solana TVL was $10.5B.
Saber protocol had $7.5B at its peak.
Simply put, 3/4 of Solana’s TVL could have been manipulated and falsely reported.
What did they do wrong?
Well, they faked their identities.
That’s quite common in web3, where you are essentially unknown till you are properly doxxed.
They also create entire protocols and built services to attract money.
This created fake signals of a large and growing base of users and total value, but were actually quite misleading.
This happens all the time in the crypto space.
Creating hype, generating signals and sending indicators to the market that something is going to moon.
And when people buy into it, you dump the tokens on them and make away with a tidy profit.
In this case the Macalinao brothers actually spent extra effort to game the system and build protocols on top of protocols to execute their plan.
It was a well-devised, patience and very calculated move.
Building a protocol is not easy at all.
Coupled with the fact that Solana is one of the hottest chains with surging number of users, complexities and problems exponentiate.
You got to respect the Macalinao brothers hustle and hardwork in this long con (if this is indeed true).
Now, they are moving Saber to Aptos, another layer 1 blockchain.
To rinse and repeat?
Let’s just hope not.
How will this hurt Solana?
Will people still trust the Macalinao brothers?
How can we prevent such things from happening again?
Can anonymity and web3 coexists peacefully?
Those are the questions we have to wrestle with for web3 is grow stronger.
-
Is anonymity a good thing in Web3?
-
#startups #business #startupx #growth #success #socialmedia #culture #web3 #strategy #blockchain #tvl #solana #sol #saber #sunny #eth #btc #crypto #hackers #Macalinaobrothers
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