Deniz Tutku
While rumors about the insolvency of the Bybit crypto platform were spreading online, many significant events took place in the crypto community. New hacks to watch out for, technologies to watch out for, and events to attend. What else is interesting? Read on to find out.
Over the weekend, a series of massive hacks of accounts on X took place. The victims were several influential industry figures and celebrities who promoted everything from Luna2 and ORDI to meme coins inspired by famous personalities.
Among the latest victims is a crypto investor going by the pseudonym Gigantic-Cassocked-Rebirth, known as GCR. He confirmed that his profile had been hacked. His account was used to publish posts about ORDI and Luna2.0, after which both tokens instantly increased by 6% and 274%.
Source: X
Some have noted that the hacker could have used the account to place a micro-cap, but chose to publish two tokens, resulting in a limited profit.
“GCR hacker fumbled the bag hard. Bro could’ve picked ANY believable micro-cap to pump 10–20x, yet chose to shill ORDI and LUNA2 for a measly 10% wick” said crypto analyst Miles Deutscher.
Another victim was the famous American rapper Rich The Kid. His account posted a link to buy a new $RICH token launched on the Solana meme coin creation tool pump.fun.
DEX Screener data indicates that within the first two hours after launch, the token accumulated a market capitalization of $90,000. The post was later deleted, but the rapper never made any statement about the hack.
Billionaire Elon Musk’s company xAI, in cooperation with Oracle, plans to create a computer that will run the next version of the large-scale language model of artificial intelligence Grok.
According to The Information, citing a presentation shown to xAI stakeholders, the project is described as a “gigafactory of computing.” The computer is expected to be ready by the fall of 2025.
During the presentation to investors, Musk said that the new supercomputer will use up to 100,000 Nvidia H100 GPUs based on the Hopper architecture, making it at least four times larger than the largest existing GPU clusters. He also emphasized his commitment to the timely completion of the project.
WhiteBIT, one of the largest cryptocurrency exchanges in Europe, is once again a partner of international blockchain events. In particular, this time it has announced its participation in Money20/20 Europe, one of the largest events in the financial technology industry. The event will take place in Amsterdam on 4–6 May, where the exchange will present its innovative solutions and products.
Money20/20 Europe brings together representatives of financial institutions, technology companies, start-ups, regulators and investors. The conference program includes presentations by leading experts, panel discussions, and demonstrations of innovative solutions. More than 350 speakers will take part in the event, including representatives of such major companies as Visa, Mastercard, Lloyds Banking Group, JPMorgan, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, and Ukrainian bank PrivatBank.
The main topics of the event will include the implementation of AI solutions in the industry, current cybersecurity issues, blockchain as a new reality of the fintech industry, personalization in the banking sector, etc.
Volodymyr Nosov, founder and CEO of WhiteBIT, noted: “This is already the third global event this year in which we are participating, following the Paris Blockchain Week Summit and Token2049 Dubai. As one of the largest European crypto exchanges, we must stay at the center of events to continue innovating and offering our clients the best solutions on the market.”
At a recent leadership meeting, Ethereum developers set a date for the Pectra update. They plan to release it by the end of the first quarter of 2025. Previously, the team expected the update to appear in late 2024 or early 2025.
Pectra will introduce the Ethereum Virtual Machine Object Format (EOF), which includes about 11 suggestions for improving the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) in both first- and second-tier solutions. One of the notable additions to Pectra is EIP-7251, otherwise known as “increase maximum active balance.” With this proposal, individual validators will be able to deposit more than the current maximum of 32 ETH, increasing the limit to 2,048 ETH.
Along with the new improvements, Ethereum developers have decided to replace the EIP-3074 account abstraction proposal with EIP-7702, a new initiative introduced by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin. EIP-7702 introduces a new type of transaction that allows Ethereum account addresses to temporarily act as smart contract wallets during a transaction and then return to their original state.
Aptos, a first-tier blockchain platform, has reached a new high in terms of the number of transactions. In one day, May 25, it recorded 115.4 million transactions, surpassing Solana’s 31.7 million.
The transaction volume growth not only set a new standard but also surpassed the previous L1 record of more than 65 million transactions held by Sui Network by a significant margin of more than 50%.
Aptoscan’s data shows that the number of transactions per second (TPS) of blockchain users has also reached a historic high of 32,000. This surge in transaction activity may be due to the launch of Tapos Cat, a new game that has gained rapid popularity. The game processed 10 million transactions on its first day online, which significantly contributed to the growth of activity on the platform.
At first glance, Tapos Cat may seem to have no clear purpose, but Aptos supporters argue that it is an important engineering project that demonstrates the reliability and scalability of the network and paves the way for future developments.
BounceBit (BB) is a BTC restocking network with an innovative CeDefi framework. Thanks to the CeFi + DeFi framework, BounceBit allows BTC holders to generate income from various sources. The BB token is available for spot trading on Binance, Bybit, and futures on WhiteBIT.
Retik Finance (RETIK) is a DeFi token based on the Ethereum network that complies with the ERC20 standard. RETIK powers the Retik Finance ecosystem, stimulating decentralized transactions and innovative financial solutions. It is traded on UniSwap, MEXC, and BitMart exchanges.
Notcoin (NOT) is a community-driven token aimed at engaging users in the Web3 ecosystem through a clickable game. Currently, the coin is available for spot and futures trading on many cryptocurrency exchanges, including Binance, OKX, WhiteBIT, etc.
MON Protocol (MON) is the native coin of the MON Protocol, which serves as the ecosystem token for all Pixelmon games. Mon Protocol unveiled the MON token at the TGE event in early 2024 and also launched a pre-sale program for the community. The coin has recently become available for trading on Bitget, Gate.io, MEXC, and other cryptocurrency exchanges.