Sports Illustrated has been in some hot water over the past few days, regarding claims that it had published AI-generated content written by fake authors. The CEO of the magazine's publisher was just one of several executives who found themselves unemployed in the aftermath of the scandal.
But who is looking to be gainfully employed, and what is just an AI-generated fake in the crypto world? Read on to find out.
We have seen a resurgence of alternative use cases for blockchain this week. In the U.K., political movement the Other Party launched, promising voters a say in policy decisions through a proposed blockchain-based voting platform. The COP28 climate change summit also released its final statement, including plans for a blockchain-based carbon credits platform.
Meanwhile, China has been pushing its new digital ID platform RealDID, as a tool to enhance citizens' privacy... as long as the citizens don't want to hide anything from the Chinese authorities, that is. Also, pushing digital IDs (still) is Worldcoin, which is trying to make its Worldcoin ID and blockchain network more useful. Or just useful.
Derivatives platform Synthetix has announced a change in its incentives policy to improve outcomes for passive token holders. The current inflationary model will transition to a buyback and burn system. Ethereum has also entered a deflationary phase, as an increase in on-chain activity has seen $58 million in ETH burned so far this month, outpacing the amount of new ETH created through staking.
Also suddenly finding itself in demand due to certain incentives, has been Solana's Saga Web3 Smartphone. An airdrop of 30 million dog-themed BONK meme-coins was promised to each and every Saga owner, which saw the token value soar to more than the cost of the phone on the recent BONK pump. Cue an explosion in new orders from degen traders.
The latest news on fallen former crypto kings is that Do Kwon won't be extradited (to the U.S.?) until at least February, and Sam Bankman-Fried is the "worst person" according to his lawyer... under cross-examination, at least. DeFi platform SafeMoon has also fallen far from grace, filing bankruptcy proceedings this week, following the arrest of its executives last month and pending court action from the SEC.
Staying on the right side of the law, however, is Tether, which has bent over backwards to point out just how very compliant it is these days, following the suggestion by U.S. lawmakers that it was involved in terrorist financing.
El Salvador has been making its own (surprisingly progressive) laws over the past couple of years when it comes to crypto. This week it gave regulatory approval to its own Bitcoin-backed 'Volcano Bonds', which will be sold in part to fund a volcano-powered bitcoin mining project in the country. Meanwhile, our Banking and CBDC Roundup covered companies providing new crypto services for banks, banks providing new crypto services for customers, CBDC updates from South Korea and Kazakhstan, and Ripple, among other topics.
The argument over Bitcoin Ordinals took a new turn, with those claiming that the functionality is basically a 'bug' in the code, getting support for their case when this explanation was logged in the U.S. National Vulnerability Database. A flawed multisig script caused a $1.4 million loss in one of Yearn.finance's treasuries, causing around 25 'lucky traders' to profit from the error. Yearn has reached out for the return of the funds but had received few responses at the time of writing.
A vulnerability was also discovered in Ledger's Connect Kit javascript library this week, leading to a loss of around half a billion dollars. The community got together to neutralize the threat as quickly as possible, but Ledger was roundly mocked for its assurance that an exploit like the one that happened couldn't possibly happen.
The NFT market continues to regain its footing post-crash, with global icons FIFA, Casio and a certain ex-U.S. President all announcing digital art drops featuring additional benefits for token holders this week. From a piece of Trump's mugshot outfit, to World Cup final tickets, NFTs have evolved into more than just a jpeg on a server somewhere. Meanwhile, the Pudgy Penguins have announced a new Web3 game, Pudgy World, to complement the existing NFT collection and its physical cuddly companions.
Finally, Rainbow Wallet has labeled its shameless quest to entice MetaMask customers to jump ship a 'Fox Hunt', and it seems to be working. A point system for migrating, along with a promised airdrop, has seen the platform add about 6 million users since the promotion launched.
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