Read in the Digest;
- Solana Suffers 7th Outage in 2022 After a Surge of Transactions
- Yuga Labs Raises $320 Million in Virtual Land Sale, Ethereum Gas Fees Go Through the Roof
- ApeCoin (APE) Drops 40% Despite Otherside Metaverse Land Sale
- Rari Capital and Fei Protocol Suffer a Combined $80 Million Hack, Saddle Finance Loses $13.8 Million in Hack
- Ripple Labs Unlocks 700M XRP, While Locking 800M XRP in Different Transactions
Solana Suffers 7th Outage in 2022 After a Surge of Transactions
Solana’s high-performance blockchain project has experienced another outage that kept the network offline for seven hours Saturday, April 30, and Sunday, May 1. This is the 7th major outage Solana has suffered since 2022.
According to on-chain data, Solana’s latest blackout happened because of numerous transactions from nonfungible token (NFT) minting bots.
The mining bots were used on Candy Machine, a popular application used by Solana NFT projects to launch collections. Unfortunately, the Solana network validators lost consensus because the network was overcrowded with 4 million transactions per second.
The 4 million transactions, or 100 gigabits of data per second, are the highest ever recorded on the Solana blockchain. The validator community brought the network back online by 3:00 a.m. UTC on May 1.
Flipsider:
- Solana’s network crash comes just days after co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko said Bitcoin must change to PoS to avoid losing its users.
Why You Should Care
Metaplex said in a bid to stop this that they have combined and will soon deploy a botting penalty to the program as part of a broader effort to steady the network.
Yuga Labs Raises $320 Million in Virtual Land Sale, Ethereum Gas Fees Go Through the Roof
On April 30, Yuga Labs, creator of the famous Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) NFT collection, launched its land sales for its much-anticipated metaverse project, the Otherside.
Shortly after launching, Yuga sold 55,000 blocks of land (Otherdeeds) in its “Otherside,” raising approximately $320 million. Yuga Labs has now completed the largest NFT mints to date via virtual land sales.
Although Otherdeeds were sold directly for a flat price of 305 ApeCoin, gas fees were paid in ETH. The surge in demand caused the gas fees on the Ethereum network to take an unexpected turn.
Early into the sale, ETH network users reported gas fees as high as $467. However, at the peak of the sales, gas fees were between $3,800 and up to $6,500 (some reported $14,000) per transaction.
Ethereum gas tracker. Source: Etherscan
Flipsider:
- The spike in gas fees helped the Ethereum network burn more than 71,700 ETH, or over $200 million.
Why You Should Care
As of 09:43 UTC, the gas price of Ethereum has dropped down to as low as $2.63 per transaction.
Ethereum gas tracker. Source: Etherscan
ApeCoin (APE) Falls 40% Despite Otherside Metaverse Land Sale
Despite being used as the token for what is now the largest NFT mints to date via virtual land sales, Apecoin (APE) has been on a downward spiral after a strong rally.
On April 28, APE’s price reached its second-highest level, hitting $27.57. However, over the last three days, the price of APE has plunged by more than 40%.
The three-day price chart of Apecoin (APE). Source: Tradingview
The price drop saw APE drop to as low as $15.5. As a result of the selloff, Yuga Labs decided to limit the minting of Otherdeed NFTs, starting with two NFTs per wallet for the first wave.
Flipsider:
- Yuga Labs has requested the ApeCoin DAO to hold a vote on whether ApeCoin (APE) could migrate from Ethereum to its own blockchain.
Why You Should Care
According to Yuga Labs, the migration of ApeCoin (APE) to its own chain would help them properly scale the hot new token.
Rari Capital and Fei Protocol Suffer a Combined $80 Million Hack, Saddle Finance Hacked for $13.8 Million
The worrisome trend in decentralized finance continues, as another DeFi attacker has managed to siphon as much as $80 million on April 30. The latest attack was suffered by Rari Protocol, which merged with Fei Protocol last December.
According to smart contract analysis firm Block Sec, the attacker exploited a reentrancy vulnerability in Rari’s Fuse lending protocol. The bug allows hackers to trick a protocol into letting them withdraw an excess supply of tokens they don’t actually own.
Within a few hours after the Rari attack was reported, Saddle Finance – a decentralized automated market maker for stablecoins – was hit by a similar attack, with 4,900 ETH or $13.8 million stolen.
Unlike Rari, BlockSec has been able to help Saddle Finance recover around $3.8 million of the stolen funds. BlockSec used an internal system that uses flashbots to detect and front-run hacking incidents to recover the funds.
Flipsider:
- Rari Capital has offered to let the attacker keep $10 million if they choose to return funds.
Why You Should Care
DeFi theft and hacks have taken various forms since the year started, leading to calls for greater security of DeFi protocols.
Ripple Labs Unlocks 700M XRP, While Locking 800M XRP in Different Transactions
In its May episode of monthly token unlocking to make XRP supply more predictable, Ripple Labs has unlocked 700 million XRP tokens from its escrow account.
According to data provided by the large transaction tracker, WhaleStats, Ripple unlocked the 700 million XRP coins in two separate transactions.
The first 500 million XRP transaction was worth $304.9 million, and the second 200 million XRP transaction was worth $121 million.
Unlike the previous months, Ripple Labs also locked another 800 million XRP tokens. Ripple sent the tokens to its escrow wallet in three separate transactions – 500 million XRP, 200 million XRP, and 100 million XRP.
Flipsider:
- The large-scale transactions around Ripple’s XRP have left whales jittery about the price of XRP.
Why You Should Care
Ripple Labs locks XRP tokens as part of an effort to reduce the number of XRP in circulation and further prevent the digital currency price from crashing.