For the week ending 18-Sep-2018

This is a roundup of top stories from the EOS community, and from the greater blockchain industry in which EOS exists.

Curated weekly by Jeanene and brought to you by Thomas. 

Two dApp hacks occurred this week. $58,000 was stolen from the Newdex exchanged by creating fake EOS tokens, which were able to be traded as Newdex does not use smart contracts to prove authenticity; (Link 1) EOSBet lost about 40,000 EOS due to a vulnerability in its smart contract. (Link 2)

The mutability of [published contracts on] EOS has been a topic of discussion after Trybe had issues with its airdrop, due to a problem in the contracts undertaking the ‘drop, so that too many tokens were sent to certain users. The development team behind Trybe was able to reverse the transactions and take back tokens from user wallets without their permission. [They were able to do so only because they were working with their own private token and their own 'transfer' action; such clawbacks are not possible with the native EOS token. -Ed] (Link 3)

Max Borders, director of Social Evolution and author of The Social Singularity, wrote an opinion piece on the need for decentralization for future human development. (Link 4)

A joint report from the World Economic Forum and Bain & Company titled, Trade Tech – A New Age for Trade and Supply Chain Finance, suggests that blockchain could generate $1 trillion in new trade over the next ten years. (Link 5)

France

French lawmakers have passed a law setting out guidelines for ICOs. The legislation enables the French financial regulator Authorité des Marchés Financiers to approve and issue permits to businesses intending to float ICOs in France. (Link 6)

Japan

Japan’s Financial Services Agency has published several documents from its fifth crypto study group meeting. The current state of crypto regulations and exchange registrations were discussed, along with self-regulatory rules established by the Japan Virtual Currency Exchange Association. (Link 7)

Kenya

The Central Bank of Kenya fined five major commercial banks for handling stolen state money, regarding the National Youth Service. (Link 8)

Mexico

The Mexican government published a circular entitled, General Provisions on Operations Related to Electronic Payment Funds, which states that the Bank of Mexico is responsible for issuing crypto-related permits. AML requirements include forbidding customer identification, validation checks and time delays. (Link 9)

Netherlands

Financial crime prosecutors from the Netherlands have charged the Dutch bank ING with violations, and a $900 million dollar fine because the financial institution unwittingly helped facilitate money laundering. Margreet Frohberg the lead prosecutor of the case explained in an interview that “hundreds of millions of euros” were illegally transferred. (Link 10)

Nigeria

President Muhammad Buhari has demanded HSBC Bank return about $100 million that it allegedly helped former dictator Sani Abacha launder from the Nigerian economy. (Link 11)

UAE

UAE Securities and Commodities Authority has approved a plan to regulate ICOs, and recognize the issued tokens as securities, according to Chairman Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri. (Link 12)

USA

Coinbase, Circle, Digital Currency Group, and Polychain Capital and other notable crypto firms have joined together to launch the Blockchain Association, a US lobbying organization. The association claims to be the first wholly-dedicated lobbying organization that aims to seek influence over the law in regards to the blockchain and cryptocurrency industry. (Link 13)

According to the Times of India, the authorities of Illinois and Arizona wrote to India’s Criminal Investigation Department officials in the state of Gujarat, “Asking them to seize the property of the promoters of a cryptocurrency investment firm, Bitconnect.” (Link 14)

In the courts, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn), in U.S. V. Zaslavskiy, 17-cr-0647, the judge has ruled that ICOs are now considered under the jurisdiction of securities law. The ruling, if upheld, could set precedence for future ICO-related suits brought about by both alleged victims and regulators. (Link 15) The U.S. Attorney’s Office District of Connecticut announced the sentencing of Homero Joshua Garza will include “21 months of imprisonment, followed by three years of supervised release, the first six months of which [Mr. Garza] must spend in home confinement, for his role in his companies’ purported generation and sale of virtual currency.” (Link 16) The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania has determined that it does not have jurisdiction in a case against Mt. Gox. (Link 17)

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority has taken its first disciplinary action by charging Timothy Tilton Ayre of Agawam, Massachusetts, with securities fraud and the unlawful distribution of an unregistered cryptocurrency security called Hempcoin.” (Link 18) The SEC its first disciplinary action against a digital asset management fund by issuing a cease-and-desist order against Crypto Asset Management (CAM) and its founder Timothy Enneking. (Link 19)

EOSIO Usage

Bitfinex released details about EOSfinex ahead of the beta launch. (Link 20) Bancor announced its new cross-chain project, BancorX, which will allow users to trade between select EOS-based tokens as well as between EOS - and ethereum-based tokens. (Link 21) ARXUM announced that “EOS is now successfully implemented in the ARXUM Production Protocol.” (Link 22)

Governmental Usage

In the U.S., Oregon's economic development agency Business Oregon, in partnership with R/GA Ventures, Nike, OHSU, Intel and Smith & Crown, is creating the Oregon Blockchain Venture Studio , which aims to attract out-of-state blockchain leaders to apply the emerging technology to business and policy conundrums. (Link 23) The MyPass Initiative, a partnership between the City of Austin, Austin-Travis County Emergency Medical Services, and Dell Medical School at the University of Texas, has been working to develop a blockchain-powered ID system for people experiencing homelessness. (Link 24)

Many industries in Malaysia are looking to blockchain. Mastura Ishak, program director at the Malaysian Industry-Government Group for High Technology, studied the impact that blockchain technology would have on the country’s key industries. Tenaga Nasional Berhad, Malaysia’s sole utility provider, is exploring how it can use blockchain in the renewable energy sector. (Link 25)

New Coins

Carbon has launched its own ethereum based stablecoin, dubbed CarbonUSD, which has a unique algorithmic model. Miles Albert, co-founder of Carbon, said, "We've already developed our algorithmic scale model, we've already done simulations as well, to test the resilience of our model," he said "We plan to whitelist our algorithmic stablecoin into the 'metatoken' structure after CarbonUSD has reached sufficient scale and liquidity." (Link 26)

Social Good

Nadja Leroux, a Namibian wildlife conservationist looking out for the African wild dog, set up a bitcoin cash fund to acquire the technology she needs for the work. As community development manager of the Cheetah Conservation Fund, Leroux engages farmers in monitoring patterns of predation and using natural means such as livestock guard dogs so farmers do not resort to killing the wild dogs to protect domestic animals. (Link 27)

Issues

The International Monetary Fund has now advised against the Marshall Islands’ plan to introduce a national cryptocurrency, warning of US banks refusing to work with Marshall Islands businesses, should the national crypto be adopted. (Link 28)

A report conducted by researchers from Xi’an Jiaotong University has found more than 90% of the code underpinning at least 4 in 5 altcoins to have been plagiarized. After comparing the code underpinning 488 cryptocurrencies in pairs, the researchers found that the code underpinning 405 cryptocurrencies (83%) yielded a similarity score of between 90% and 100%. Further, 324 of the virtual currencies (66.6%) had a similarity score of between 95% to 100%. (Link 29)

Management Changes

Phil Potter, the Chief Strategy Officer of Bitfinex, is leaving the company, and will be replaced by Chief Executive JL van der Velde. (Link 30)

Mining

According to a press release, Wuhan General Group (China), Inc., a Nevada, U.S based investment company, has entered negotiations to transform a U.S. Defense Department facility into a crypto mining farm. (Link 31)