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Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken (SEB) and Credit Agricole Bank have jointly launched a new digital bond platform called “so|bond.” The platform is built on blockchain technology and enables institutional clients to issue, trade and settle bonds digitally. The platform is set to provide a more efficient and secure process than traditional methods, enhancing the clients’ experience.

The so|bond platform is designed to use a validation protocol called “Proof of Climate awaReness” to minimize its environmental footprint while incentivizing participating nodes to improve their environmental impact. Each node will be remunerated according to a formula linked to its climate impact, with the lower the environmental footprint, the larger the reward. This protocol enables the platform to consume energy comparable to non-blockchain systems, making it an eco-friendly solution.

The so|bond platform is the first use case for the “Proof of Climate awaReness” protocol, which was developed by the French-based IT provider Finaxys. The protocol’s innovative approach to the blockchain infrastructure and securities market allows it to play a pivotal role in green and sustainable finance, aligning with Credit Agricole’s Societal Project.

Romaric Rolleti, head of innovation and digital transformation at Credit Agricole, stated that the bond blockchain platform is part of a larger plan for the bank’s digital transformation. The platform’s innovative approach to the blockchain infrastructure and securities market, coupled with the strong commitment to green and sustainable finance, is at the center of Credit Agricole’s Societal Project. This initiative joins many other efforts to explore the use of blockchain, smart contracts, and the Internet of Things for a global environmental cause.

The so|bond platform launch comes amid growing interest in green and sustainable finance. In October 2022, the Bank for International Settlements, the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and the United Nations Climate Change Global Innovation Hub presented the results of their Genesis 2.0 initiative — two prototypes of tokenized green bonds. With so|bond, SEB and Credit Agricole have demonstrated their leadership in addressing environmental concerns while leveraging blockchain technology for a more efficient and sustainable bond market.

Bitget is an exchange for bitcoin derivatives, and the San Francisco-based company Dragonfly Capital, which is a venture capital firm, just made a statement that it has invested $10 million in Bitget. Dragonfly Capital is a part of the company Bitget. The funds are going to be used toward supporting Bitget’s continuing expansion in the international market and in its services, as well as the company’s planned corporate social responsibility actions targeted at promoting crypto knowledge and acceptance.

Bitget was introduced to the public for the first time in 2018, and since that time, the platform has grown to include more than 80,000 dealers and 380,000 copy traders. Copy traders synchronize their trading positions with the trading positions of other traders by using automation to copy the other traders’ positions. As part of its 2023 strategy, Bitget plans to expand the functionalities of its spot trading, launchpad, and Bitget Earn products.

Dragonfly Capital is a well-known venture capital firm that is renowned for investing in major blockchain businesses such as Matter Labs, 1inch, and Polygon. The firm is also known for investing in other firms related to blockchain technology. In the year 2022, the corporation reportedly handled assets with a value of around $3 billion, as stated in the reports. Bitcoin derivatives exchanges have made a complete comeback despite the fact that FTX had a catastrophic meltdown back in November. Throughout that period of time, the exchange was accountable for enabling a daily trading volume of contracts totaling $6.6 billion, and it had an open interest of $5.1 billion.

As a result of the failure of FTX, the open interest on major exchanges has increased to around $68.5 billion at the time this article was published, according to information compiled by Coinmarketcap and CoinGecko. This number is much more than the predicted $60,1 billion that existed during the month of December 2022, when open interest was at its lowest point.

In spite of the recent spike in activity, the cryptocurrency company is still beset by challenges, like as the recent legal action taken against Binance by the Commodities Futures Trading Commission. Allegations made by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) state that Binance attracted around 2.8 million customers from the United States without first registering with the regulatory body. Since it is the responsibility of the seller to carry out processes of due diligence before registering potential customers in the United States, it is quite unlikely that the claimed users would be the ones to bear the costs of finding their way into the exchange.

On March 13, 2023, Euler Finance suffered a flash loan attack, resulting in the theft of $196 million worth of various tokens, including Dai, USDC, StETH, and WBTC. This attack drained millions of dollars from Euler Finance’s smart contracts, causing the total value locked inside them to drop from over $311 million to $10.37 million. Additionally, 11 different DeFi protocols, including Balancer, Yearn.finance, and Yield Protocol, either froze or lost funds.

Following the attack, Euler Finance took proactive measures to recover the stolen funds. The protocol disabled its vulnerable etoken module and donation function as the first course of action and worked with auditing companies to analyze the root cause of the exploit. At the same time, Euler Finance attempted to contact the hacker to negotiate a bounty.

On March 15, Euler Finance gave the hacker an ultimatum to return 90% of the stolen funds or face a $1 million reward for information leading to their arrest. The hacker, however, started moving funds at will, causing chaos and distress among the victims. Despite this, one victim managed to convince the hacker to return their life savings, resulting in the hacker beginning to return stolen funds over several days.

Meanwhile, Euler Finance’s CEO, Michael Bentley, revealed that ten separate audits over two years deemed the protocol “nothing higher than low risk” with “no outstanding issues.” However, the hack exposed the protocol’s vulnerability and the need for improved security measures.

On March 21, Euler Finance launched a $1 million bounty reward against the hacker after being ghosted mid-conversation while trying to strike a deal. However, the hacker started returning the stolen assets in large numbers on multiple occasions, starting on March 25. Finally, 23 days after the hack, Euler Finance announced that the stolen funds had been recovered, and the $1 million bounty was no longer accepting new information.

In the final transactions, the hacker returned 12 million DAI and 10,580 ETH in multiple transactions. The crypto community applauded Euler Finance’s efforts to recover the funds and restore investor confidence. Gnosis, the team behind Gnosis Safe multisig and Gnosis Chain, recently launched a hash oracle aggregator to improve the security of bridges by requiring more than one bridge to validate a withdrawal.

The Euler Finance hack serves as a cautionary tale for the DeFi industry, highlighting the importance of comprehensive security measures and frequent audits. It also demonstrates the benefits of negotiating with hackers to recover stolen funds and the role of the community in restoring investor confidence. Overall, the recovery of the stolen funds is a significant victory for Euler Finance and the DeFi industry as a whole.

According to a tweet that was published on April 3, a multichain token bridge known as Allbridge has successfully recovered bitcoin valued at $465,000 that was stolen in a recent exploit. A message was sent to the project by an individual who returned 1,500 BNB, which is equal to $465,000. The remaining money were deemed a white hat reward for the individual, as Allbridge had promised. After that, the project changed all of the Binance Coins (BNB) it had received into Binance Dollars (BUSD) so that they could be utilized as compensation.

Peckshield, a blockchain security company, was the first to discover the vulnerability. On April 1, the company sent a tweet to Allbridge in which it alerted the company that a person was manipulating the BNB Chain pools swap price by serving as both a liquidity provider and a swapper. As the vulnerability was discovered, Allbridge offered the attacker a reward as well as the opportunity to avoid legal repercussions.

Blockchain security companies CertiK and PeckShield calculated that the entire amount taken was very close to $550,000 despite the fact that the project has not publicly stated the complete amount that was stolen. According to PeckShield, the attack generated around $573,000 in total, comprised of $282,889 in Bitcoin USD and $290,868 worth of Tether (USDT).

Allbridge also disclosed that a second address made advantage of the same vulnerability and provided a link to a wallet that at the moment has 0.97 BNB, which has a value of around $300 at the time of this writing. The project requested that the second exploiter make contact and explore the possibility of the monies being returned.

After the original breach, Allbridge made it very obvious that it was collaborating with a number of different groups to recover the missing monies. BNB Chain was one of those firms, and on April 2, it tweeted that it had found at least one of the perpetrators engaged using on-chain analysis. This information was shared with the public. AvengerDAO was recognized by BNB Chain for its contributions to the money recovery effort, and BNB Chain is providing active assistance to the Allbridge team as they work to recover the funds.

The rapid reaction of Allbridge to the vulnerability as well as their offer of a white hat incentive for uncovering vulnerabilities highlight how important it is for the cryptocurrency sector to prioritize security. Projects may strengthen their security and stave off future assaults if hackers are offered financial incentives to disclose flaws rather than use them for their own gain. On the other hand, it is essential for organizations to collaborate in order to track down missing cash and hold those responsible for the thefts accountable for their actions.