Binance Launches Oracle, UvToken and Team Finance Exploited, Blockchain.com Debuts Visa Cards

Get your daily, bite-sized summary of cryptoassets and blockchain-related news – examine the stories that fly under the radar of today’s crypto news.
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Exchange news

• Binance has launched a decentralized Web3 oracle, Binance Oracle, a data streaming network that connects real-world data to blockchain smart contracts, a press release said. Binance Oracle will enable smart contracts to run on real-world inputs and outputs, starting with BNB chain ecosystem. The early bird program has started and over 10 BNB Chain projects have already integrated with the oracle network. Binance Oracle is chain-agnostic and will eventually support more blockchains, the exchange said.

Security news

• Multi-chain crypto wallet UvToken has been hacked for BNB 5,011 ($1.44 million) and the funds have been routed into crypto mixes Tornado Cashaccording to security firms Ancilia and PeckShield. The incident happened on the BNB blockchain today. UvToken confirmed the hack and so that its “Eco Staking project” was attacked.
• Decentralized finance (DeFi) liquidity locker Team finances has suffered an exploit with the attacker draining $15.8 million worth of tokens from the protocol, according to PeckShield. The hacker targeted the liquidity tokens under Team Finance’s custody. Team finances confirmed attack, saying that “$14.5M USD of tokens were leveraged through the revised v2 to v3 migration feature.”

Payment news

• Blockchain.com, a platform for buying, selling and trading crypto, announced the debut of its Blockchain.com Visa card, with 50,000 waitlist registrations already at launch. Initially available to US residents, users can spend crypto or cash in the Blockchain.com wallet without fees and earn 1% back in crypto anywhere Visa debit cards are accepted, it said.
• Crypto payment processor BitPay announced support for Polygon (MATIC). Consumers can buy, store, exchange and use MATIC in the BitPay app later this week, the press release said. BitPay app holders will have access to use other ERC-20 tokens on the Polygon network. BitPay merchants will be able to accept Polygon payments from “the most popular” Polygon wallets, it added.

CBDC news

• Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao tweeted that The National Bank of Kazakhstan (NBK) will integrate its digital central bank currency (CBDC), the digital tenge, into the BNB chain.

Regulatory news

• Hong Kong’s government plans to allow retail investors to trade crypto on locally licensed exchanges, according to Bloomberg. A mandatory licensing regime for crypto trading platforms due to begin in March will allow retail trading, it said, citing unnamed sources. Details of the new regime are expected to be announced on Monday at a conference.

Blockchain News

• Layer-1 blockchain platform Phantom announced the launch of Watchdog, a continuous smart audit system. In collaboration with blockchain security firm Debauchery, decentralized applications (dapps) developed on Fantom will benefit from automatic audits by the Watchdog system. The launch of Watchdog will strengthen the security of dapps on Fantom, and also upgrade the quality and performance of Fantom native applications, it said in an announcement.

Investment news

• Funa blockchain software development company that builds applications leveraging decentralized wallet (dWallet) technology, announced today that it raised $3.9 million in a pre-funding round led by The JAM Fundand joined SOMA capital, NOMO Venturesand Great Oaks Venture Capital, as well as early stage technology investor Cory Levy. It plans to use the funds to build a series of products and applications on top of it Odsy networka decentralized access control layer for Web3.
• The Decentralized Engineering Corporation (DEC), a software development company, has raised a total of $9 million in seed funding led by Steve Vassallo at Foundation capital and Thomas Bailey at Road Capital. The funds will be used to launch and accelerate the expansion of Teleportersa decentralized ridesharing application powered by TRIPa new protocol developed by DEC that will enable a variety of mobility-based applications powered by the Solana (SOL) blockchain.
• Web3 publishing protocol Koii network announced its partnership with decentralized Q&A protocol Peeranha enables users who submit answers to questions on Peeranha to receive KOII tokens every time their answer is viewed, a press release said. Koii will also have a dedicated forum on the platform, enabling developers to earn tokens by helping each other use and build on Koii’s decentralized app development stack. In the future, members of the Peeranha community will also be able to earn tokens by running nodes on a personal device to host the decentralized application itself.
• Baicells, a provider of LTE and 5G solutions, and Helium Deploy, a blockchain-focused company and provider of Helium 5G solution packages, have announced a partnership that will see Helium Deploy invest $9.5 million in Baicell’s Nova430H DeWi radios, to meet global demand, a press release said.

DeFi news

• Laboratory for open source code for research, development and distribution Protocol Labs announced the launch of Filecoin Saturna data delivery network that will help scale Filecoin network and make it more accessible to the general public, says a press release. The release of Filecoin Saturn enables anyone to download Saturn’s open source software, run it on their server, contribute bandwidth to the network and earn FIL.
• The DFINITY Foundationthe non-profit organization developing the public blockchain Internet Data Protocol (ICP), announced that ICP has integrated support for crawlers, which will allow dapps and websites on the blockchain to be found on search engines and maps of them to be generated on social platforms, it said in an announcement. Crawlers are programs used by search engines such as Google to collect content data so they can index, rank and render metadata from dapps. “The Internet Computer will be the first blockchain ever to allow search engine optimization (SEO) for dapps running 100% on-chain,” it said.