Here are some of the major developments from the world of crypto over the past few days
Developers at Ethereum have now gone back to their drawing boards after they failed to introduce Holesky, a new test network, on September 16, 2023. A misconfiguration in the source code prevented the testnet from launching with its estimated 1.5 million validators, according to an announcement made by Ethereum infrastructure provider Nethermind.
Parithosh Jayanthi, an engineer from the Ethereum Foundation said that although some validators manually resolved the set-up problem, allowing the Holesky testnet to launch, there weren’t enough active validators for the network to reach finality.
According to Nethermind, the developers have now decided to try it after a week, around September 23, 2023.
Hong Kong Police have arrested crypto influencer Joseph Lam (Lin Zuo), who goes by the username “jolamchok” on Instagram, for his association with the crypto exchange, JPEX.
According to a South China Morning Post article, Hong Kong Police allegedly detained Lin Zuo, for his affiliation with JPEX. The police also searched his office and took boxes, including a plastic bag holding cash, for evidence.
Hong Kong Securities and Futures Commission had recently accused JPEX of actively pushing the platform’s offerings to the Hong Kong public through Internet celebrities and over-the-counter money changers, according to a local report. The paper also quoted an unsubstantiated source as saying that Lin Zuo allegedly pitched “schemes” to a chat group set up for cryptocurrency investing. According to reports, Miss Chen, one of the suspected victims, was persuaded to invest $12,800 (100,000 Hong Kong dollars) in cryptocurrency.
Exchange volume across decentralised finance (DeFi) protocols declined to $52.8 billion in August 2023, 15.5 per cent lower than in July, according to an analysis by investment manager firm VanEck.
The results are based on VanEck’s MarketVector Decentralised Finance Leaders Index (MVDFLE), which monitors the performance of some of the biggest and most liquid tokens on DeFi protocols, including Curve DAO (CRV), Maker, Lido DAO, Aave, and THORChain.
According to the research, the DeFi index underperformed Bitcoin and Ether in August 2023, declining 21 per cent for the month. The results were made worse by the 33.5 per cent negative performance of the UNI token, which investors sold in order to realise gains from July. Total value locked (TVL), a crucial ecosystem indicator, fell by 8 per cent in August, from $40.8 billion to $37.5 billion, outpacing Ethereum’s 10 per cent monthly decrease, the analysis revealed.