A new euro-pegged Stablecoin recently launched in France has come under fire due to its decision to limit peer-to-peer transactions.
Here are some of the major developments from the world of crypto over the past few days.
A new euro-pegged Stablecoin recently launched in France has come under fire due to its decision to limit peer-to-peer transactions.
On April 20, 2023, French bank Societe Generale-Forge (SGF) launched the Ethereum-based Stablecoin, known as EUR CoinVertible (EURCV), which is only accessible to qualified institutional clients. It is not publicly accessible for the time being.
Observers who examined its smart contract code claim that before a transaction can be carried out, an ERC-20 transfer must first be validated by a centralised registrar, most likely one controlled by the bank.
In an April 20 tweet, pseudonymous smart contract engineer “alephv.eth” explained: “They coded it, so they must whitelist all users, process all user transfers, and even process your ERC20 approvals before they process your ‘transferFrom’ lmao.”
Some other pundits have also shared harsh sentiment towards the new Stablecoin
VC Funding For Web 3.0 Start-Ups Down By 82%, Says Crunchbase
In the first quarter of 2023, venture capital (VC) funding for Web 3.0 start-ups dropped 82 per cent year-on-year (y-o-y) from $9.1 billion in the first quarter of 2022 to $1.7 billion.
In a piece published on April 20, 2023, Crunchbase News highlighted the statistics and noted that the $1.7 billion figure for Q1 2023 also represents the lowest amount of start-up investment for Web 3.0 since the $1.1 billion reported in Q4 2020, when “many people had never heard of Web 3.0.”
Early-stage businesses that are either working directly with cryptocurrency or Blockchain technology (or both) are referred to in this context as Web 3.0 start-ups.
Deal flow, or the total number of transactions between venture capitalists and Web 3.0 firms, also experienced a considerable reduction, with 333 transactions recorded in Q1 2023 representing a y-o-y decline of about 33 per cent.
Trading Bot with Subway Theme Makes Millions With ‘Sandwich’ Attacks
This week, an unidentified operator of a Maximal Extractable Value (MEV) bot made well over a million dollars by conducting “sandwich attacks” against buyers and sellers of two new meme coins.
The wallet address associated with the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) domain “jaredfromsubway.eth” made $950,000 from the sandwich attacks on April 18, 2023, and about $300,000 and $400,000 on April 17 and April 19, 2023, respectively, according to a Tweet from non-fungible token (NFT) data platform Sealaunch on April 19.
The famed sandwich chain and its infamous former spokesperson Jared Fogle are likely puns in the bot’s ENS domain. According to a different report by Sealaunch, the MEV bot used 7 per cent of all Ethereum petrol fees in the 24 hours between April 18 and April 19.