How did Binance Grow So Fast? A Walk Down the Exchange's ...

Summary: Everyone knows that when you give your assets to someone else, they always keep them safe. If this is true for individuals, it is certainly true for businesses.
Custodians always tell the truth and manage funds properly. They won't have any interest in taking the assets as an exchange operator would. Auditors tell the truth and can't be misled. That's because organizations that are regulated are incapable of lying and don't make mistakes.

First, some background. Here is a summary of how custodians make us more secure:

Previously, we might give Alice our crypto assets to hold. There were risks:

Alice might take the assets and disappear.
Alice might spend the assets and pretend that she still has them (fractional model).
Alice might store the assets insecurely and they'll get stolen.
Alice might give the assets to someone else by mistake or by force.
Alice might lose access to the assets.

But "no worries", Alice has a custodian named Bob. Bob is dressed in a nice suit. He knows some politicians. And he drives a Porsche. "So you have nothing to worry about!". And look at all the benefits we get:

Alice can't take the assets and disappear (unless she asks Bob or never gives them to Bob).
Alice can't spend the assets and pretend that she still has them. (Unless she didn't give them to Bob or asks him for them.)
Alice can't store the assets insecurely so they get stolen. (After all - she doesn't have any control over the withdrawal process from any of Bob's systems, right?)
Alice can't give the assets to someone else by mistake or by force. (Bob will stop her, right Bob?)
Alice can't lose access to the funds. (She'll always be present, sane, and remember all secrets, right?)

See - all problems are solved! All we have to worry about now is:

Bob might take the assets and disappear.
Bob might spend the assets and pretend that he still has them (fractional model).
Bob might store the assets insecurely and they'll get stolen.
Bob might give the assets to someone else by mistake or by force.
Bob might lose access to the assets.

It's pretty simple. Before we had to trust Alice. Now we only have to trust Alice, Bob, and all the ways in which they communicate. Just think of how much more secure we are!

"On top of that", Bob assures us, "we're using a special wallet structure". Bob shows Alice a diagram. "We've broken the balance up and store it in lots of smaller wallets. That way", he assures her, "a thief can't take it all at once". And he points to a historic case where a large sum was taken "because it was stored in a single wallet... how stupid".
"Very early on, we used to have all the crypto in one wallet", he said, "and then one Christmas a hacker came and took it all. We call him the Grinch. Now we individually wrap each crypto and stick it under a binary search tree. The Grinch has never been back since."

"As well", Bob continues, "even if someone were to get in, we've got insurance. It covers all thefts and even coercion, collusion, and misplaced keys - only subject to the policy terms and conditions." And with that, he pulls out a phone-book sized contract and slams it on the desk with a thud. "Yep", he continues, "we're paying top dollar for one of the best policies in the country!"
"Can I read it?' Alice asks. "Sure," Bob says, "just as soon as our legal team is done with it. They're almost through the first chapter." He pauses, then continues. "And can you believe that sales guy Mike? He has the same year Porsche as me. I mean, what are the odds?"

"Do you use multi-sig?", Alice asks. "Absolutely!" Bob replies. "All our engineers are fully trained in multi-sig. Whenever we want to set up a new wallet, we generate 2 separate keys in an air-gapped process and store them in this proprietary system here. Look, it even requires the biometric signature from one of our team members to initiate any withdrawal." He demonstrates by pressing his thumb into the display. "We use a third-party cloud validation API to match the thumbprint and authorize each withdrawal. The keys are also backed up daily to an off-site third-party."
"Wow that's really impressive," Alice says, "but what if we need access for a withdrawal outside of office hours?" "Well that's no issue", Bob says, "just send us an email, call, or text message and we always have someone on staff to help out. Just another part of our strong commitment to all our customers!"

"What about Proof of Reserve?", Alice asks. "Of course", Bob replies, "though rather than publish any blockchain addresses or signed transaction, for privacy we just do a SHA256 refactoring of the inverse hash modulus for each UTXO nonce and combine the smart contract coefficient consensus in our hyperledger lightning node. But it's really simple to use." He pushes a button and a large green checkmark appears on a screen. "See - the algorithm ran through and reserves are proven."
"Wow", Alice says, "you really know your stuff! And that is easy to use! What about fiat balances?" "Yeah, we have an auditor too", Bob replies, "Been using him for a long time so we have quite a strong relationship going! We have special books we give him every year and he's very efficient! Checks the fiat, crypto, and everything all at once!"

"We used to have a nice offline multi-sig setup we've been using without issue for the past 5 years, but I think we'll move all our funds over to your facility," Alice says. "Awesome", Bob replies, "Thanks so much! This is perfect timing too - my Porsche got a dent on it this morning. We have the paperwork right over here." "Great!", Alice replies.
And with that, Alice gets out her pen and Bob gets the contract. "Don't worry", he says, "you can take your crypto-assets back anytime you like - just subject to our cancellation policy. Our annual management fees are also super low and we don't adjust them often".

How many holes have to exist for your funds to get stolen?
Just one.

Why are we taking a powerful offline multi-sig setup, widely used globally in hundreds of different/lacking regulatory environments with 0 breaches to date, and circumventing it by a demonstrably weak third party layer? And paying a great expense to do so?
If you go through the list of breaches in the past 2 years to highly credible organizations, you go through the list of major corporate frauds (only the ones we know about), you go through the list of all the times platforms have lost funds, you go through the list of times and ways that people have lost their crypto from identity theft, hot wallet exploits, extortion, etc... and then you go through this custodian with a fine-tooth comb and truly believe they have value to add far beyond what you could, sticking your funds in a wallet (or set of wallets) they control exclusively is the absolute worst possible way to take advantage of that security.

The best way to add security for crypto-assets is to make a stronger multi-sig. With one custodian, what you are doing is giving them your cryptocurrency and hoping they're honest, competent, and flawlessly secure. It's no different than storing it on a really secure exchange. Maybe the insurance will cover you. Didn't work for Bitpay in 2015. Didn't work for Yapizon in 2017. Insurance has never paid a claim in the entire history of cryptocurrency. But maybe you'll get lucky. Maybe your exact scenario will buck the trend and be what they're willing to cover. After the large deductible and hopefully without a long and expensive court battle.

And you want to advertise this increase in risk, the lapse of judgement, an accident waiting to happen, as though it's some kind of benefit to customers ("Free institutional-grade storage for your digital assets.")? And then some people are writing to the OSC that custodians should be mandatory for all funds on every exchange platform? That this somehow will make Canadians as a whole more secure or better protected compared with standard air-gapped multi-sig? On what planet?

Most of the problems in Canada stemmed from one thing - a lack of transparency. If Canadians had known what a joke Quadriga was - it wouldn't have grown to lose $400m from hard-working Canadians from coast to coast to coast. And Gerald Cotten would be in jail, not wherever he is now (at best, rotting peacefully). EZ-BTC and mister Dave Smilie would have been a tiny little scam to his friends, not a multi-million dollar fraud. Einstein would have got their act together or been shut down BEFORE losing millions and millions more in people's funds generously donated to criminals. MapleChange wouldn't have even been a thing. And maybe we'd know a little more about CoinTradeNewNote - like how much was lost in there. Almost all of the major losses with cryptocurrency exchanges involve deception with unbacked funds.
So it's great to see transparency reports from BitBuy and ShakePay where someone independently verified the backing. The only thing we don't have is:

ANY CERTAINTY BALANCES WEREN'T EXCLUDED. Quadriga's largest account was $70m. 80% of funds are in 20% of accounts (Pareto principle). All it takes is excluding a few really large accounts - and nobody's the wiser. A fractional platform can easily pass any audit this way.
ANY VISIBILITY WHATSOEVER INTO THE CUSTODIANS. BitBuy put out their report before moving all the funds to their custodian and ShakePay apparently can't even tell us who the custodian is. That's pretty important considering that basically all of the funds are now stored there.
ANY IDEA ABOUT THE OTHER EXCHANGES. In order for this to be effective, it has to be the norm. It needs to be "unusual" not to know. If obscurity is the norm, then it's super easy for people like Gerald Cotten and Dave Smilie to blend right in.

It's not complicated to validate cryptocurrency assets. They need to exist, they need to be spendable, and they need to cover the total balances. There are plenty of credible people and firms across the country that have the capacity to reasonably perform this validation. Having more frequent checks by different, independent, parties who publish transparent reports is far more valuable than an annual check by a single "more credible/official" party who does the exact same basic checks and may or may not publish anything. Here's an example set of requirements that could be mandated:

First report within 1 month of launching, another within 3 months, and further reports at minimum every 6 months thereafter.
No auditor can be repeated within a 12 month period.
All reports must be public, identifying the auditor and the full methodology used.
All auditors must be independent of the firm being audited with no conflict of interest.
Reports must include the percentage of each asset backed, and how it's backed.
The auditor publishes a hash list, which lists a hash of each customer's information and balances that were included. Hash is one-way encryption so privacy is fully preserved. Every customer can use this to have 100% confidence they were included.
If we want more extensive requirements on audits, these should scale upward based on the total assets at risk on the platform, and whether the platform has loaned their assets out.

There are ways to structure audits such that neither crypto assets nor customer information are ever put at risk, and both can still be properly validated and publicly verifiable. There are also ways to structure audits such that they are completely reasonable for small platforms and don't inhibit innovation in any way. By making the process as reasonable as possible, we can completely eliminate any reason/excuse that an honest platform would have for not being audited. That is arguable far more important than any incremental improvement we might get from mandating "the best of the best" accountants. Right now we have nothing mandated and tons of Canadians using offshore exchanges with no oversight whatsoever.

Transparency does not prove crypto assets are safe. CoinTradeNewNote, Flexcoin ($600k), and Canadian Bitcoins ($100k) are examples where crypto-assets were breached from platforms in Canada. All of them were online wallets and used no multi-sig as far as any records show. This is consistent with what we see globally - air-gapped multi-sig wallets have an impeccable record, while other schemes tend to suffer breach after breach. We don't actually know how much CoinTrader lost because there was no visibility. Rather than publishing details of what happened, the co-founder of CoinTrader silently moved on to found another platform - the "most trusted way to buy and sell crypto" - a site that has no information whatsoever (that I could find) on the storage practices and a FAQ advising that “[t]rading cryptocurrency is completely safe” and that having your own wallet is “entirely up to you! You can certainly keep cryptocurrency, or fiat, or both, on the app.” Doesn't sound like much was learned here, which is really sad to see.
It's not that complicated or unreasonable to set up a proper hardware wallet. Multi-sig can be learned in a single course. Something the equivalent complexity of a driver's license test could prevent all the cold storage exploits we've seen to date - even globally. Platform operators have a key advantage in detecting and preventing fraud - they know their customers far better than any custodian ever would. The best job that custodians can do is to find high integrity individuals and train them to form even better wallet signatories. Rather than mandating that all platforms expose themselves to arbitrary third party risks, regulations should center around ensuring that all signatories are background-checked, properly trained, and using proper procedures. We also need to make sure that signatories are empowered with rights and responsibilities to reject and report fraud. They need to know that they can safely challenge and delay a transaction - even if it turns out they made a mistake. We need to have an environment where mistakes are brought to the surface and dealt with. Not one where firms and people feel the need to hide what happened. In addition to a knowledge-based test, an auditor can privately interview each signatory to make sure they're not in coercive situations, and we should make sure they can freely and anonymously report any issues without threat of retaliation.
A proper multi-sig has each signature held by a separate person and is governed by policies and mutual decisions instead of a hierarchy. It includes at least one redundant signature. For best results, 3of4, 3of5, 3of6, 4of5, 4of6, 4of7, 5of6, or 5of7.

History has demonstrated over and over again the risk of hot wallets even to highly credible organizations. Nonetheless, many platforms have hot wallets for convenience. While such losses are generally compensated by platforms without issue (for example Poloniex, Bitstamp, Bitfinex, Gatecoin, Coincheck, Bithumb, Zaif, CoinBene, Binance, Bitrue, Bitpoint, Upbit, VinDAX, and now KuCoin), the public tends to focus more on cases that didn't end well. Regardless of what systems are employed, there is always some level of risk. For that reason, most members of the public would prefer to see third party insurance.
Rather than trying to convince third party profit-seekers to provide comprehensive insurance and then relying on an expensive and slow legal system to enforce against whatever legal loopholes they manage to find each and every time something goes wrong, insurance could be run through multiple exchange operators and regulators, with the shared interest of having a reputable industry, keeping costs down, and taking care of Canadians. For example, a 4 of 7 multi-sig insurance fund held between 5 independent exchange operators and 2 regulatory bodies. All Canadian exchanges could pay premiums at a set rate based on their needed coverage, with a higher price paid for hot wallet coverage (anything not an air-gapped multi-sig cold wallet). Such a model would be much cheaper to manage, offer better coverage, and be much more reliable to payout when needed. The kind of coverage you could have under this model is unheard of. You could even create something like the CDIC to protect Canadians who get their trading accounts hacked if they can sufficiently prove the loss is legitimate. In cases of fraud, gross negligence, or insolvency, the fund can be used to pay affected users directly (utilizing the last transparent balance report in the worst case), something which private insurance would never touch. While it's recommended to have official policies for coverage, a model where members vote would fully cover edge cases. (Could be similar to the Supreme Court where justices vote based on case law.)
Such a model could fully protect all Canadians across all platforms. You can have a fiat coverage governed by legal agreements, and crypto-asset coverage governed by both multi-sig and legal agreements. It could be practical, affordable, and inclusive.

Now, we are at a crossroads. We can happily give up our freedom, our innovation, and our money. We can pay hefty expenses to auditors, lawyers, and regulators year after year (and make no mistake - this cost will grow to many millions or even billions as the industry grows - and it will be borne by all Canadians on every platform because platforms are not going to eat up these costs at a loss). We can make it nearly impossible for any new platform to enter the marketplace, forcing Canadians to use the same stagnant platforms year after year. We can centralize and consolidate the entire industry into 2 or 3 big players and have everyone else fail (possibly to heavy losses of users of those platforms). And when a flawed security model doesn't work and gets breached, we can make it even more complicated with even more people in suits making big money doing the job that blockchain was supposed to do in the first place. We can build a system which is so intertwined and dependent on big government, traditional finance, and central bankers that it's future depends entirely on that of the fiat system, of fractional banking, and of government bail-outs. If we choose this path, as history has shown us over and over again, we can not go back, save for revolution. Our children and grandchildren will still be paying the consequences of what we decided today.
Or, we can find solutions that work. We can maintain an open and innovative environment while making the adjustments we need to make to fully protect Canadian investors and cryptocurrency users, giving easy and affordable access to cryptocurrency for all Canadians on the platform of their choice, and creating an environment in which entrepreneurs and problem solvers can bring those solutions forward easily. None of the above precludes innovation in any way, or adds any unreasonable cost - and these three policies would demonstrably eliminate or resolve all 109 historic cases as studied here - that's every single case researched so far going back to 2011. It includes every loss that was studied so far not just in Canada but globally as well.
Unfortunately, finding answers is the least challenging part. Far more challenging is to get platform operators and regulators to agree on anything. My last post got no response whatsoever, and while the OSC has told me they're happy for industry feedback, I believe my opinion alone is fairly meaningless. This takes the whole community working together to solve. So please let me know your thoughts. Please take the time to upvote and share this with people. Please - let's get this solved and not leave it up to other people to do.

Facts/background/sources (skip if you like):

The inspiration for the paragraph about splitting wallets was an actual quote from a Canadian company providing custodial services in response to the OSC consultation paper: "We believe that it will be in the in best interests of investors to prohibit pooled crypto assets or ‘floats’. Most Platforms pool assets, citing reasons of practicality and expense. The recent hack of the world’s largest Platform – Binance – demonstrates the vulnerability of participants’ assets when such concessions are made. In this instance, the Platform’s entire hot wallet of Bitcoins, worth over $40 million, was stolen, facilitated in part by the pooling of client crypto assets." "the maintenance of participants (and Platform) crypto assets across multiple wallets distributes the related risk and responsibility of security - reducing the amount of insurance coverage required and making insurance coverage more readily obtainable". For the record, their reply also said nothing whatsoever about multi-sig or offline storage.
In addition to the fact that the $40m hack represented only one "hot wallet" of Binance, and they actually had the vast majority of assets in other wallets (including mostly cold wallets), multiple real cases have clearly demonstrated that risk is still present with multiple wallets. Bitfinex, VinDAX, Bithumb, Altsbit, BitPoint, Cryptopia, and just recently KuCoin all had multiple wallets breached all at the same time, and may represent a significantly larger impact on customers than the Binance breach which was fully covered by Binance. To represent that simply having multiple separate wallets under the same security scheme is a comprehensive way to reduce risk is just not true.
Private insurance has historically never covered a single loss in the cryptocurrency space (at least, not one that I was able to find), and there are notable cases where massive losses were not covered by insurance. Bitpay in 2015 and Yapizon in 2017 both had insurance policies that didn't pay out during the breach, even after a lengthly court process. The same insurance that ShakePay is presently using (and announced to much fanfare) was describe by their CEO himself as covering “physical theft of the media where the private keys are held,” which is something that has never historically happened. As was said with regard to the same policy in 2018 - “I don’t find it surprising that Lloyd’s is in this space,” said Johnson, adding that to his mind the challenge for everybody is figuring out how to structure these policies so that they are actually protective. “You can create an insurance policy that protects no one – you know there are so many caveats to the policy that it’s not super protective.”
The most profitable policy for a private insurance company is one with the most expensive premiums that they never have to pay a claim on. They have no inherent incentive to take care of people who lost funds. It's "cheaper" to take the reputational hit and fight the claim in court. The more money at stake, the more the insurance provider is incentivized to avoid payout. They're not going to insure the assets unless they have reasonable certainty to make a profit by doing so, and they're not going to pay out a massive sum unless it's legally forced. Private insurance is always structured to be maximally profitable to the insurance provider.
The circumvention of multi-sig was a key factor in the massive Bitfinex hack of over $60m of bitcoin, which today still sits being slowly used and is worth over $3b. While Bitfinex used a qualified custodian Bitgo, which was and still is active and one of the industry leaders of custodians, and they set up 2 of 3 multi-sig wallets, the entire system was routed through Bitfinex, such that Bitfinex customers could initiate the withdrawals in a "hot" fashion. This feature was also a hit with the hacker. The multi-sig was fully circumvented.
Bitpay in 2015 was another example of a breach that stole 5,000 bitcoins. This happened not through the exploit of any system in Bitpay, but because the CEO of a company they worked with got their computer hacked and the hackers were able to request multiple bitcoin purchases, which Bitpay honoured because they came from the customer's computer legitimately. Impersonation is a very common tactic used by fraudsters, and methods get more extreme all the time.
A notable case in Canada was the Canadian Bitcoins exploit. Funds were stored on a server in a Rogers Data Center, and the attendee was successfully convinced to reboot the server "in safe mode" with a simple phone call, thus bypassing the extensive security and enabling the theft.
Over $200m has been stolen impersonating users of cryptocurrency platforms by one group alone. Here's a list of 10 social engineering attacks against corporate companies. Here's an even larger case. While verification methods are improving, so are methods of identity theft and social engineering. We now have sim swapping and deep fake videos to contend with. Hackers have massive database sets of personal information they can utilize. As the sums at stake increase, so to will the level of effort criminals are willing to undertake. Obscurity for an insecure system will only postpone an attack until the "jackpot" is large enough.
The very nature of custodians circumvents multi-sig. This is because custodians are not just having to secure the assets against some sort of physical breach but against any form of social engineering, modification of orders, fraudulent withdrawal attempts, etc... If the security practices of signatories in a multi-sig arrangement are such that the breach risk of one signatory is 1 in 100, the requirement of 3 independent signatures makes the risk of theft 1 in 1,000,000. Since hackers tend to exploit the weakest link, a comparable custodian has to make the entry and exit points of their platform 10,000 times more secure than one of those signatories to provide equivalent protection. And if the signatories beef up their security by only 10x, the risk is now 1 in 1,000,000,000. The custodian has to be 1,000,000 times more secure. The larger and more complex a system is, the more potential vulnerabilities exist in it, and the fewer people can understand how the system works when performing upgrades. Even if a system is completely secure today, one has to also consider how that system might evolve over time or work with different members.
By contrast, offline multi-signature solutions have an extremely solid record, and in the entire history of cryptocurrency exchange incidents which I've studied (listed here), there has only been one incident (796 exchange in 2015) involving an offline multi-signature wallet. It happened because the customer's bitcoin address was modified by hackers, and the amount that was stolen ($230k) was immediately covered by the exchange operators. Basically, the platform operators were tricked into sending a legitimate withdrawal request to the wrong address because hackers exploited their platform to change that address. Such an issue would not be prevented in any way by the use of a custodian, as that custodian has no oversight whatsoever to the exchange platform. It's practical for all exchange operators to test large withdrawal transactions as a general policy, regardless of what model is used, and general best practice is to diagnose and fix such an exploit as soon as it occurs.
False promises on the backing of funds played a huge role in the downfall of Quadriga, and it's been exposed over and over again (MyCoin, PlusToken, Bitsane, Bitmarket, EZBTC, IDAX). Even today, customers have extremely limited certainty on whether their funds in exchanges are actually being backed or how they're being backed. While this issue is not unique to cryptocurrency exchanges, the complexity of the technology and the lack of any regulation or standards makes problems more widespread, and there is no "central bank" to come to the rescue as in the 2008 financial crisis or during the great depression when "9,000 banks failed".
In addition to fraudulent operations, the industry is full of cases where operators have suffered breaches and not reported them. Most recently, Einstein was the largest case in Canada, where ongoing breaches and fraud were perpetrated against the platform for multiple years and nobody found out until the platform collapsed completely. While fraud and breaches suck to deal with, they suck even more when not dealt with. Lack of visibility played a role in the largest downfalls of Mt. Gox, Cryptsy, and Bitgrail. In some cases, platforms are alleged to have suffered a hack and keep operating without admitting it at all, such as CoinBene.
It surprises some to learn that a cryptographic solution has already existed since 2013, and gained widespread support in 2014 after Mt. Gox. Proof of Reserves is a full cryptographic proof that allows any customer using an exchange to have complete certainty that their crypto-assets are fully backed by the platform in real-time. This is accomplished by proving that assets exist on the blockchain, are spendable, and fully cover customer deposits. It does not prove safety of assets or backing of fiat assets.
- If we didn't care about privacy at all, a platform could publish their wallet addresses, sign a partial transaction, and put the full list of customer information and balances out publicly. Customers can each check that they are on the list, that the balances are accurate, that the total adds up, and that it's backed and spendable on the blockchain. Platforms who exclude any customer take a risk because that customer can easily check and see they were excluded. So together with all customers checking, this forms a full proof of backing of all crypto assets.
- However, obviously customers care about their private information being published. Therefore, a hash of the information can be provided instead. Hash is one-way encryption. The hash allows the customer to validate inclusion (by hashing their own known information), while anyone looking at the list of hashes cannot determine the private information of any other user. All other parts of the scheme remain fully intact. A model like this is in use on the exchange CoinFloor in the UK.
- A Merkle tree can provide even greater privacy. Instead of a list of balances, the balances are arranged into a binary tree. A customer starts from their node, and works their way to the top of the tree. For example, they know they have 5 BTC, they plus 1 other customer hold 7 BTC, they plus 2-3 other customers hold 17 BTC, etc... until they reach the root where all the BTC are represented. Thus, there is no way to find the balances of other individual customers aside from one unidentified customer in this case.
Proposals such as this had the backing of leaders in the community including Nic Carter, Greg Maxwell, and Zak Wilcox. Substantial and significant effort started back in 2013, with massive popularity in 2014. But what became of that effort? Very little. Exchange operators continue to refuse to give visibility. Despite the fact this information can often be obtained through trivial blockchain analysis, no Canadian platform has ever provided any wallet addresses publicly. As described by the CEO of Newton "For us to implement some kind of realtime Proof of Reserves solution, which I'm not opposed to, it would have to ... Preserve our users' privacy, as well as our own. Some kind of zero-knowledge proof". Kraken describes here in more detail why they haven't implemented such a scheme. According to professor Eli Ben-Sasson, when he spoke with exchanges, none were interested in implementing Proof of Reserves.
And yet, Kraken's places their reasoning on a page called "Proof of Reserves". More recently, both BitBuy and ShakePay have released reports titled "Proof of Reserves and Security Audit". Both reports contain disclaimers against being audits. Both reports trust the customer list provided by the platform, leaving the open possibility that multiple large accounts could have been excluded from the process. Proof of Reserves is a blockchain validation where customers see the wallets on the blockchain. The report from Kraken is 5 years old, but they leave it described as though it was just done a few weeks ago. And look at what they expect customers to do for validation. When firms represent something being "Proof of Reserve" when it's not, this is like a farmer growing fruit with pesticides and selling it in a farmers market as organic produce - except that these are people's hard-earned life savings at risk here. Platforms are misrepresenting the level of visibility in place and deceiving the public by their misuse of this term. They haven't proven anything.
Fraud isn't a problem that is unique to cryptocurrency. Fraud happens all the time. Enron, WorldCom, Nortel, Bear Stearns, Wells Fargo, Moser Baer, Wirecard, Bre-X, and Nicola are just some of the cases where frauds became large enough to become a big deal (and there are so many countless others). These all happened on 100% reversible assets despite regulations being in place. In many of these cases, the problems happened due to the over-complexity of the financial instruments. For example, Enron had "complex financial statements [which] were confusing to shareholders and analysts", creating "off-balance-sheet vehicles, complex financing structures, and deals so bewildering that few people could understand them". In cryptocurrency, we are often combining complex financial products with complex technologies and verification processes. We are naïve if we think problems like this won't happen. It is awkward and uncomfortable for many people to admit that they don't know how something works. If we want "money of the people" to work, the solutions have to be simple enough that "the people" can understand them, not so confusing that financial professionals and technology experts struggle to use or understand them.
For those who question the extent to which an organization can fool their way into a security consultancy role, HB Gary should be a great example to look at. Prior to trying to out anonymous, HB Gary was being actively hired by multiple US government agencies and others in the private sector (with glowing testimonials). The published articles and hosted professional security conferences. One should also look at this list of data breaches from the past 2 years. Many of them are large corporations, government entities, and technology companies. These are the ones we know about. Undoubtedly, there are many more that we do not know about. If HB Gary hadn't been "outted" by anonymous, would we have known they were insecure? If the same breach had happened outside of the public spotlight, would it even have been reported? Or would HB Gary have just deleted the Twitter posts, brought their site back up, done a couple patches, and kept on operating as though nothing had happened?
In the case of Quadriga, the facts are clear. Despite past experience with platforms such as MapleChange in Canada and others around the world, no guidance or even the most basic of a framework was put in place by regulators. By not clarifying any sort of legal framework, regulators enabled a situation where a platform could be run by former criminal Mike Dhanini/Omar Patryn, and where funds could be held fully unchecked by one person. At the same time, the lack of regulation deterred legitimate entities from running competing platforms and Quadriga was granted a money services business license for multiple years of operation, which gave the firm the appearance of legitimacy. Regulators did little to protect Canadians despite Quadriga failing to file taxes from 2016 onward. The entire administrative team had resigned and this was public knowledge. Many people had suspicions of what was going on, including Ryan Mueller, who forwarded complaints to the authorities. These were ignored, giving Gerald Cotten the opportunity to escape without justice.
There are multiple issues with the SOC II model including the prohibitive cost (you have to find a third party accounting firm and the prices are not even listed publicly on any sites), the requirement of operating for a year (impossible for new platforms), and lack of any public visibility (SOC II are private reports that aren't shared outside the people in suits).
Securities frameworks are expensive. Sarbanes-Oxley is estimated to cost $5.1 million USD/yr for the average Fortune 500 company in the United States. Since "Fortune 500" represents the top 500 companies, that means well over $2.55 billion USD (~$3.4 billion CAD) is going to people in suits. Isn't the problem of trust and verification the exact problem that the blockchain is supposed to solve?
To use Quadriga as justification for why custodians or SOC II or other advanced schemes are needed for platforms is rather silly, when any framework or visibility at all, or even the most basic of storage policies, would have prevented the whole thing. It's just an embarrassment.
We are now seeing regulators take strong action. CoinSquare in Canada with multi-million dollar fines. BitMex from the US, criminal charges and arrests. OkEx, with full disregard of withdrawals and no communication. Who's next?
We have a unique window today where we can solve these problems, and not permanently destroy innovation with unreasonable expectations, but we need to act quickly. This is a unique historic time that will never come again.

Thoughts?

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Over the course of mere months, the DeFi space has grown to the tune of billions in 2020. While DeFi has earned its title as the next hottest crypto trend, its popularity has shown to be a double-edged sword. Reports of scams and “rug pulls” have volleyed into crypto news outlets, social media, and discussion groups, damaging the reputation of the DeFi space.
DeFi is unique in that the tenets of trust and decentralization has normalized the practice of anonymity to the point where nearly every single DeFi team launches anonymously. While the freedom to create DeFi tools does support the notion that anyone should be able to create an honest financial protocol for the goodwill of the people, the opposite effect often occurs. If the past few months has proven anything, it’s that the normalization of anonymity has acted as both the greatest weapon and the greatest defence for fraudulent actors and dishonest entities. Because of this, DeFi is often seen as a free-for-all minefield as countless exit scams and “rugpulls” have become the norm. Having this as an accepted vice of DeFi shouldn’t mean investors should normalize risk of losses. It should inspire projects to set a higher standard in the DeFi space.
We are excited to announce that the YFDAI team has taken the tenets of decentralized finance and expanded on them. As a DeFi protocol, we champion decentralization and the collective action of the community to pave the road towards true transparency and security for all. After countless hours of legal counseling, we’re proud to announce that we will be among the very few DeFi projects to go public and among the first to set a new precedent for the DeFi space.
Say hello to the YFDAI team.
Meet Pritha Paul (Olivia) — Chief Strategic — Volunteer

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Olivia is both a software engineer and a Businesswoman. Having been an avid fan of blockchain and trader of cryptocurrencies, Olivia felt the need to contribute her expertise to the cryptocurrency space. This desire prompted her to create YFDAI, one of DeFi’s most secure and trusted protocols. Seeing the cryptocurrency space as a professional programmer, Olivia knows the importance of making a clean and secure DeFi protocol.
With the rate of fraudulent projects ascending contemporaneously with the rise of DeFi, Olivia knew it was crucial to have a trusted and well-secured protocol that can guide as an example for other projects to follow. Along with this idea, Olivia felt that for DeFi to reach its highest potential, there needed to be an ecosystem that protects investors and supports DeFi projects looking to bring real value to the space. With this in mind, Olivia came up with YFDAI’s signature SafeSwap and LaunchPad platforms.
Olivia has a number of qualifications and holds a bachelor’s in Computer Applications. Some of her advanced programming languages include: C, C++, JAVA, Python, Oracle.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/pritha-paul-olivia-a576b71b9/
Meet Tapas Paul (Rocky) — Lead Dev — Volunteer

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Doubling as a software developer and website designer, Tapas carries ample experience in web development and design. Having been familiar with cryptocurrencies for years, his initial descent into the space came in the golden year of 2017. Since then, Tapas has been engaged in crypto and felt the need to create a truly honest and secure DeFi platform together with Pritha. Tapas’s vast expertise in web development and blockchain gives YFDAI an edge in becoming one of the top DeFi protocols in the space.
Tapas has a diverse range of tech experience that range from creating web applications and front-end designs for various startups to working as a senior blockchain developer for distributed solidity systems for complicated DAPPs. Since then, Tapas has provided Ethereum and TRON consulting to multiple blockchain startups entering the space.
Some of Tapas expertise and advanced programming languages include- Solidity, Web3 TronWeb, JavaScript, MongoDB, ExpressJS, ReactJS Node.JS React Native, HTML5, CSS3, Distributed Ledger Technology , Ethereum and TRON DAPPs, Authentication systems, Real Time Web Apps.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tapas-paul-rocky-4609781b2/
Meet Ankit Ruthala (Thore) — Chief Business Development — Volunteer

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Thore carries a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering with fundamental engineering and dynamics experience. He has extensive background experience in both engineering and blockchain development. With the ever-increasing level of innovation that is occurring in the blockchain and cryptocurrency space, Thore felt the need to contribute his own knowledge and expertise to the field. Thore’s extensive experience in the field is projected into the YFDAI project with the end-user in mind. Being proficient in both blockchain literacy and technical analyses, Thore understands the cryptocurrency space from both a developer and investor perspective.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankit-runthala-752a4785
Meet Wesley — Security Consultant — Volunteer

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Wesley specializes in Infrastructure and security management with a background in economics. Having been involved in the cryptocurrency scene for over three years, Wesley has had ample exposure to the world of blockchain and cryptocurrencies. Since 2017, Wesley has worked as an agent for BTC Direct and in Binance community management.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/wesley-thijssen-223813134/
Meet Cristian- Graphic Designer — Volunteer

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Despite his previous work experience as a computer programmer, Cristian found his niche excelling in graphic design and maximizing brand identity. After winning over 400 graphic design competitions, Cristian now works as a dedicated graphic designer. Living by the mantra of “every profession is an act of service”, Cristian’s passion is manifested through his works in design, brand awareness, and customer satisfaction.
https://99designs.com/profiles/oakbrand
Meet Cris Content Writer — Volunteer

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Cris first began his cryptocurrency journey in the summer of 2017. Since then, he has been obsessed with everything cryptocurrency and blockchain related. After being featured on a series of cryptocurrency publications on Medium, Cris found his way into writing and managing a variety of cryptocurrency startups. Cris now continues pursuing his passion in cryptocurrency while balancing life as a university student.
https://www.linkedin.com/m/in/cris-montoya-1738b61b9-Cris/
Meet Christof Waton — Business Development Consultant — Volunteer

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Christof currently holds a bachelor’s in data communication and is currently completing his masters in Digital Currencies. His initial descent into cryptocurrencies came when he first bought Bitcoin in 2014. Since then, Christof has led his professional career in a variety of fields in and out of the crypto space. Within the crypto space, Christof has held positions as chief business development officer for both ExMarkets and CoinMargin. Outside of the crypto space Christof led as a consultant for both Dubai Hills Fund and Verifo, an e-money institution. After years of experience in both the financial and crypto industry, Christof has experienced cryptocurrency through the lens of a professional, investor, and an enthusiast.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/watonchristof/
Meet Philip Dow — Head Advisor — Volunteer

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Phil operates as a strategic executive with a high-level background in project management, business development, and marketing. Phil first brought his expertise to the cryptocurrency field in 2016. Phil carries a wealth of knowledge as his years in crypto garnered him key connections with a variety of different cryptocurrency partners ranging from, developers, project CEOs, and marketing.
For the past 4 years Phil has brought coverage to a multitude of different blockchain companies, each offering unique expertise and applications in a wide variety of fields.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/philipdow55/
Now that the team identities have been released this dispels the “Elephant in the room”. The fact that the team chose to become non-anon opens up many doors that would otherwise be closed. The specifics of those opportunities will be made clear in the upcoming whitepaper and future announcements.
Even though the names and faces of the founders behind the project have been revealed, please note that there are many people who are working on the YFDAI project on a contractual basis and volunteer basis who have not been included in the disclosure. There are experts and advisors in the fields of business development, economics, law, and other areas vital to any business that play a major role in the success of YFDAI and who share the vision of the founders to clean up the DeFi space and offer a safe, reliable, and secure suite of DeFi products to the public.
While the team behind a crypto project is vital, the ultimate success of any DeFi project relies on the technology, the code, and the community. YFDAI’s technology and code have been designed to be bulletproof in order to maximize the safety and security for the end user. In the not too distant future, YFDAI’s business model envisions the everyday decisions to ultimately be made by you, the community, by way of the DAO as governance is turned over to the token holders.
To ensure we are operating as securely and compliantly as possible YFDAI has been incorporated as a Technology business in Singapore:
Company Name — Tejster Technologies PTE. LTD. Registration No — 202031933C Address — 50,Raffles Place,#37–00,Singapore Land Tower, Singapore (048623)
To finalise the compliance aspect YFDAI is in the process of obtaining full Financial Services regulation by means of receiving compliance and registration in the Republic of Estonia.
This will be a two stage process with an initial Virtual Currency Exchange and E-Wallet licence currently being sought. YDFAI’s legal representatives have moved this to an advanced stage and expect this to be finalized in Q4 2020. It is at this point that the team shall resume their full job titles and the term “Volunteer” will no longer be required.
The licenses will open up a plethora of opportunities which will be fully detailed in our soon to be released whitepaper and will also provide YFDAI with a level of accreditation that will provide users with full peace of mind.
Once YFDAI secures the Financial Services accreditation listed above, YFDAI will have full insurance coverage of the project’s financial holdings and transactions, including project wallets and user funds.
Thank you for your support and we look forward to setting a new standard of self regulation that will revolutionize the DeFI arena and level the playing field for all participants while minimizing the fraud and desecration of the bad actors who have infiltrated the DeFi space.
- YFDAI Team
Visit us on our website and chat with us on Telegram!
Website: https://www.yfdai.finance
Telegram Community: https://t.me/yfdaifinance
Telegram Announcements: https://t.me/yfdai
Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/yfdai-finance

You have probably read dozens of articles dedicated to this subject before, and likely skipped even more. So why write another one, let alone read it? The short answer is times have changed. Well, times always change. Still, the point is that we may be amidst a paradigm shift in the cryptocurrency space right now even if we don’t feel it yet.
by stealthEX
Such a fundamental change is possible due to a confluence of several factors. Some of these factors are external and therefore not related to crypto. Others are internal and represent the value-oriented nature of cryptocurrencies. It just happened that all of them got activated under specific conditions at a certain point in time, which is today, give or take.

Economic woes in a post-Covid-19 World

You wouldn’t be far from the truth if you claimed that we haven’t yet pulled through the pandemic, to begin with. Unfortunately, it only makes matters worse unless you are a cryptocurrency investor and don’t care for the rest of humanity. Anyway, the damage has been done, and nothing can change that. We are now entering the phase that is technically called “competitive devaluations” and colloquially known as currency wars.
You could also argue that if it didn’t happen at the peak of the coronavirus pandemic, it is not going to happen now. The sad truth is that we are only starting to feel the real pain. Even the deadly coronavirus doesn’t take over the body instantly, while it takes some time on the scale of a few months up to a couple years for the economic disease to spread through the fabric of society, evolve, and then erupt with inflation rates shooting through the roof, among many other nasty things. Please take your seat.
The world reserve fiat, the American dollar, is sinking like Titanic, slowly but surely. We can’t say the same about less lucky currencies, though. We won’t dwell on the Venezuelan bolivar and Zimbabwean dollar as they are altogether beyond redemption, but fiats like the Brazilian real and Russian ruble are also balancing on the brink of another landslide devaluation, which they have seen many in the past. Sharp minds in the cryptocurrency space have been telling us about this development for ages. It all looked like a remote possibility in some distant future that as we felt deep down wouldn’t have a chance to come up in our lifetime.
As it stands, we were wrong, and the events described are now starting to unfold right before our own eyes. In a strange twist of fate, large-scale cryptocurrency adoption is about to occur along with them, but not through some technical breakthroughs and innovation, or even the much-hyped DeFi, but primarily through the failure of conventional financial systems based on fiat currencies. Rest assured, the top dogs in the cryptocurrency pit are well aware of this dynamic, and they are not going to wait any longer.
Grayscale Investments, a multi-billion dollar company behind a host of cryptocurrency trust funds, started to frenziedly buy up bitcoins a couple weeks ago. All in all, it acquired over 17,000 BTC adding to its already quite impressive stash of Bitcoin, now totalling almost 450,000 coins under its management. Love it or leave it, but it amounts to 2.4% of all bitcoins mined to date, including lost, burned, or left for dead as dust in Bitcoin wallets. In essence, it means that their effective share is way higher.
But while Grayscale definitely sits at the top of the cryptocurrency investment chain, it is not the only company that went on a buying spree lately. MicroStrategy, a company largely unknown to the wider public, suddenly got religion and swapped over $400 million of its capital into 38,250 BTC. Even Barry Silbert, CEO of Grayscale, commented on this feat in his tweet.
Twitter, by StealthEX
So whenever there is a hint at price correction, someone comes out of the shadows and picks up a handful of bitcoins from the market propping up the price.
Why are they doing this? You already know the answer.

Paradigm shift

In different words, all that cryptocurrencies had to do was to last long enough until fiat started to fall apart. It does now, and paradoxically such times are also times of great opportunity, Baron Rothschild’s way. The world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, has been pushing its cryptocurrency payment card since April when it acquired Swipe, a firm focused on crypto-to-fiat payment cards. At the time of the acquisition Swipe already supported 20 cryptocurrencies and fiat transactions in major currencies.
Binance.com, by StaelthEX
For European users the Binance card was officially made available in August, and the exchange plans to enter the US market soon. Given its dominance in the crypto arena, it wouldn’t be unreasonable to expect the surge in the cryptocurrency use as a means of payment thanks to this. It is unlikely that people would spend their precious bitcoins, but the packmaster is not the only member of the pack that Binance handles. Cryptos like Litecoin or Bitcoin Cash can easily become currencies of choice to use with Binance debit cards.
But what truly makes it a game-changer is the current turmoil in the global economic affairs which may turn out to be a once-in-a-lifetime chance for crypto to pick up where fiat currencies leave, or fail, to be exact. On the other hand, it may be a natural development after all, set in stone by the very first Bitcoin transaction and cemented for good when it got confirmed. Now things start to arrange themselves to fit their preordained layout. We have taken our time.
As cryptocurrencies are not internally linked to, or tied by, the lunatic policies of monetary authorities, that is to say, no central bank can ask or force miners to mine more bitcoins, we have the first element in place in the layout for the cryptocurrency mass adoption to occur at the most basic level. In fact, it has always been there, so we just had to wait until the two other elements arrived, even though it took longer than most of us were ready to wait.
The second required element in the grand picture of cryptocurrency adoption is the change in attitude toward wealth evaluation. So far the vast majority of people involved in crypto, including its most die-hard supporters, valued their cryptocurrency holdings in fiat terms. Without doubt, it was the US dollar, regardless of your home currency. But when fiat collapses or enters a long period of runaway inflation, people will be ready for a dramatic change in their approaches toward capital assessment as well as spending habits.
And here comes the most important part where Binance hits the nail on the head. If you are unable to effortlessly spend crypto in your everyday life, the first two components cannot trigger this change in attitude on their own. We need this third element to make use of what has existed and take advantage of what has come around. In a way, what Binance did, and what its competitors are no doubt going to do as well if they don’t want to miss out on the opportunity, appears to be the part that snugly snaps into place when we finally get there.
With Binance payment card, you can “buy the things you love with crypto”. So now the ball is in your court to support the full-scale cryptocurrency adoption coming up. Kidding aside, with fiat turning into trash by leaps and bounds all over the globe, this looks like a very enticing payment option for both the crypto purists and the unbanked. We have seen quite a few such cards in the past, but Binance seems to be adamant on making its variety really popular and actually usable. And then you can ride volatility waves to your financial benefit.
If Binance succeeds, that may herald a new era of cryptocurrency adoption, a breakthrough of sorts after so many years of stagnation in this department.

Repercussions and ramifications

It is not like only we, traders and investors alike, see these trends. Governments are also taking notice and paying close attention. They can’t remove cryptocurrencies and they can’t help inflating their national currencies. However, they can still crack down massively on this and similar endeavors, trying to nip them in the bud. We don’t know yet what Uncle Sam is going to say but some muslim countries have been quite vocal in this regard.
For example, Egypt has issued a fetva which prohibits bitcoin transactions as being against Sharia, an Islamic religious law. Another mostly Islamic country, Indonesia, has banned the use of cryptocurrencies as a means of payment. Russia, although not Islamic yet, is hellbent on effectively outlawing most cryptocurrency operations despite passing earlier a law on digital assets which is essentially neutral to crypto.
To conclude, we must be aware that once things get serious and governments see that their monetary supremacy is being threatened, that they can no longer play their favorite game of inflation tax, they will leave no stone unturned to prevent mass use of crypto as an alternative means of payment. And cryptocurrency payment cards are hands down one of the best tools available for this use on a down-to-earth level, groceries and whatnot.
Now you know what their target will be.
And don’t forget if you need to exchange your coins StealthEX is here for you. We provide a selection of more than 300 coins and constantly updating the cryptocurrency list so that our customers will find a suitable option. Our service does not require registration and allows you to remain anonymous. Why don’t you check it out? Just go to StealthEX and follow these easy steps:
✔ Choose the pair and the amount for your exchange. For example BTC to ETH.
✔ Press the “Start exchange” button.
✔ Provide the recipient address to which the coins will be transferred.
✔ Move your cryptocurrency for the exchange.
✔ Receive your coins.
Follow us on Medium, Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit to get StealthEX.io updates and the latest news about the crypto world. For all requests message us via [email protected].
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Original article was posted on https://stealthex.io/blog/2020/10/06/cryptocurrency-adoption-a-breakthrough/

Everyone and his grandma know what cryptocurrency mining is. Well, they may not indeed know what it actually is, in technical terms, but they have definitely heard the phrase as it is hard to miss the news about mining sucking in energy like a black hole gobbles up matter. On the other hand, staking, its little bro, has mostly been hiding in the shadows until recently.
by StealthEX
Today, with DeFi making breaking news across the cryptoverse, staking has become a new buzzword in the blockchain space and beyond, along with the fresh entries to the crypto asset investor’s vocabulary such as “yield farming”, “rug pull”, “total value locked”, and similar arcane stuff. If you are not scared off yet, then read on. Though we can’t promise you won’t be.

Cryptocurrency staking, little brother of crypto mining

There are two conceptually different approaches to achieving consensus in a distributed network, which comes down to transaction validation in the case of a cryptocurrency blockchain. You are most certainly aware of cryptocurrency mining, which is used with cryptocurrencies based on the Proof-of-Work (PoW) consensus algorithm such as Bitcoin and Ether (so far). Here miners compete against each other with their computational resources for finding the next block on the blockchain and getting a reward.
Another approach, known as the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) consensus mechanism, is based not on the race among computational resources as is the case with PoW, but on the competition of balances, or stakes. In simple words, every holder of at least one stake, a minimally sufficient amount of crypto, can actively participate in creating blocks and thus also earn rewards under such network consensus model. This process came to be known as staking, and it can be loosely thought of as mining in the PoS environment.
With that established, let’s now see why, after so many years of what comes pretty close to oblivion, it has turned into such a big thing.

Why has staking become so popular, all of a sudden?

The renewed popularity of staking came with the explosive expansion of decentralized finance, or DeFi for short. Essentially, staking is one of the ways to tap into the booming DeFi market, allowing users to earn staking rewards on a class of digital assets that DeFi provides easy access to. Technically, it is more correct to speak of DeFi staking as a new development of an old concept that enjoys its second coming today, or new birth if you please. So what’s the point?
With old-school cryptocurrency staking, you would have to manually set up and run a validating node on a cryptocurrency network that uses a PoS consensus algo, having to keep in mind all the gory details of a specific protocol so as not to shoot yourself in the foot. This is where you should have already started to enjoy jitters if you were to take this avenu entirely on your own. Just think of it as having to run a Bitcoin mining rig for some pocket money. Put simply, DeFi staking frees you from all that hassle.
At this point, let’s recall what decentralized finance is and what it strives to achieve. In broad terms, DeFi aims at offering the same products and services available today in the traditional financial world, but in a trutless and decentralized way. From this perspective, DeFi staking reseblems conventional banking where people put their money in savings accounts to earn interest. Indeed, you could try to lend out your shekels all by yourself, with varying degrees of success, but banks make it far more convenient and secure.
The maturation of the DeFi space advanced the emergence of staking pools and Staking-as-a-Service (SaaS) providers that run nodes for PoS cryptocurrencies on your behalf, allowing you to stake your coins and receive staking rewards. In today’s world, interest rates on traditional savings accounts are ridiculous, while government spending, a handy euphemism for relentless money printing aka fiscal stimulus, is already translating into runaway inflation. Against this backdrop, it is easy to see why staking has been on the rise.

Okay, what are my investment options?

Now that we have gone through the basics of the state-of-the-art cryptocurrency staking, you may ask what are the options actually available for a common crypto enthusiast to earn from it? Many high-caliber exchanges like Binance or Bitfinex as well as online wallets such as Coinbase offer staking of PoS coins. In most cases, you don’t even need to do anything aside from simply holding your coins there to start receiving rewards as long as you are eligible and meet the requirements. This is called exchange staking.
Further, there are platforms that specialize in staking digital assets. These are known as Staking-as-a-Service providers, while this form of staking is often referred to as soft staking. They enable even non-tech savvy customers to stake their PoS assets through a third party service, with all the technical stuff handled by the service provider. Most of these services are custodial, with the implication being that you no longer control your coins after you stake them. Figment Networks, MyContainer, Stake Capital are easily the most recognized among SaaS providers.
However, while exchange staking and soft staking have everything to do with finance, they have little to nothing to do with the decentralized part of it, which is, for the record, the primary value proposition of the entire DeFi ecosystem. The point is, you have to deposit the stakable coins into your wallet with these services. And how can it then be considered decentralized? Nah, because DeFi is all about going trustless, no third parties, and, in a narrow sense, no staking that entails the transfer of private keys. This form of staking is called non-custodial, and it is of particular interest from the DeFi point of view.
If you read our article about DeFi, you already know how it is possible, so we won’t dwell on this (if, on the off chance, you didn’t, it’s time to catch up). As DeFi continues to evolve, platforms that allow trustless staking with which you maintain full custody of your coins are set to emerge as well. The space is relatively new, with Staked being probably the first in the field. This type of staking allows you to remain in complete control of your funds, and it perfectly matches DeFi’s ethos, goals and ideals.
Still, our story wouldn’t be complete if we didn’t mention utility tokens where staking may serve a whole range of purposes other than supporting the token network or obtaining passive income. For example, with platforms that deploy blockchain oracles such as Nexus Mutual, a decentralized insurance platform, staking tokens is necessary for encouraging correct reporting on certain events or reaching a consensus on a specific claim. In the case of Nexus Mutual, its membership token NXM is used by the token holders, the so-called assessors, for validating insurance claims. If they fail to assess claims correctly, their stakes are burned.
Another example is Particl Marketplace, a decentralized eCommerce platform, which designed a standalone cryptocurrency dubbed PART. It can be used both as a cryptocurrency in its own right outside the marketplace and as a stakable utility token giving stakers voting rights facilitating the decentralized governance of the entire platform. Yet another example is the instant non-custodial cryptocurrency exchange service, ChangeNOW, that also recently came up with its stakable token, NOW Token, to be used as an internal currency and a means of earning passive income.

What’s next?

Nowadays, with most economies on pause or going downhill, staking has become a new avenue for generating passive income outside the traditional financial system. As DeFi continues to eat away at services previously being exclusively provided by conventional financial and banking sectors, we should expect more people to get involved in this activity along with more businesses dipping their toes into these uncharted waters.
Achieving network consensus, establishing decentralized governance, and earning passive income are only three use cases for cryptocurrency staking. No matter how important they are, and they certainly are, there are many other uses along different dimensions that staking can be quite helpful and instrumental for. Again, we are mostly in uncharted waters here, and we can’t reliably say what the future holds for us. On the other hand, we can go and invent it. This should count as next.
And remember if you need to exchange your coins StealthEX is here for you. We provide a selection of more than 250 coins and constantly updating the list so that our customers will find a suitable option. Our service does not require registration and allows you to remain anonymous. Why don’t you check it out? Just go to StealthEX and follow these easy steps:
✔ Choose the pair and the amount for your exchange. For example ETH to BTC.
✔ Press the “Start exchange” button.
✔ Provide the recipient address to which the coins will be transferred.
✔ Move your cryptocurrency for the exchange.
✔ Receive your coins!
The views and opinions expressed here are solely those of the author. Every investment and trading move involves risk. You should conduct your own research when making a decision.
Original article was posted on https://stealthex.io/blog/2020/09/08/cryptocurrency-staking-as-it-stands-today/

How Decentralized Finance Came to Be

Decentralized Finance (DeFi) can be rightfully considered a third revolution in the crypto space. If you wonder what the first two are, these are the invention of blockchain itself along with the technology’s firstborn, Bitcoin, and the inception of the smart contract technology. Just like blockchain provides the basis for smart contracts, the latter give rise to DeFi. It is often said that smart contracts are poised to revolutionize the ways both humans and organizations interact in their contractual relationships. In this sense, DeFi is the stage where these relationships are set to emerge and develop. With a bigger picture in mind, it is the world that the blockchain technology lays the foundation for, while smart contracts help to build it. Why we need DeFi, how it is possible, what makes it tick and click are the main themes of this article.
by StealthEX

But seriously, why do we need it?

As most financial services in existence today are provided by or involve third parties, for example, banks, exchanges, investment companies, insurance agencies etc, DeFi is an attempt to build an alternative environment, an ecosystem of applications offering the same set of services but now powered by public blockchain networks in a decentralized, transparent and permissionless way. By and large, the basic idea that guides DeFi is essentially the same ethos that drives innovation with crypto as such, but at an entirely different level.
Just like cryptocurrencies try to wrest the state supremacy over money from the hands of rogue governments and central banks, DeFi takes it further and aims higher. With DeFi, it is no longer a matter of creating a coin in an effort to replace fiat money, which mostly doesn’t work anyway. However, building a whole new domain of financial services available fairly and squarely to anyone, with full control over the assets but without corrupt governments and greedy intermediaries sticking around, may pan out better after all.
So, answering the question posed at the beginning of this section, we need DeFi for basically the same reasons we need cryptocurrencies. Or, put differently, if we need cryptocurrencies, an assumption that has been proved indisputable, it is inevitable as well that we will sooner or later become interested in decentralized financial services powered by these cryptocurrencies through smart contract blockchains. We can’t just create Bitcoin and say that’ll do. It is a natural development, a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, in a sense.

How is it ever possible?

As mentioned in the introduction, DeFi emerges thanks to smart contract tech and decentralized applications (or simply dApps) running them. So how does it work in practice? To better understand the idea, let’s take a closer look at a relatively simple example of a decentralized crypto-backed stablecoin which can be created through a smart contract. Stablecoins are coins whose value is pegged to a stable asset such as a commodity like gold or a fiat currency like the US dollar.
There are a few different types of stablecoins that exist in the wild. For the purpose of this exposition, we are interested in crypto-backed stablecoins. Like stablecoins collateralized by fiat, these stablecoins use cryptocurrencies as collateral. However, the key difference is that a fiat-based stablecoin is pegged to the fiat currency which is backing it up. Kinda obvious. A crypto-backed stablecoin, on the other hand, is pegged to one asset, say, the American dollar, but backed up by a completely different one, for example, Ether. Things get tricky.
A crypto-collateralized stablecoin is possible through the magic and the beauty of the smart contract governing it. If the price of such a stablecoin rises above its peg, or parity, you can create more stablecoins and sell them at a premium. If the price of the stablecoin falls below parity, you can buy stablecoins and liquidate them at a discount. If the collateral itself crashes, undercollateralized stablecoins will be liquidated with their collateral now backing up fewer stablecoins. As a result, the price always gets pushed back to parity.
And all this rather complicated stuff is done on the blockchain in a decentralized and automatic fashion with no banks or other third parties involved. Consequently, more services are easily possible too. And quite a few at that.

Okay, what decentralized financial services are available?

Well, one such service we have just described above. Cryptocurrencies are infamous for being extremely volatile, and stablecoins are designed to deal with this issue. There are many stablecoins out there like Tether, TrueUSD, or Gemini Coin, but they are all based on trusting third parties. Easily one of the best known crypto-backed stablecoins is MakerDAO’s DAI, which is pegged against the US dollar with a basket of crypto-assets as collateral in a truly decentralized and trustless way, that is, a blockchain way.
Crypto-based stablecoins can be used on their own by offering a hedge against the price volatility of such popular cryptocurrencies as Ether or Bitcoin. Aside from that, they are also instrumental in other DeFi services, for example, in decentralized exchanges like IDEX or BiKi.com. With stablecoins, it becomes possible to create fiat trading pairs in addition to crypto ones in entirely decentralized, non-custodial trading environments as opposed to centralized exchanges like Bitfinex or Binance, which are vulnerable to high-profile hacks and personal data leaks.
Unlike MakerDAO, Ampleforth doesn’t strive to create a rock-solid stablecoin. Instead, it comes up with the notion of “adaptive money built on sound economics”, with its mission stretching out as far as to marry “the scarcity of Bitcoin with the elasticity of fiat”. It tries to go beyond the relatively simple concept of a stablecoin and brings forth the idea of elastic money supply that can expand and contract depending on market demands, as well as allow the creation of a valid form of collateral for DeFi based on that idea.
Obviously, DeFi is not just about stablecoins or the financial services using them. Blockchain-based borrowing and lending is another important DeFi arena. With platforms like Compound, dYdX, Dharma, you can deposit your crypto assets to either earn interest on them or use these assets as collateral for borrowing. Smart contracts automatically match borrowers and lenders, offering dynamic interest rates based on supply and demand. And with tools like LoanScan, you can also easily shop around for the best interest rates on the block.
These examples are far from exhaustive, of course, as the space is rapidly expanding and evolving. However, there are some fundamental issues that put grit into the wheels of the DeFi war machine.

So where’s the catch?

There are many advantages of DeFi, but to be of any practical use, it needs up-to-date information that would be reliable and authentic. Smart contracts that DeFi is based on are hopelessly on-chain, but the data they need for processing is mostly off-chain. Without a bridge to close this gap between a smart contract and its source of external information, smart contracts are entrapped in closed-off dungeons of their blockchains. To be sure, no crypto-based stablecoin is going to work correctly without a real-time price feed for the assets taken as its collateral and used for maintaining the peg.
To get around this roadblock, a concept of blockchain oracles has been suggested. But as the chain cannot be stronger than its weakest link, blockchain oracles seem to be that weak link in the field of DeFi and beyond as obtaining information in a verifiable way can be an intimidating task. What approaches dApps are taking to procure and verify sources of truth in the external world is the topic of our upcoming article about blockchain oracles. Stay with us and stay tuned!
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Original article was posted on https://stealthex.io/blog/2020/08/04/decentralized-finance-defi/

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How popular is DeFi?
Link, known as the leader of the oracle machine, has increased by 305.19% for the past three months, with an investment return of 17,052%, climbing to the fifth spot in the cryptocurrency ranking list by market value in the short term;
Since its issuance, YFI, which has soared 350 times all the way, has attracted 630 million US dollars of investment in 5 days, and was even dubbed the next Bitcoin in this circle;
From Comp for lending, KNC and BAL, governance tokens for decentralized exchanges, to SNX which is a stable currency payment network, various governance tokens of the DeFi ecosystem have emerged in an endless stream, stirring the blood in the market.
Such a boom is not only reflected in the currency price, but also pushes the brand new DEX based on the AMM (automated market making) model an overnight hit. UniSwap, known as the next-generation casino, has surpassed the world's first-tier centralized exchanges such as Binance, OKex, and Huobi in user activity, daily trading volume, and daily turnover.
With the rapid rise of UniSwap, the DEX threat theory has once again triggered heated discussions among the media and communities in the blockchain industry.
DEX on the Rise
The success of UniSwap is by no means something accidental. As early as 2018 when centralized exchanges suffered the hacker theft one after another, Vitalik Buterin, founder of Ethereum, predicted that the future lay in decentralized exchanges and that Ethereum, by developing a "better" decentralized platform, could empower the cryptocurrency community to regain the dominance from the centralized cryptocurrency exchange.
To realize the decentralized concept of returning to users their asset ownership, geeks in the blockchain industry have made many attempts.
Kyber Network, Bancor, Balancer, 0X, Curvefi, etc. are all DEXs based on Ethereum blocks. For a long time, affected by the performance of Ethereum and cross-chain issues, these DEXs were once stagnant.
With the lessons learned from Ethereum DEX, newcomers to the DEX have focused on high performance, high TPS, and rich assets as the ultimate goal for product development.
Amid the DEX threat theory, major exchanges have deployed their own public chain DEX products in a response to their respective development strategies: Binance launched Binance DEX on its Binance Chain, and Bittrex Exchange unveiled Ethfinex on the Ethereum and EOSfinex on the EOS blockchain, two platforms where users can exchange for fiat currencies; last year, CoinEx officially launched CoinEx Chain, a public chain dedicated to decentralized transactions, followed by CoinEx DEX.
Since the birth of the DEX in the blockchain world, this field has never run out of competition.
By independent development or other’s advantage?
From 2017 when it was established to 2019 as it stabilized, DEX has witnessed its annual trading volume skyrocketing from less than US$5 million to over US$2.5 billion. As DeFi gains fame and grows rapidly, DEX has grown into the most popular source of money, attracting a flood of speculators. In the past month, the trading volume of the global cryptocurrency market DEX has exceeded US$ 4 billion, more than twice the figure across 2019.
In the past two years, despite the increasingly in-depth exploration in the DEX, the cross-chain issue remains a stumbling block in its development path. DEX will not outperform CEX in the trading experience until a cross-chain solution is worked out.
The concept of DeFi went viral in 2019. With the continuous improvement of the DeFi ecosystem, the current Ethereum blockchain has developed into a complete decentralized financial system, covering mortgage lending, interest from deposit, leveraged trading, token exchange, identity authentication, and other infrastructure essential to traditional financial systems.
In addition to the mouth-watering profit, the DeFi ecosystem has also brought along explosive growth in both the type and quantity of digital assets, making DEX a market favorite. Compared with the DEX dedicated to public chains, the Ethereum-based DEX has been equipped with more possible functions and thus become more attractive thanks to the comprehensive supplementary infrastructure on Ethereum.
This also presents DEX pioneers with new opportunities. Dubbed “Swap’s summer”, the summer of 2020 has seen a market rush in Swap development after UniSwap became a hit.
Miniswap, Justswap, and btswap are no more innovative than UniSwap according to their product structures and white papers.
By comparison, OneSwap has injected unique essence into its product design and governance model based on UniSwap's automated market making.
Upgraded UniSwap
OneSwap, which has a double mining model + order book, has received an investment of tens of millions from CoinEx even before the product is launched. It is known that OneSwap is jointly developed by a group of technology geeks who have engaged in the cryptocurrency community for many years. The project was initiated by a member of the team in an attempt to upgrade UniSwap after he experienced the convenient AMM enabled by UniSwap.
Without limit orders, users have to trade in the price set by the platform, which, however, compromised their experience. In addition, the lack of liquidity mining and transaction mining rewards cannot reduce the losses of liquidity providers caused by unilateral market conditions.
"DEX still has much room for perfection, and could even surpass CEX in trading experience"
The OneSwap development team always believes that UniSwap still has a long way to go before it becomes the strongest DEX in the DeFi ecosystem. They have endeavored to, relying on their abundant experience in exchange product development and digital currency trading, create the most powerful DEX product in the DeFi ecosystem based on smart contracts.
OneSwap is called the “upgraded UniSwap” in the community. By the combination of the Constant Product Market Maker (CPMM) model in the Uniswap project and the on-chain order book, it reduces restrictions on users’ trading, and, through its OneSwap Wallet, improves user interaction methods and further enhances their experience in trading and product usage.
OneSwap boasts one-click token issuance and listing essential to DEX. Unlike the listing review mechanism on Binance DEX, the setting of OneSwap is more consistent with the concept of decentralization. Anyone can put his or her good projects and ideas, if any, into practice through OneSwap without permission.
In terms of product design, OneSwap will add to its function menu the Candlestick chart, order form, and depth chart according to user habits, apart from limit orders. These functions will offer OneSwap users an experience as smooth, easy-to-use, and convenient as in the CEX.
A new source of money? A two-pronged platform with transaction mining + liquidity mining
To support on-chain governance, OneSwap will issue a ERC20 governance token called ONES. The total number of ONES remains constant at 100 million, 50% of which will be used as community funds to support the construction of the OneSwap ecosystem and 50% will be owned by the OneSwap team. Community funds can be applied for through on-chain governance. 5% of the part held by the team will be unlocked initially, and the rest will be unlocked at a rate of 5% every six months until all is unlocked after four and a half years.
After the OneSwap product was launched, the OneSwap team will take part of the initially unlocked tokens as airdrop rewards for the open beta. Then OneSwap will officially start liquidity mining and transaction mining, and the governance token ONES will also be simultaneously launched on centralized trading platforms across the world. The first round of mining activities will last for one month, and mining rewards are yet to be made public.
Liquidity mining is a popular way of obtaining governance tokens in the DeFi ecosystem. Well-known DeFi projects including COMP, Cure, and Banner have all enabled liquid mining.
Transaction mining could date back to 2018 when Fcoin grew popular.
The transaction mining model initiated by Fcoin in 2018 once set off a bull market that year, pushing many investors into financial freedom in the rush of transaction mining. In addition, transaction mining based on the DeFi ecosystem is still a blue ocean, which is not common in the current market. The success of OneSwap's double mining model, if possible, would surely start a craze in the cryptocurrency market.
The OneSwap team has not yet announced specific mining rules, but disclosed that it has developed the smart contract code. To ensure the product security, OneSwap will invite three well-known security agencies in the blockchain industry to audit the code and announce the auditing results in early September at the soonest.
Conclusion
DeFi did not rise to fame without reason in 2020. Such overnight popularity is an inevitable result of Ethereum's efforts to build a decentralized consensus mechanism and improve infrastructure in the past few years. Ethereum has almost become the only public chain in the DeFi circle and the only construction base for well-known DEX. If OneSwap succeeds, it means a huge breakthrough for both DeFi and Ethereum, and decentralization in its true sense is around the corner.

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