Mon April 17

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In news today; India to Host Major Security Conference Focused on Int'l Crime in Age of NFT, AI, Metaverse, U.S. House Releases A Draft Of Stablecoin Bill and Hundred Finance Hacked On Optimism, Reddit Is Back With New NFT Collection

🕵️ India to Host Major Security Conference Focused on Int'l Crime in the Age of NFT, AI, Metaverse: The Ministry of Home Affairs is preparing to hold a conference on international crime and security in the context of NFTs, artificial intelligence, and the Metaverse. All G20 countries are expected to participate in this conference, happening in the second week of July in Delhi. The conference will feature delegations from 20 countries, global organisations working to combat different types of crime, tech giants, and high-level officials such as DGPs and chief secretaries from states. The conference will be chaired by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on the first day. The event will include brainstorming sessions on various topics, including the link between NFTs and money laundering, which has raised concerns in many countries regarding their use in terrorist financing. Additionally, discussions will be held on the use of AI in detecting crime and security breaches.

📖 U.S. House Releases A Draft Of Stablecoin Bill: The House Financial Services Committee in the US has released a preliminary version of a potentially significant bill on stablecoins, which proposes a pause on stablecoins that are supported by other cryptocurrencies and a call for research into a central bank digital currency (CBDC). The bill is the first major crypto legislation to advance in 2023. The legislation introduces new definitions for issuers of payment stablecoins, using a term similar to one coined by former Senator Pat Toomey in his 2022 stablecoin bill. The pause on stablecoins like UST would persist until a study is conducted. The bill also requires an examination of the potential impact of a CBDC released by the Federal Reserve.

💻 Hundred Finance Hacked On Optimism: Hundred Finance, a DeFi lending protocol that employs the veHND model across multiple blockchains and integrates with Chainlink oracles for market stability, has suffered a major security breach on the Optimism layer-2 scaling solution. On April 15, the protocol reported via its official Twitter account that it had been hacked, resulting in a loss estimated at $7 million. The company has reached out to the hackers and is consulting with several security teams to gain a better understanding of the situation. According to CertiK, the attacker targeted Hundred Finance by exploiting the exchange rate between ERC-20 tokens and htokens, allowing them to withdraw more tokens than they had initially deposited.

🧳 Reddit Is Back With New NFT Collection: Reddit has launched its 3rd gen NFT collection, which involved more than 100 artists in creating new avatar tokens featuring the platform's logo character, "Snoo." All of Reddit's NFT releases have been highly sought-after, with over 7.4 million unique wallets purchasing the collectible avatars to date, according to Dune. The collection was so popular that it temporarily crashed the site when it was launched on Reddit's NFT marketplace.

What Are Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN)?: Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks (DePIN) is the new name for blockchain networks that use tokens to incentivise communities to build physical infrastructure networks/dApps (think charging, telecoms, etc.) from the ground up. The sector has been around for years, but the consensus around a name has ignited a unified understanding that this is Web3’s time to shine — in the real world. This blog explores all you need to know to make sense of crypto’s most exciting sector.