The Chicago Journal

Last week’s cross-chain bridge hack leads Binance to burn tokens

Nicholas Alexander Nicholas Alexander on November 7, 2022

Binance recently finished its 21st quarterly burning of BNB tokens to offset losses from the hacking of Binance Bridge last week.

BNB burn

BNB is BNB Chain (formerly called Binance Smart Chain) native cryptocurrency token.

It is the company’s competing token with rival cryptocurrency Ethereum.

Burning is a Binance process of permanently removing tokens from cryptocurrency inventory.

It is generally used as a measure against inflation.

Binance Burn burned exactly 2,064,152.42 BNB from the market.

The tokens were worth over $549 million at current prices when they were burned.

The hack

Last week, a hacker exploited the BNB chain bridge and managed to get over 2,000,000 BNB using artificial withdrawals.

At the time, the stolen BNB had a net worth of around $566 million.

After the theft, most of the coins were lost when the BSC chain validators froze the network.

Since then, the network has had a hard fork in undoing some of the damage.

A hard fork is a patch release that is said to be “temporary” to enable cross-chain functionality between BNB Beacon Chain and Binance Smart Chain.

However, the hacker managed to transfer over $100 million in cash to other channels.

After the hack

Despite the hack, no Binance user lost any funds in the theft.

Instead, it resulted in a rule prohibiting the minting of new coins for BNB, which was intended as a deflationary sign.

Binance’s quarterly BNB buybacks led the action.

This has also been achieved with an on-chain feature that burns some of the BNB transaction costs in real-time.

Quarterly burns

Previously, the quarterly burns were based on Binance’s profits from BNB’s operations on the Binance trading platform.

From there, Binance has moved to a formal “auto-burn” model.

The formula calculates the amount of BNB to burn based on the number of chain blocks of BNB available during the quarter, along with the price of BNB.

In general, the higher the price of the coin at that time, the more BNBs will be burned each quarter.

The company’s fire in July burned 1.96 million tokens, for a total of $ 444.6 million that month.

Other notes

Binance is also helping to burn Luna Classic Tokens (LUNC) using the same approach as the latest quarterly burning model.

The burn takes a fee from the LUNC tokens to redeem the token from the market.

Periodic Binance burning will only stop when the BNB supply reaches less than 100,000,000 tokens, which is less than 50% of token supply since the initial launch.

Reference:

Binance burns as many BNB tokens as hacker minted from thin air

Crypto report: Binance loses $570 million in a heist after hackers target cross-chain bridge

Claire Peterson Claire Peterson on October 10, 2022

Theft has become a recurring problem in the crypto and NFT space, and Binance has become the latest victim of a significant robbery.

The report

On Friday, a Binance spokesperson revealed that a Binance-linked blockchain was involved in a $570 million hack last Thursday.

On Thursday, the cryptocurrency exchange platform tweeted that Binance had temporarily suspended BNB Smart Chain, its blockchain network.

The company claimed that the action was the result of irregular activity.

On Friday, Binance released a statement claiming that hackers stole two million BNB cryptocurrency tokens, which were worth $ 570 million at the time.

Changpeng Zhao, the CEO of Binance, initially tweeted that about $100 million worth of cryptocurrencies had been stolen.

On Thursday, he tweeted:

“Your funds are safe. We apologize for the inconvenience.”

According to Binance, tokens worth $100 million remain “unrecovered” and have been removed from the chain by the hacker.

At the moment, the remaining funds of the BNB chain are being frozen.

The hack

The big heist was carried out when the hackers targeted what is known in the crypto space as a cross-chain bridge.

Recently, bridges have become the target of most hackers.

Bridges are the infrastructure that allows users to exchange crypto assets on different blockchains.

Their services usually hold large reserves of various coins.

This puts coin reserves at the center of the hackers’ radar.

According to blockchain analytics firm Elliptic, coin reserves have made blockchain bridges prime targets for theft.

Theft

Elliptic reports that about $1.83 billion was stolen from bridges in August, with the majority ($1.21 billion) in 2022.

Binance was not alone as others experienced major thefts in 2022.

Other losses include $190 million stolen from cryptocurrency bridge provider Nomad in August.

In June, California-based Harmony announced a loss of $100 million at the end of June.

Axie Infinity’s Ronin Bridge lost $625 million in March.

Effects of the Binance hack

The latest hack caused the BNB blockchain to go offline for about nine hours.

BNB made a corporate post saying that the chain’s ecosystem contacted the chain’s validators to prevent the incident from spreading further.

Chain validators are people who verify that transactions on the blockchain are legitimate.

According to a tweet from the company, the channel went back online around 2:30 a.m. ET.

Reference:

Binance-linked blockchain hit by $570 million crypto theft

Changpeng Zhao recruits Max Baucus to be Chair of Binance’s Global Advisory Board

Nicholas Alexander Nicholas Alexander on September 28, 2022

 

Crypto exchange Binance has made changes to its business, and now former US senator Max Baucus is joining its Global Advisory Board.

The Board

The cryptocurrency exchange platform has announced the creation of a new Global Advisory Board.

The Board is a strategic council of experts who share their knowledge of regulatory, political, and social issues in the cryptocurrency industry.

Max Braucus, a former US senator and ambassador to China, will assume the role of prime minister.

The rest of the board is made up of experts from a variety of fields, including economics, finance, corporate governance, government and public policy.

David Plouffe, former campaign manager and senior adviser to former President Obama, is also joining the Global Advisory Board.

For the digital economy, they will be joined by former UK culture secretary Lord Vaizy and former French treasury chief Bruno Bezard.

Several experts sit on the board, including representatives from Brazil, Germany, Mexico, Nigeria, South Africa, and South Korea.

The formation of the Board

Binance CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao said the Board was formed due to the rapid development of blockchain technology, cryptocurrencies, and Web3.

“It’s vital Binance draws on its knowledge, diverse experiences, and backgrounds to help us properly and successfully navigate such a dynamic industry,” he elaborated.

“Both I and Binance as an entity see an inflection point for mass crypto adoption rapidly approaching.”

“With this change clearly on the horizon, Binance’s role as an industry leader needs to be honed and managed with increasing expertise and experience,” Zhao added.

According to the Binance CEO, it is impossible for one person to cover all the areas that require thoughtful and enlightened decisions at a crucial time.

“Binance will benefit greatly from input from people with experience across governments and industries, important and strategic relationships, and subject matter expertise.”

Binance and regulatory issues

Binance is no stranger to regulatory battles in various districts.

This year, however, it was registered as an official digital supplier in Bahrain, France, and Italy.

It also relies on Pro-Crypto regulators to extend its operations around the world.

In July, Binance was fined $ 3.3 million by De Nederlandsche Bank for launching its services in the Netherlands without proper authorization.

“Of all the technologies with the potential to create positive disruption, the world of crypto, blockchain, and Web3 is among the most exciting and the most promising,” said Baucus in a statement.

“That’s why it is a great pleasure to participate in setting up the Binance Global Advisory Board and bringing the group’s unrivaled collective expertise to bear in solving complex problems with a socially positive outcome.”

At this week’s Mainnet conference in New York, Zhao suggested governments create a new category exclusively for blockchain-based assets.

He simply defined the resource as a new data transfer technology and a distinct new class of resources.

Reference:

Binance taps former Obama advisor for new Global Advisory Board