An attacker recently stole 30,000 EOS tokens from EOS-based gambling site EOSPlay by using an official service operated by Block.one called ‘REX’.
Unsuprisingly, the community was unhappy about this with @Dexaran (who is also the founder of the Callisto Network and the creator of the ERC223 ethereum standard) claiming that all of their contracts on the EOS mainnet had stopped working around the time of the attack, whilst @rektkid_ exclaimed “We’re under attack. Mayday”.
Whilst we have gained some valuable insights over the past couple of weeks: we expect the next two weeks to hold some really big news – such as the first hard fork to EOS (expected September 23, 2019).
Top News
Welcome to the latest bi-weekly news roundup for Block.one’s blockchain network and EOS cryptocurrency.
September 13th
“Operating Correctly” Dan Larimer on $110k EOS-Based Hack
An attacker has reportedly made off with 30,000 EOS tokens from EOS-based gambling site EOSPlay by using an official service operated by Block.one called ‘REX’.
The story originated over on Twitter from an analysis of block transaction history which revealed an exploit in EOSIO (the development infrastructure for the EOS blockchain) that allowed the attacker to win 100% of times in a a dice-roll game.
This was achieved by the attacker filling blocks with their transactions using resources rented through REX, which temorarily stopped other transactions from being completed as the attacker siphoned funds to their own private wallet.
What was suprising, was the response to the situation given by Chief Technical Officer Dan Larimer (@bytemaster7) who said that #EOS was “operating correctly” and compared it to “when attackers flood eth or bitcoin with high fee transaction spam”.
On end, Larimer is effectively insinuating that the fault lies with the victim, EOSPlay; either through fault in their code, or methodology.
“eosplay should lease enough bandwidth to ensure that they can upgrade everything even during congestion.”
Dan Larimer @bytemaster7
The community feedback to this was not positive either, with @cmichello stating that “REX makes it way too affordable to spam the network. I also think it’s an issue”.
REX is an exchange for RAM and CPU resources on the EOS network which attempts to provide a riskless experience to its users, and utilises its own token called T-Rex.
Whilst attacks on gambling services and dapps are uncommon compared to token exchanges and software wallets, it has been recorded to happen and has even happend to another app based on EOSIO last September called EOSBet.
September 9th
Tim Draper Joins MakeSense Board of Directors
MakeSense, the developers of EOS-based messaging dapp Sense.Chat, has welcomed renowned venture capitalist and founder of Draper Associates to its Board of Directors.
Draper has history with the company as he was an early investor (of an undisclosed value) in Sensay, Inc, the parent company of Make.Sense – and has a long history of successful past investments which adds credence to his backing.
These investments include Tesla, Skype, Baidu and Twitch; whilst a great number of blockchain based projects have themselves found success as a result of having been featured on Tim Draper’s reality show ‘Meet The Drapers‘.
Sense.Chat launched on iOS and Android in August 2019, and is described by its makers as being the “first” decentralized chat and video messenger with a digital wallet. Its purpose is to enable EOS account holders (old and new) to send and recieve tokens – as well as allowing them to communicate via private multimedia chat.
Additionally, it employs the ‘Sense.Chat Encryption Protocol’ which “uses advanced cryptography combined with the EOS blockchain to deliver messages so that users will be able to maintain their privacy in an unparalleled, highly secure application.”
Quotes
Tim Draper
“The world is becoming decentralized. I am excited to support this amazing application. Sense.Chat improves human connections by allowing private, seamless messaging and payments.”
Crystal Rose, Founder and CEO (Sense.Chat)
“Sense.Chat is the first messaging system of its kind utilizing blockchain technology for privacy and security. It has the potential for ushering in mass consumer adoption in crypto. As an early supporter of our mission and respected visionary in the space, Draper is an incredible asset for our team’s success.”
John Schenk, CFO (Sense.Chat)
“Tim is among the most respected VCs in Silicon Valley and a major proponent for blockchain technology… We’re delighted to have him on our board.”
September 23rd
Which Cryptocurrency Will Overtake EOS?
A recent Twitter poll conducted by @marketcapone recently people as to which of four potential project they believed had the greatest chance of overtaking the market-cap of EOS.
Despite some misuse of terminology (mistakenly calling the four “sidechains”) the poll garnered responses from 254 participants.
Of the four options: Worbli, Telos, Wax and LynxChain – it was Telos which attained the greatest number of votes by a clear margin, with a 44% majority.
Taking second place was Wax, with 26%; whilst Worbli and LynxChain trailed behind with 21% and 9%, respectively.
EOS is currently the seventh largest cryptocurrency, by market capitalization, currently sitting at $2,613,192,130.
For comparison: the market capitalization of Telos is a tiny fraction of EOS, at $434,905. If it were to even catch up with EOS, the accomplishment would take the team a very long time.
Wax, conversely, has less of a distance to go if it were to match or overtake EOS; however its value is still less than 10% that of EOS – at $22,262,302. Even LynxChain poses more of a challenge than Telos when looking at statistics, with a $1,246,588 market capitalization as of writing (27/09/2019).
Whilst the idea of these projects overtaking EOS may seem farfetched, there are projects available which do pose a tangible challenge. XLM from Stellar Network, for example, currently has a $1.16 billion market-cap; whilst Binance Coin claims $2.37 billion.
