Ava Labs President Opines Subnets Technology Promises an Optimistic Future for Avalanche

Ava Labs president John Wu earlier this month discussed various matters blockchain and the current crypto market in a confab with Real Vision CEO Raoul Pal. During the interview held on September 8 and released on September 16, the FinTech executive gave an optimistic projection for the Avalanche network and its native token.

Views on adoption, macro environment forces, and tokenization vision

Wu observed that three significant factors determine the price of any altcoin: the macro environment, liquidity, and network adoption. He thus based his vision of a bright future on the strengths that Avalanche's adoption and usage have been growing over the past year. He projected that even though macro factors are bearish, they will eventually turn upwards.

Comparing the contest among layer 1 blockchains to search engines in the 90s, the Harvard alums forecasted that most of these chains would ultimately be phased out once the rule of three key elements applies. This, he explained, could be as a result of the severalty of options available to consumers or as an effect of regulation.

Wu further pointed out that Avalanche, as a domain-specific blockchain, is focused on finance which might work to its advantage to survive in such a competitive environment. Through Avalanche's subnets, developers can customize for given purposes without worrying about the consensus layer. The chain's separation of the execution layer (where subnets sit) from the consensus layer has helped Avalanche improve efficiency through horizontal scaling.

The tech investor also touched on non-fungible tokens, specifically exploring the potential of using NFTs for the tokenization of real-life assets. Wu envisions this as the future as it makes it easy to transfer and trade to unlock value. Tokenization also enables small enterprises to carry out securitization through blockchain at lower costs and not as many go-betweens.

To learn more about Avalanche check out our Investing in Avalanche guide.

Avalanche's staking protocol GoGoPool raises $5 million

GoGoPool, a decentralized staking protocol native to the Avalanche blockchain, announced a $5 million raise in seed money at the end of last month. The round saw some major funding figures co-led by venture capital fund Framework Ventures and crypto-focused investment firm CoinFund. Others involved were Flow Traders, Republic Capital, Alpha Crypto, Builder Capital, and Avalaunch.

The official statement detailed that with GoGoPool, Avalanche gains a liquid staking option, in addition to the protocol's benefit of expediting the process of launching subnets on the network. The funds will be directed toward growing the GoGoPool team, enhancing product development ahead of the mainnet launch, and creating new open-source technologies for subnets.

A focus on liquid staking and subnet challenges

On GoGoPool, hardware operators may join the protocol, be paired with liquid stakers' funds, and start validating the Avalanche Primary Network at a fraction of the usual price. In exchange for their staked AVAX, holders receive a wrapped ggAVAX token, gaining access to GoGoPool's community benefits and instant liquidity. Stakers can join the protocol by staking GoGoPool tokens when a subnet has already been launched, giving them access to the validator set.

The unique aspect of this staking pool is the ability of liquid stakers and subnet owners to cooperate and incentivize hardware operators on the protocol. This is crucial in lowering the cost of creating subnets and boosting the effectiveness of validator nodes. In essence, GoGoPool gives the freedom to grow subnets on Avalanche.

Trader exploits GMX DEX for $700K by manipulating Avalanche (AVAX) token

A crafty trader netted about $700,000 in profits from the decentralized exchange GMX by taking advantage of a loophole before developers acted to prevent the situation from worsening. The trader preyed on the platform's trading at zero slippage offering and manipulated the price of the Avalanche (AVAX) token. Genesis Global Trading head of derivatives Joshua Lim confirmed the incident on Sunday.

Lim noted that the trader performed the same sly play five times, injecting millions into market positions ranging from $4 million to $5 million in every attempt. The incident was a tricky one, as pointed out by Lim, as it didn't affect any operational aspects of the exchange. The GMX team shared an update via a tweet, noting that it had set a roof on the open interest for the AVAX coin i.e. $2m long / $1m short.

Ethereum PoW exposed to a smart contract ‘replay attack' on Omni Bridge

In another incident, exploiters made extra ETHW by carrying out replay attacks via the omni bridge of the Gnosis chain last Friday.

Tough start

ETHPoW, a proof of work version of the Ethereum blockchain, suffered a rocky start late last week. Grayscale communicated its intent to possibly sell its ETHPoW tokens at a future date, and as a sign of the expected fork wars, Justin Sun's crypto exchange Poloniex said that EthereumFair (ETF) would be the fork it would be primarily supporting.

ETHPoW was hit by another challenge after smart contract auditing firm BlockSec discovered that attackers were exploiting for ETHW, ETHPoW's native token. BlockSec said that it immediately informed the ETHPoW team of the exploit, which consequently attempted to liaise with Gnosis Chain but to no avail. Eventually, the analytics service resorted to sending out a public alert on Sunday, as more and more attacks were witnessed, heightening the risk level.

The problematic third-party smart contract exposed Ethereum PoW in that the invaders started with porting 200 WETH via Omni Bridge and ‘replayed' the same transaction on the Ethereum PoW network to gain an extra 200 ETHW. These tokens minted out of thin air and now on the PoW chain could then be drained.

It was a contract-level , not chain-level exploit

Ethereum PoW developers clarified on Sunday that the exploit only affected the particular smart contract chain involved, and thus the PoW chain remained intact. The assets collected have, however, since been sold on several crypto exchanges, an act which BlockSec noted could affect the liquidity of ETHW, consequently cautioning investors who intend to engage in trades of the token.

Other security entities, including Certik, confirmed the exploit. The blockchain remained protected by the EIP-155, which it enforced before the hardfork. This EIP contains the ChainID of a transaction, which prevents transactions from being replayed on other chains. BlockSec has warned that some other protocols might possess the same vulnerability. It has also advised special developer attention (Solidity) when dealing with a ChainID to be stored on the smart contract natively, as was in this instance.