Archive for the ‘Smart Contracts’ Category

MakerDAO Uncovered: Revolutionizing Decentralized Lending and … – Block Telegraph

MakerDAO is an open-source project on the Ethereum blockchain and a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) that aims to create a better, smarter, and unbiased global financial system. It has developed a protocol that allows anyone with ETH and a MetaMask wallet to lend themselves money in the form of a stablecoin called DAI, which is pegged to the US dollar and backed by crypto assets as collateral.

MakerDAO also has its own governance token, MKR, which is used by holders to vote on key parameters and risk management of the protocol. It is also one of the pioneers and leaders of the decentralized finance (DeFi) movement, which seeks to provide financial tools and services that do not rely on centralized intermediaries or gatekeepers.

By enabling users to access credit, savings, and stable currency in a transparent, permissionless, and trustless way, MakerDAO hopes to empower individuals and businesses around the world with more financial freedom and opportunities.

In this article, we will explore how MakerDAO works, why it matters, and what challenges and potentials it faces in the rapidly evolving crypto space.

MakerDAO consists of three main components: the smart contract platform, the DAI stablecoin, and the MKR governance token.

The Smart Contract Platform: It manages the creation and liquidation of DAI loans, as well as the collateralization and risk parameters of the system. The platform comprises various types of smart contracts, such as Maker Vaults, Oracles, Liquidators, and the Emergency Shutdown Module.

The DAI Stablecoin: DAI is a decentralized, algorithmic, and collateral-backed stablecoin that aims to maintain a 1:1 peg with the US dollar. Unlike other stablecoins that rely on centralized issuers or fiat reserves, DAI is created and destroyed by users through Maker Vaults. The supply of DAI is determined by market demand and collateral availability.

The MKR Governance Token: MKR is the native token of MakerDAO and the ultimate decision-maker of the protocol. MKR holders have the power and responsibility to vote on various aspects of the system, such as collateral types, Oracles, emergency shutdowns, and upgrades.

MakerDAO is one of the most influential and impactful projects in the DeFi space, as it provides a number of benefits and opportunities for users, borrowers, lenders, and the broader crypto ecosystem.

Users can access credit, savings, and investment opportunities, while borrowers can leverage their existing crypto assets for additional capital. Lenders can earn a stable income from the stability fees paid by DAI borrowers, and the ecosystem benefits from the stability and liquidity provided by MakerDAO.

MakerDAO faces some challenges, including scalability and efficiency issues tied to the Ethereum blockchain, regulatory and compliance risks, and competition from other stablecoin and lending platforms. However, the project has shown remarkable resilience and adaptability, evolving and improving its protocol and governance.

MakerDAO has demonstrated its potential and impact, growing to become one of the largest and most popular DeFi platforms in the crypto space. Despite these challenges, MakerDAO remains a significant project, forging the future of blockchain and finance by creating a better, smarter, and unbiased global financial system.

As MakerDAO continues to grow and evolve, it is likely to introduce new features and innovations to further strengthen its position in the DeFi landscape. Some potential developments may include:

Layer 2 Scaling Solutions: MakerDAO could explore the implementation of Layer 2 scaling solutions to increase transaction throughput, reduce network congestion, and lower gas fees. This would make the platform more accessible and user-friendly for a broader range of users.

Additional Collateral Types: As the crypto ecosystem continues to expand, MakerDAO could support a wider range of collateral types to back DAI, including non-fungible tokens (NFTs), tokenized real-world assets, and other digital assets. This would improve the platforms flexibility, enabling users to access new borrowing and lending opportunities.

Cross-chain Compatibility: MakerDAO could further develop its cross-chain compatibility to enable seamless integration with other blockchain networks. This would allow users to interact with the platform across different ecosystems, creating a more interconnected and efficient DeFi landscape.

Improved Governance Mechanisms: MakerDAOs governance model could be enhanced with the implementation of additional features, such as quadratic voting, delegation, or liquid democracy. These improvements would make the governance process more effective and inclusive, ensuring that the interests of the community are well represented.

Integration with Traditional Financial Systems: MakerDAO could explore partnerships and collaborations with traditional financial institutions to bridge the gap between the crypto and traditional financial worlds. This would allow users to access a wider range of services, such as fiat on/off ramps, loans, and investment products.

MakerDAO has been a major driving force in the DeFi revolution, providing users with a decentralized and trustless platform for credit, savings, and stable currency. Despite the challenges it faces, MakerDAO remains a key player in the DeFi space, continually innovating and adapting to the rapidly evolving crypto landscape.

As the project continues to grow and develop, it is expected to introduce new features and improvements, further solidifying its position as a pioneer and leader in decentralized finance.

This article first appeared on Grit Daily.

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MakerDAO Uncovered: Revolutionizing Decentralized Lending and ... - Block Telegraph

Stuck in the past: Why and how construction needs to change – BIC Magazine

Owners often believe their projects cost too much.

Contractors often believe that theyre not making any money. What does it say about the construction industry when both parties are right? Owners, contractors, suppliers, bankers and insurers all want essentially the same thing. They want predictability of ROI, capital efficiency, sustainable operations, fair and reasonable profit, minimized risk and timely payments.

Project owners have fewer people to achieve greater efficiency by delivering projects faster and cheaper. They must own decisions they make. If the owners push everything onto contractors, then they are delegating the fate of project outcomes to them. Meanwhile, contractors struggle with cash flow, facing an average 75-day delay between invoice and payment. As a result, they have to borrow money, usually at steeper rates than owners might otherwise borrow. Contractors are not banks theyre builders. So why do we treat the construction supply chain as a bank?

We are in a race to the bottom with onerous, lopsided contracts built on suspicion and designed to protect positions. The supply chain hierarchy adds layers of protectionist money and mark-ups. For example, in the U.K., contractors are reportedly loading bids by up to 5% to account for uncertainty around payment timing. Meanwhile, multiple parties insure the same risk because the fragmented supply chain renders invisible the true insurance coverage inefficiently applied throughout the complex hierarchy. Is it any surprise that the average contract bidding process is around nine months, and the average project is 300% over-insured?

Complexity isnt the problem; managing it is. Our industry is still largely thinking in 20th century terms. Its time for urgent change in the form of punctuated evolution. Smart Contracts (SCs) have already been adopted and proven by the O&G industry, demonstrating 10% to 30% in cost savings for each party in the contract. SCs are essentially computer programs designed to automate the performance of the plain language contract, linked legally and irrevocably to it through an addendum.

Bank accounts are securely connected to SCs so payments can be made immediately when the services are completed, dramatically accelerating cash flow. SCs enable net one-day payment terms. Thanks to distributed ledger technology, all SC parties simultaneously have full transactional transparency, seeing the same information at the same time. Details are changed only by the agreement of all parties. It is a self-policing system, cross-checked between all computers and immutable on just one system: its a single source of shared and collaborative truth.

SCs eradicate human error and replace onerous, time-consuming tasks like compiling monthly invoices, reducing back-office costs and allowing deployment of people to higher-value tasks. All transactions are recorded and visible to all approved parties in real-time, resulting in a full project history at the end of the job everything designed, bought, fabricated, tested, installed and commissioned.

In short, SCs drive out transactional waste and numerous inefficiencies, providing immediate value for capital projects by automating critical processes.

For more information, visit agpglobal.com or call (713) 481-4613.

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Stuck in the past: Why and how construction needs to change - BIC Magazine

Liquid staking solutions now have more TVL than DEXs: DefiLlama – Cointelegraph

Liquid staking solutions such as Lido and Rocket Pool now have more total value locked (TVL) than decentralized exchanges (DEXs), making them the top category of DeFi protocols, according to data from crypto analytics platform DefiLlama.

TVL is a metric that measures the dollar value of all cryptocurrencies locked within a protocols smart contracts.

Liquid staking protocols have just recently taken the top spot. On April 13, there was only $17.19 billion of crypto locked in liquid staking contracts, compared to $18.89 billion in DEXs, according to archived information. However, DEXs have experienced a $1.66 billion decline to $17.2 billion, while liquid staking solutions have experienced a $280 million increase to $17.47 billion, giving them the top spot.

Related: Podcaster apologizes for spreading Lido rumor

Liquid staking protocols are staking pools that stake crypto on behalf of users. These protocols also issue tokens to users that represent the person's deposited crypto. Because these tokens can be used in DeFi apps, liquid staking protocols allow users to both simultaneously stake their coins and use them in other applications.

According to DefiLlamas May 1 data, Lido (stETH) is still the top staking protocol with $11.54 billion of cryptocurrency locked inside its contracts. Coinbase Wrapped Staked Ether (CBETH) is a distant second with $2.19 billion locked, and Rocket Pool (rETH) is third with $1.46 billion. The remaining protocols have less than $1 billion of TVL each but add up to $2.22 billion collectively.

Lido was the first liquid staking protocol, and it launched in 2020. Liquid staking has become more popular as Ethereummoved to proof-of-stake and allowed withdrawals.

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Liquid staking solutions now have more TVL than DEXs: DefiLlama - Cointelegraph

Cardano Makes Groundbreaking Move, Deploys on Ethereum … – Crypto News Flash

DJED Alliance announces the third deployment of the Djed stablecoin protocol as it makes a groundbreaking presence on the EVM-compatible sidechain of Cardano, the Milkomeda-C1. According to the report, this is the first deployment of the main programming language for writing smart contracts for the Ethereum blockchain, Solidity. The project seeks to expand to several other EVM-compatible blockchains, and this is said to be a huge step.

Since going live in January 2023, DJED stablecoin has grown extensively. The team has also announced that they will soon launch a new game called Dead Pxlz, a non-fungible token(NFT) project, on the Cardano ecosystem. Paima Studios has disclosed in a tweet that Dead Pxlz is using the Paima engine.

The Milkomeda C1 was launched in March 2022 and enables the deployment of Ethereum dApps in the Cardano network. In a blog post, DJED Alliance explained that the DJED stablecoins are backed by crypto, and will not be exposed to risks faced by entities managing fiat currency reserves. In addition, DJED stablecoin is said to be formally verified.

This means that mathematical theorems have been proven, clearly showing under which assumptions the stablecoins remain pegged, and the proofs have been checked using the interactive theorem prover Isabelle and the bounded model checker Lustre.

The deployment on Milkomeda-C1 is said to be based on version O (Osiris) of the protocol. Osiris enables reserve coins and stablecoins to be sold back to the DJED contract simultaneously, and independently of the reserve ratio. This particular deployment is said to be the first that is fully autonomous. The rules or the parameters of the deployment cannot be changed by anyone. The implementation is said to come from the collaboration between Vacuum Labs, Bloxico, AOSSIE, dcSpark, and Milkomeda.

The Djed Alliance is proud of our collective achievement of this significant milestone in our mission to bring reliable stability to the cryptocurrency industry. We wish success to this deployment on Milkomeda-C1 and we look forward to continuing our support for the Djed stablecoin protocol and its implementations on multiple blockchains.

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The Cardano team has also published its weekly report which discloses that there has been a major update in its wallet and services, Basho, smart contracts, etc. The Daedalus team is reported to have removed Catalyst fund information from the wallet due to issues with API. The Hydra team is also fixing the state machine continuity on-chain, and also improving the API reference navigation through the addition of a sidebar.

In Project Catalyst, several teams reportedly presented their projects to the community.

The Mithril team also announced an important update:

This week, the Mithril team continued implementing the new certifier service of the aggregator, which is in charge of producing certificates for multi-signatures. They also started implementing the interfaces defined to provide certification of a new type of data applied to the Mithril stake distribution and the fully immutable Cardano files snapshot.

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Cardano (ADA) is currently trading at $0.390776 after surging by 1.2 percent in the last seven days.

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An Interoperable Web 3.0 Without Proper Security Is a Disaster Waiting To Happen – The Daily Hodl

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Interoperability is crucial for the development of Web 3.0 technologies and the wider crypto ecosystem.

Without interoperability, users are limited to using a single blockchain, preventing them from connecting with other networks and taking advantage of the various benefits that come with a more open and interconnected system.

However, Web 3.0 is only as secure as the systems that support it, and without proper security, a permissionless and trustless future is a disaster waiting to happen.

The bridge the most dangerous place in crypto

A bridge is by nature a continuation of a blockchain, and as such, it should fully satisfy the core requirements of blockchain being trustless, decentralized and secure.

This concept became known as the interoperability trilemma, and it requires bridges to be trustless, extensible and agnostic (able to transfer any type of data supported by chains).

The nature of cross-chain transacting creates more points of failure, and therefore, higher security risks compared to interacting within a single network.

While security issues are not fully solved within individual networks, bridges present extra challenges.

Regardless of how the specific bridge is designed, the funds have to be locked up in a smart contract or with a centralized custodian, which in turn becomes a honey pot for black-hat hackers.

Smart contracts that execute across multiple blockchains are more complex, making them susceptible to errors and malicious attacks.

In fact, cross-chain bridges are the victim of 50% of DeFi exploits. In the last two years, approximately $2.5 billion has been stolen by hackers by exploiting their unique vulnerabilities.

Breaches happened with some of the most well-known ecosystems Poly Network (a Polygon cross-chain protocol), Ronin (the home of Axie Infinity) and Horizon (the Harmony protocol bridge), among others.

The Wormhole Bridge exploit was the second biggest attack after the Ronin exploit. The hacker made off with roughly $320 million after finding flaw in the smart contract code of this bridge between Ethereum and Solana that allowed them to mint 120,000 Wrapped Ethereum on Solana without putting up the necessary equivalent Ethereum collateral.

The Nomad exploit was made possible by a misconfiguration of the smart contract that allowed anyone with a basic understanding of the code to authorize withdrawals for themselves, which people did.

This led to what was described as the first decentralized crowd-looting of a nine-figure bridge in history. Of the $200 million stolen, more than $32 million has been recovered from the amateur white-hat hackers.

A secure wallet is the first step to a secure bridge

While there is work to be done in the area of bridge design, implementing an improved wallet design could offer added security.

Traditional crypto wallets are often vulnerable because they rely on a single private key for controlling funds.

For example, the Ronin hack was made possible through an elaborate phishing scheme involving fake LinkedIn job offers, which led to bad actors acquiring access to five of the nine private keys held by transaction validators for Ronin Networks bridge.

MPC (multi-party computation) wallets arent tied to a single private key. They split private key shares across different locations, such as a server and a users device.

Digital signatures coming from a wallet are computed in a distributed manner. The private key is never fully reconstructed and thus cannot be exposed.

Another wallet-related technological advancement is account abstraction, which in the most basic terms allows Ethereum wallets to act as smart contracts.

The recently implemented ERC-4337 update to the Ethereum network enables a social recovery system where designated third parties can restore access to your wallet if you lose your private keys.

The update also allows the use of 2FA (two-factor authentication) and even biometrics for the protection of wallets, making them much more secure and user-friendly.

When blockchains talk to each other

The evolution of blockchain toward interoperability is sometimes likened to globalization. Imagine blockchains talking to each other freely, being able to mint an NFT on Ethereum from Solana, or get loan from a DApp on Avalanche from Arbitrum.

When it becomes safe for users and builders to cross the boundaries of individual blockchains, it will unlock a whole new level of blockchain commerce and development.

Sebastian Higgs is the chief strategy officer at Fraction, creation of MPCH Labs, where he offers entrepreneurship strategy and execution. Before joining Fraction, Sebastian was the general manager of Vo1t and then transitioned to vice president of custody at Genesis after Vo1t was acquired by Genesis Global Trading.

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An Interoperable Web 3.0 Without Proper Security Is a Disaster Waiting To Happen - The Daily Hodl