5 Things You Need To Know About The Crypto Market This Week

【TL; DR】
With 2023 now in full swing, the cryptocurrency market appears to have hauled itself out of the decimating bear market that tainted 2022, with the top 100 being painted in green over the past week. However, in spite of this week being positive in terms of price growth and recovery, there has been a plethora of legal, institutional, and operational news that has emerged providing both bullish and bearish sentiments for the imminent future of the blockchain world. To make it easier for you to digest, we’re here to break down the top five news stories that will influence the coming week in terms of crypto-related discussion, valuation, and overall investor sentiment.

Ripple CEO Optimistic About Future Of Crypto Regulation

The Ripple vs SEC lawsuit has shaken the blockchain world to its core for the last 18 months, with a lack of certainty surrounding the potential verdict weighing heavy over the market. However, in spite of the negative traction caused by the trial, Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse, has stated that he is optimistic that 2023 could hold a ‘breakthrough’ for crypto regulation.

Acknowledging that the push to regulate digital assets has support from both Republicans and Democrats in the House of Representatives and the Senate, Garlinghouse is eager to see how these governing bodies will unite to expand on previously established digital asset laws to accommodate for the ever-evolving world of crypto.

Garlinghouse has also acknowledged that bills on crypto regulation may not ‘get the nod of everyone’, but that they serve as a starting point for debate and can spark international discussions regarding the proper practice for cryptocurrency regulation.

Polkadot Parachain Vulnerabilities Highlighted

Having become renowned across the blockchain space for their variety of experimental parachains, Polkadot has long remained a figurehead of innovation and creativity within the blockchain development world. However, a security researcher recently uncovered a potential security vulnerability in Polkadot’s series of parachains that could have led to the theft of up to $200 million from three of its Ethereum-compatible parachains, These were Moonbeam, Astar Network, and Acala.

Found in June, the vulnerability was located in ‘Frontier’, a software used to wrap native tokens on the three parachains. Fortunately, the three respective parachain teams have worked to resolve the issue, releasing emergency patches to mitigate the risk of any malicious actors exploiting the vulnerability. This, fortunately, meant that no funds were lost and as a result, the critical bug finder, Pwning.eth, was rewarded with a $1 million bounty through Immunefi and a further $250,000 courtesy of Parity. Pwning.eth has a penchant for locating critical bugs, many of which have led them to receive substantial bounties historically for their contributions to securing blockchain networks.

DOJ Officially Seizes Robinhood Shares Linked To SBF

As the investigation into Sam Bankman-Fried’s involvement with the FTX collapse ensues, the past week has revealed that SBF had over $456,000,000 worth of Robinhood shares tied to him via the Alameda hedge fund. With it being reported that these shares were purchased by loans taken from the Alameda fund, an array of individuals involved with FTX, including SBF, attempted to take control of the funds, with SBF’s legal team advising that the funds be frozen and held whilst legal proceedings ensue.

However, the US Department of Justice ignored the please from SBF’s team and the battle to obtain the funds from FTX figureheads and have instead seized the 55,273,469 Robinhood shares, as well as $20,746,713.67 held in an account at ED&F Man Capital Markets Inc. These seized assets are reported to constitute property involved in the violations of money laundering and wire fraud criminal statutes and are allegedly not properties of the bankruptcy estate.

Solana Network’s Public RPCs Go Offline

On the evening of January 8th, the Solana Foundation’s RPC endpoints went offline due to a atic bug in the Validator client’s test release 1.14. Within the Solana network, RPC endpoints are the nodes that interconnect decentralised applications or wallets to the wider blockchain, ultimately facilitating the interaction between the two. However, in spite of this vast atic fault, the Solana Status page has reported that the bug only impacted nodes run by the foundation, meaning that private node providers remained unaffected in light of the incident.

As well as private RPC node providers being safe from the bug, the Head of Strategy & Communications at Solana Foundation, Austin Federa, also confirmed that despite the bug, the remainder of the network remained operational and performing at ‘optimal standards’. However, having experienced 14 outages in 2022 alone, totalling 4 days, 12 hours, and 21 minutes of total downtime, this could signal that 2023 will follow a similar suit.

Shanghai Upgrade Testnet Anticipated For February

As one of the most eagerly anticipated upgrades across blockchain this year, Ethereum’s Shanghai Upgrade is anticipated to be unveiled in March of this year, however, developers have reported that February will be the month that hosts its testnet. By the end of February, it is anticipated that Ethereum developers will deploy a public testnet ahead of the Shanghai Upgrade to help streamline the mainnet deployment process and ensure the current scheduling of March 2023 remains accurate.

The Shanghai Upgrade is set to focus on facilitating the withdrawal of Ethereum staked on the network, thus allowing those who have staked their Ether to secure the network, validate nodes, and provide liquidity to withdraw both their initial stake as well as their accrued rewards.