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Welcome to Issue 18 of The Quest Digest, where we break down Silicon Valley news for you every week, in 3 minutes.
How Axie Infinity was hacked of $540 million
Axie Infinity lost $540 million in crypto in a hack in March this year. The cause of the hack is revealed to have begun with a fake job offer.
A senior engineer at Axie Infinity was duped into applying for a job at a company that did not exist. After being offered a lucrative compensation package, and downloaded the “offer” PDF, it allowed spyware to infiltrate Ronin’s system. From there, hackers were able to take over 4 out of 9 validators on the Ronin network and then secured the final validator short of total control by gaining a signature from the Axie DAO validator.
Our Take
The rate of DeFi hacks has accelerated rapidly, topping $2 billion in funds lost this year. Axie Infinity offers a case study to the need for greater security and increasing the number of validator nodes in the network.
While Sky Mavis has raised $150 million in a round led by Binance in early April to help reimburse users affected by the hack, the event has definitely affected sentiments in the P2E and crypto gaming space.
Reddit launches NFT based marketplace
Reddit is launching an NFT-based avatar marketplace that allows you to buy blockchain-based profile pictures at a fixed rate without the need of a crypto wallet. The platform plans to release 90 designs with the total number of NFTs for sale in early-access being “tens of thousands”.
By purchasing a limited-edition NFT, users will have licensing rights to use it on and off of Reddit as avatars and you will be able to mix and match your avatar’s pappearence in the avatar builder.
Our Take
This isn’t Reddit’s first foray into NFTs and crypto. The company has launched NFT verified profile pictures and states “in the future we see blockchain as one way to bring more empowerment and independence to communities on Reddit… [and] we are exploring tools to help them be even more self-sustaining and self-governed”
So we know there’s more to come in integrating with web3.
Elon could be bailing on his own Twitter deal
The Washington Post has reported that Elon Musk’s $44 billion deal to buyout Twitter is in jeopardy with the billionaire having stopped engaging in certain discussions around funding for the agreement.
The change of course can be linked to concerns that Twitter’s data on spam and bots on the platform is not verifiable on the platform and Elon tweeting the deal was “on hold”. On Twitter’s end of things they claim it’s impossible to externally verify their user count as it requires access to private data and information, which cannot be shared safely.
Our Take
We’ve yet to hear any clear signs from Elon on the status of the deal. If the deal ends up being retracted that would mean Elon would owe Twitter $1 billion, as laid out in their original agreement.
🔥 Press Worthy
Binance US hires ex-Acorns and PayPal exec, Jasmine Lee as CFO
Twitter lays off 30% of it’s talent acquisition team
Klarna is raising at a $6.5B valuation, 1/7 of it’s last valuation
Rivian says to be on track to deliver 25,000 EVs this year
Sequoia Capital is raising 2 new US focused funds valued up to $2.25 billion
Reddit acquires NLP company MeaningCloud
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The Quest Digest is written by Hannah Ahn and edited by Brent Liang, two dropouts who hate long tech newsletters. You can sign up to our next issue below.