🆓 OpenSea temporarily removes fees

🆓 OpenSea temporarily removes fees 😏 California DFPI launches a crypto scam tracker 🤕 Platypus Protocol's quick thinking and coordinated effort stops a $8m hack

Good morning, frens.

A new week is starting, and you know what they say: new week means new struggles, and well, if you're anything like us, you'll be looking forward to them very much!

Here's what happened in the space during the weekend:

🆓 OpenSea temporarily removes fees 

😏 California DFPI launches a crypto scam tracker 

🤕 Platypus Protocol's quick thinking and coordinated effort stops a $8m hack

OpenSea temporarily removes fees

OpenSea decided to temporarily drop the fees it charges from NFT creators in an effort to answer the Blur marketplace's "challenge". Blur's recent blog post called out OpenSea for charging a fee to list NFTs on its platform and recommended that creators boycott the platform. Now, OpenSea seems to be trying to win back those same creators with a discounted listing fee.

But rather than just dropping the fees to zero percent, OpenSea has also implemented a minimum 0.5% royalty fee for NFT collections that don't employ on-chain enforcement methods, with sellers allowed to pay more if they choose. OpenSea also upgraded their operator filter tool, allowing creators to market their NFTs on other marketplaces with the same policies.

Blur's marketing team might be rubbing their hands in glee, as their first and foremost goal was to assault OpenSea's market share in a bid to gain more traction. And it looks like the move might have worked, at least for now, so OpenSea has to think of a new strategy to get itself out of this pickle. Well, crypto has always been kind of like a soap opera, right? All we can do is wait and see what happens next.

California DFPI launches a crypto scam tracker

The California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation (DFPI) has decided to take a stand against crypto scammers with their new tool, zDFPI, a crypto scam tracker. According to them, this security tool is designed to protect users from fraudulent activity and ensure that no one loses their funds due to any malicious intent.

As it turns out, the DFPI's efforts to protect users were triggered by the many complaints of victims who have been scammed in the past and now they're attempting to make sure no one else falls victim to similar schemes.

Is it going to help? Probably not as you can't know if the coin is scammy before it actually scams someone, but at least they're trying. And if it doesn't help you can go back to using the tools you already know - common sense and being extra vigilant.

Platypus Protocol's quick thinking and coordinated effort stops a $8m hack

Platypus, an automated market maker on AVAX blockchain, almost had its beak knocked off when a hacker made off with an $8.5M flash loan attack on Thursday.

A hacker that apparently goes by "retlqw" used a flash loan from Aave to take advantage of Platypus' code, taking a 44M USDC loan and depositing it into the Platypus pool. From there, they converted their liquidity pool tokens into a huge borrow of USP tokens and managed to make off with a hefty sum. The team noticed this almost immediately and scrambled to contact the AVAX development team and the industry professionals at BlockSec.

A few hours and four lines of code later, the hole had been plugged, the hacker wallet frozen and 2.4M USDC recovered, the team is probably going to fully recover their funds.

It's a lucky break for Platypus but it also serves as a reminder for the devs to start getting their code checked for vulnerabilities. Maybe this 100th hack will finally do the trick.