Hyperliquid has suffered its largest single-day outflow after security experts said that North Korean hackers were trading on the new layer-1 crypto derivatives platform. 

Metmask security researcher Tay Monahan said in a Dec. 23 X post that Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)-linked hackers had been using the platform from as early as October. 

“Yall, DPRK doesn’t trade. DPRK tests,” Monhan added in a follow-up post.

Source: Tay Monahan

Net outflows from the derivatives platform have topped $256 million in the last 30 hours, according to data from Dune Analytics. 

Outflows from Hyperliquid on Dec. 23 hit an all-time peak of $502.71 million, while inflows reached over $253.5 million.

Net outflows from Hyperliquid have topped $256 million in the last 30 hours. Source: Dune Analytics

Hyperliquid said on its Discord server that it’s “aware of reports circulating regarding activity by supposed DPRK addresses. There has been no DPRK exploit - or any exploit for that matter - of Hyperliquid. All user funds are accounted for.”

North Korean hackers such as the Lazarus Group have stolen $1.3 billion worth of crypto so far this year — doubling their haul from last year in an escalation of dictator Kim Jong Un’s effort to scrape together cash for the nation largely cut off from the world by sanctions.

Monahan further claimed that Hyperliquid’s security and infrastructure are largely centralized, relying on just four validators.

Monahan’s post triggered a broad set of reactions from crypto pundits, with Hyperliquid supporters accusing her of creating unnecessary fear. 

The exchange’s native Hyperliquid (HYPE) token was also hit by the fallout, falling 20% from its all-time high of $35 on Dec. 22, and is currently changing hands for $28, according to TradingView data. 

However, other developers and security researchers supported Monahan’s reputation as a security expert in the crypto industry. 

“You might not like the way Tay communicates, but at least we’re talking now: Kim [Jong Un’s] goons showing up is always at least a two-alarm fire,” wrote Wildcat Labs co-founder Laurence Day.

“I’ve had run-ins with Lazarus before, and you do NOT want them doing anything that looks ‘silly’ because it’s often not,” Day added in a later post. 

There are “two lines of defense” in case of major exploit 

Pseudonymous developer Cygaar said if North Korea were to attack Hyperliquid, there are two lines of defense that could be utilized to stop massive sums of USD Coin (USDC) from being stolen.

Source: Cygaar

USDC issuer Circle could blacklist addresses from moving tokens completely in a bid to freeze the movement of potential threat actors, Cyggar said.

“If they act quickly enough, they can prevent the attacker from trading out of the stolen USDC and effectively freeze the funds. This should allow Circle to return funds back to the HL bridge,” he added. 

Secondly, Cygaar said the Arbitrum Chain — the network Hyperqliuid is built on — could roll back the chain the prevent the loss of funds. However, Day said an Arbitrum rollback was “absolutely not” going to happen unless there was an “existential” threat to the chain. 

Magazine: Comeback 2025 — Is Ethereum poised to catch up with Bitcoin and Solana?

According to BlockBeats, data from Coinglass reveals that the cryptocurrency market witnessed liquidations totaling $36.32 million in the past hour. Of this amount, long positions accounted for $34.60 million.

Decentralized applications (DApps), also known as Web3 applications, tend to be slower than their Web2 counterparts because they have to organize blockchain data from multiple sources.

Maxim Legg, CEO of Pangea — a decentralized data indexing solution — told Cointelegraph that data indexing will fix the speed bottleneck for Web3 applications.

Legg said data from RPC nodes, smart contracts, and other blockchain infrastructure can be hundreds of terabytes on high-throughput chains. Indexing is the process of organizing this raw blockchain data in a way that it can be effectively recalled later. The CEO told Cointelegraph:

"This is not something you want your developers to be dealing with. This is a real infrastructure problem. It can be solved once. It does not need to be solved individually by every single DApp developer."

Unfortunately, many Web3 developers are forced to build in-house indexing solutions, which are inefficient, overly complex, and time-consuming to develop, Legg said.

Graphic illustrating factors that influence blockchain data latency. Source: Pangea

Throughput set to massively increase

The higher the throughput of a blockchain — a figure measured in transactions per second (TPS) — the more onchain data that blockchain will generate that must be indexed by a DApp interacting with that chain.

In October, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin outlined goals to scale the Ethereum base layer and its layer-2 scaling solutions to process over 100,000 transactions per second combined.

The goals outlined by Buterin in the Ethereum roadmap also involved increasing interoperability between Ethereum and its many layer-2 networks.

StarkWare CEO Ben Sasson told Cointelegraph at the DevCon 2024 conference that Starknet — an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution — would 4x its TPS within three months and rival the Solana network’s throughput.

Layer-2 solution ZKsync is also eyeing higher throughput as part of its goals. According to the project roadmap, the developers want ZKsync to increase throughput to 10,000 TPS by 2025 and reduce transaction fees to as low as $0.0001.

Solana’s non-voting throughput is currently in the 800 to 1,050 TPS range. Solana’s high-throughput and monolithic design features have attracted developer attention — ranking it as the top ecosystem for development in 2024.

Magazine: Is measuring blockchain transactions per second (TPS) stupid in 2024? Big Questions

According to Odaily, recent data from Tree News indicates that BlackRock's IBIT experienced a substantial net inflow of $430.7 million yesterday. 

According to Odaily, the United States reported a higher-than-expected core Producer Price Index (PPI) annual rate for November, reaching 3.4%. This figure surpasses the anticipated 3.2% and marks an increase from the previous value of 3.10%. The core PPI monthly rate for November aligned with expectations at 0.2%. However, the prior month's figure was revised from an initial 0.00% to 0.30%.

Ape into gaming ecosystem cryptos not single-player games tokens YGG exec

Crypto traders looking to make smarter bets on gaming tokens should go for ones tied to entire ecosystems, not just individual games, says Yield Guild Games corporate development and finance manager Serge-Raymond Nzabandora. 

These single-player games with token launches, I think, are more likely to be forgotten, right? Compared to the likes of the Ronins of the world and the Immutables of the world, you want to look at ecosystem players, he tells Web3 Gamer.

Ronin Network and Immutable Games are blockchain gaming platforms designed to support developers building games with player-owned economies.

Nzabandora says both are able to sustain these higher market caps by having new content which is original. Immutable (IMX) has a market cap of $3.48 billion, while Ronin (RON) stands at $848.38 million, according to CoinMarketCap data.

Whether Ronins or Axies makes a return or not, it still has Pixels, right, he says.

Pixel is a laid-back adventure game that has become one of the largest Web3 games by daily active user count. In May it crossed 1 million daily active users.

Nzabandora sees the AI memecoin surge as a sign of growing interest in narratives, which could lead to a bigger push for gaming” as a narrative.

He believes the current cycle will play out differently, as the market is a lot smarter than the previous market. That said, funds and attention are now split across a lot of different tokens.

The amount of liquidity, the increase hasnt been commensurate with the increase of tokens, and therefore the mindshares split massively right, he says.

I think those who necessarily pick blindly, without much of a sense of the underlying tokenomicswill see red.

Alliestrasza claims Web2 peers think shes doing something nefarious

Popular Web3 gaming commentator and content creator Alliestrasza made the leap from traditional Web2 gaming content just over a year ago and it still doesnt sit right with her former colleagues.

My peers from Web2 keep thinking that I am doing something nefarious by supporting crypto and blockchain games, she told Web3 Gamer at the recent YGG Play Summit in the Philippines.

The YGG Play Summit in the Philippines. (Alliestrasza)

There have been a lot of scams in the space, so their impression of it isnt great if you dont take the time to look at the projects that are building good stuff, says the 31-year-old gamer from Los Angeles.

Alliestrasza switched because she wanted to be rewarded for all the time and money she invested in gaming.

I have put thousands of dollars [into games] that I can never extract, she told Game7 DAO back in April 2023 to explain making the leap.

Now shes getting rewarded for playing games, unlike her Web2 gamer friends who are basically volunteering to spruik for multibillion-dollar corporations and shes pulling in tons of views on her content, too.

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As an ambassador for the sci-fi card game Parallel, shes built a solid online following with over 113,000 YouTube subscribers, more than 16.5 million views across her videos, and 235,000 Twitch followers, all by making entertaining and educational gaming content.

Alliestrasza prefers making content to competing in gaming tournaments, even though she has competed at a high level.

I do still enjoy competing, and I did it a lot in Hearthstone, but I think that Ive come to the realization that the thing I love most is entertaining and connecting with people, she adds.

You get to be on camera connecting with people, and I think thats honestly more where I shine, she says.

Alliestrasza says that commentating keeps you in the thick of the action the whole time.

Sometimes, when you compete, you can just lose right away, and youre out completely. But if youre the caster and the commentator, you get to sort of be there for the whole experience, she says.

Web3 Gamers have coaches? It is wild, but totally true

Gaming tournaments at conventions are way more intense than you might expect. But the weirdest part for outsiders? The gamers actually have coaches just like a sports team or your wellness-obsessed mate.

At the YGG Play Summit, Web3 gaming coach Muka describes the job as a glorified project manager.

Being a coach doesnt mean you come up with all the ideas, says the former top 200 World of Warcraft player.

Gaming tournaments are a serious business in the Philippines. (Ciaran Lyons)

It also doesnt seem to have a strict training schedule like, say, for the Manchester United Football Club players.

Its not a very formalized structure, he laughs, explaining that its more of an organic process when they train together on the aforementioned sci-fi card game Parallel.

Theres times where were kind of chilling out and stuff; theres no need to hit the gas, but when we hit the gas, you know, its Discord calls going for hours a day, people running in and out, running scrims, playing a bunch of games, talking ideas.

He calls it trial by fire and says when players have a new idea, hed rather they just jump into the game and try it out instead of overthinking it.

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The players are there; they all have their ideas and are experts in what they want to do.

Its all about taking the ideas from a culmination of players and helping them morph those ideas together, creating lineup strategies, letting the expertise of one transfer to the others, he explains.

Muka says that is where the magic happens.

That feeling of playing with other people and coming up with a strategy and trying to pull it off, thats always been the most fun for me, he says.

As for how many hours gaming coaches spend a week training their players before tournaments, Mukas not exactly keen to face that reality.

I cant quantify in hours; it would hurt me if I told you, he laughs.

Other News

The third-person battle royale shooting game Off The Grid early access has launched on XBOX Series X|S in Game Preview.

Blockchain-based gaming metaverse Axie Infinity has launched the Axie Adoption Center; users without an Axie can now receive delegated Axies.

Gaming giant Immutable has introduced Perpetual Rewards, a system that claims to ensure players are rewarded more regularly as opposed to the odd distribution.

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Recently, there’s been a rise in P2P disputes linked to account blocks. Here's how it happened to me and steps you can take to protect yourself.

What Happened?

Buyer Fraud: Some buyers were involved in off-platform transactions or received funds from third parties. They then bought USDT from me and sold it at a higher rate elsewhere.

Account Blocks: Fraudulent activities led to complaints from the original senders of funds. This caused buyers' accounts to be blocked, followed by my account being frozen.

Key Lessons From My Experience

1. Investigation Settlements: In one case, the buyer resolved the issue with the sender, allowing me to receive the funds.

2. Unsettled Disputes: In other cases, buyers failed to resolve disputes, forcing me to return payments for those transactions.

Precautionary Steps to Secure Your Trades

Ask for Proof: Always request proof of funds, including the buyer’s CNIC if payments are made from their account.

Get a Video Statement: Ask buyers for a short video statement confirming the transaction details.

Check Payment Sources: If payments seem suspicious or involve third-party accounts, cancel the trade immediately.

Record Evidence: Keep a video record of the buyer’s transaction history for the past 24 hours.

Stay Safe on Binance P2P

While Binance offers strong merchant protection, always double-check buyers’ authenticity to avoid risks. Secure transactions require vigilance and proper verification.
Trade smart, trade safely!

#BinanceSafety #P2PTips #CryptoAlert