Daily Archives: July 27, 2022

PRESS RELEASE. Pocket Network, a decentralized Web3 infrastructure provider that services blockchain data requests for applications and developers, is implementing key protocol changes after its community DAO voters rallied to boost network efficiency and bring costs down. As of late June, the Pocket DAO has passed two proposals with significant impacts on the incentive structure for nodes participating in Pocket Network’s protocol.

Pocket’s protocol is serving approximately 1 billion RPC requests every day, and is on course towards a goal of supporting 100 blockchains before year-end. At the same time, as Pocket Network has seen explosive growth in the number of active nodes on the network (all the way up to almost 50,000 nodes in May of this year), infrastructure costs of the protocol have risen as well.

Thanks to some of the highest levels of engagement out of any past proposals in the Pocket DAO, voters and commenters took on this economic challenge on two separate fronts: by implementing stake-weighted servicer node rewards, and by increasing validator node rewards by a factor of five.

The evolution of these two proposals was a case study in effective DAO governance, and included amendments to original proposals, discussions of exact parameters, economic modeling and forecasting, lively debate on alternatives, and even a discussion of the constitutionality of DAO proposals. Over the course of multiple weeks of active community debate and in-depth economic analysis, insights were pooled from a variety of perspectives and common ground was found. This significant accomplishment further solidifies the Pocket Network community’s intrinsic belief in the project, and their sharing of the same strong, long-term values.

As Pocket Network CEO Michael O’Rourke notes, “This week we’ve had a couple of the most impactful proposals to be passed by the Pocket DAO in our short two-year history. It is a meaningful shift in how everyone needs to think about node running, and is part of the evolution into a more efficient network moving into V1 of Pocket Network.”

For more on each of these key decisions, and how they will bring optimized cost-efficiency for the network, see the full discussions of PIP-22 and PUP-19 in the Pocket Network Forum.

About Pocket Network

Pocket Network, a blockchain data ecosystem for Web3 applications, is a platform built for applications that uses cost-efficient economics to coordinate and distribute data at scale. It enables seamless and secure interactions between blockchains and across applications. With Pocket, the use of blockchains can be simply integrated into websites, mobile apps, IoT and more, giving developers the freedom to put blockchain enabled applications into the “pocket” of every mainstream consumer. For more information visit pokt.network.

 

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This is a press release. Readers should do their own due diligence before taking any actions related to the promoted company or any of its affiliates or services. Bitcoin.com is not responsible, directly or indirectly, for any damage or loss caused or alleged to be caused by or in connection with the use of or reliance on any content, goods or services mentioned in the press release.

Image Credits: Shutterstock, Pixabay, Wiki Commons

Tl;dr: Search engine phishing exploits the trust we have in search engines and the convenience of searching for something rather than remembering the domain. The following piece outlines what search engine phishing attacks may look like and how Coinbase users can avoid them.

By Coinbase Security Team

How do you log in to Coinbase? If you’re like many people, you open your preferred browser and type “Coinbase” or “Coinbase login” in the address bar. You expect to get results like this:

But sometimes you may get results like this:

The second set of screenshots show an example of phishing links. This is called search engine phishing and it has become a trend for attackers targeting Coinbase accounts.

When most people think of phishing, email or SMS phishing comes to mind. However, phishing can take many forms. Search engine phishing exploits the trust we have in search engines and the convenience of searching for something rather than remembering the domain.

We all do it, but this opens us up to potential search engine phishing attacks if we are not diligent about checking our links and protecting ourselves online. Here are some tips to prevent this from happening to you:

Coinbase uses a uniform naming convention for our websites and pages. The convention follows this pattern: [page].coinbase.com. For example, here are some of our pages:

One way to avoid this type of scam is to bookmark the above Coinbase pages that you frequent. Bookmarking removes the need to search for, or manually type, a domain name. Here is a quick tutorial on how to create bookmarks in the most popular browsers.

It takes a good amount of work for anyone to get their website ranked high in search engine results. This is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO), which is the process of improving the traffic from search engines to a website. Some website services, including Google Sites and Microsoft Azure, offer built-in SEO functionality.

As seen in the screenshots above, attackers tend to exploit website services like Google Sites and Microsoft Azure — building a false sense of trust in the phishing link.. The naming conventions might follow a pattern like one of the following:

sites.google.com/[phishingpage].com
[phishingpage].azurewebsites.net

These phishing websites will typically then redirect to another phishing page after a victim clicks a button on the site. The redirect will take the victim to a second phishing page where the actual phishing attack happens. Using a second phishing site is a way for attackers to protect the first phishing site and maintain its SEO ranking. So, be aware of redirects as an indication that you may be visiting a phishing website. A typical flow may look like this:

Here are some indicators you can look for to protect yourself from search engine phishing:

• Does the naming convention of the search result follow this pattern: [page].coinbase.com? If not, it is likely a phishing page.
• When you click on a search result, are you redirected to a website with a different domain than what you expected? If so, it is likely a phishing page.
• When you click on a search result, does the website look different than the last time you logged in to Coinbase? If so, this could be a phishing page which is using an older version of our website theme.
• When you visit the website from the search results and click on a button, are you redirected to a website with a different domain than the first page? If so, it is likely a phishing page.
• After you enter your credentials, are you prompted to call Coinbase because of some sort of error? Does a live chat box automatically open? This tactic is commonly paired with phishing attacks and is known as a “support scam” attack.

Here is an example of what a scam error may look like and a live chat box which may follow the error:

Remember, think before you click! Our US support phone number is 1–888–908–7930 and you can find other ways to contact us at help.coinbase.com. If you are suspicious of activity on a “Coinbase” website, go to our Help page and initiate a conversation there with our Support team.

We are constantly monitoring the internet to identify phishing domains and take them down, but we need your help. Please help us by reporting any suspicious domains to security@coinbase.com.

As the crypto market trended to the downside, Ethereum Classic (ETC) took advantage. The original Ethereum blockchain records double-digit profits across multiple timeframes and seems on track for future appreciation.

Related Reading | Cardano Moves In The Red With The Market, Can The Price Of ADA Stay Above $0.46?

At the time of writing, Ethereum Classic (ETC) trades at $30 with a 27% profit in the past day and a 20% profit over the past week. Data from Coingecko indicates that ETC’s price has been the best performing asset in the sector followed by Lido DAO (LDO).

This cryptocurrency records a higher increase than ETC’s price in the past 24 hours with 41% profits. Ethereum Classic has outperformed it in the past week, but it’s noteworthy that these two cryptocurrencies are rallying.

Lido DAO is a platform that offers users Ethereum (ETH) staking services. This allows retail investors to lock their ETH and receive a portion of the rewards from the upcoming Proof-of-Stake (PoS) migration without meeting the 30 ETH requirement.

Ethereum Classic (ETC) Will Extend Gains With “The Merge”

On the other hand, Ethereum Classic (ETC) is perceived as the alternative for ETH miners for when this blockchain completes its migration to a PoS consensus. This process is set to be completed in September 2022, with “The Merge”.

An event that will combine Ethereum’s execution layer with its consensus layer, ETH core developers only recently announced a fix tentative data for its mainnet launch. The blockchain has seen two successful implementations of “The Merge” on major Ethereum testnets.

This event represents the end of the ETH mining sector as it exists today. The PoS blockchain will validate transactions with a different mechanism.

Thus, miners will have to scramble to secure other Proof-of-Work (PoW) networks, like Ethereum Classic. As the chances of “The Merge” mainnet implementation increase, ETC’s price seems likely to follow.

Related Reading | Dogecoin Seen Doubling In Price, Despite Shedding 10% In Last 7 Days

Data from Material Indicators shows an increase in buying pressure from investors with bid orders of around $1,000. This spike was recorded close to “The Merge” tentative mainnet launch announcement.