Crypto News: As cryptocurrency games grow in popularity among users, they are increasingly expanding their ecosystems. At the same time, Vitalik Buterin has once again found himself in the spotlight for his cryptocurrency transactions. What was the reason this time – more on that in today’s cryptocurrency news digest.
Solana Users Targeted by Malicious Chrome Extension
On 20 August, decentralized exchange aggregator Jupiter announced the discovery of a malicious Chrome browser extension. In his post, Jupiter founder Meow said that Bull Checker, as the program is called, targets Solana users on the Reddit platform and advertises itself as an extension to view all holders of certain meme coins. He urged anyone who has installed Bull Checker and similar extensions to uninstall them.
Meow noted that the application can pass Solana’s simulation test and look normal, but in fact, it is a drainer designed to steal money from users’ wallets. The founder explained that once installed, Bull Checker waits for the user to interact with a regular DApp on the official domain before modifying the transaction sent to the wallet for signature. After that, the simulation result will still be ‘normal’ and will not look like a drainer. He also added that the extension asks users for permission to ‘read and write’ data, whereas normally they should only request ‘read-only’ permission.
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“This should have been a major red flag for users, but apparently, several users continued to install and use the extension,” he said.
However, one of the users who advertised the malicious extension on Reddit reported that he had earned $3,000 from it over the past week, without providing any details.
Theoriq Joins Google Startup Accelerator
On 19 August, Theoriq, a decentralized Web3 AI company, published a post on the social network X announcing its participation in the Google Cloud Startup program. The company will join the accelerator in the long term to develop its own AI agent platform.
Theoriq’s main product is a decentralized blockchain-based platform for developing and managing AI agent teams, allowing developers to integrate them into their Web3 stack. As part of the program, the company will receive access to Google Cloud services with loans of up to $350,000, as well as traditional accelerator benefits, including access to industry professionals, targeted mentoring, and networking opportunities.
Theoriq says it’s ramping up to a testnet phase as it joins the program. According to the roadmap on its website, the company plans to launch the main network for its services at the end of 2024. It is not yet known whether participation in Google’s startup accelerator will affect the company’s timeline, but the new partnership may lead to a redistribution of resources.
But ultimately, the company’s success will depend on the robustness of its protocol. As stated in its “lite paper,”, the project aims to develop a marketplace and ecosystem for AI agents. Developers will be able to create agents, and Theoriq’s protocol will allow them to build a platform, evaluate, optimize, and deploy them to end users who are already connected to the market and ecosystem.
Pixelverse Expands Ecosystem With Gems Currency
Pixelverse, the Web3 gaming ecosystem, has announced several important updates. As part of the Phase 3 rollout, the company will introduce a new in-game currency called Gems.
The Gems token is set to become a central part of the Pixelverse universe, particularly in the PixelTap game. For completing certain game tasks, players will receive these ‘valuable’ and ‘rare’ tokens. The Gem Token will play a crucial role in unlocking new content and rewards to enhance the gaming experience. The third phase will also see the introduction of a new membership program and revenue-sharing system, giving players access to more activity and new members of the Pixelverse. They will receive cryptocurrency rewards depending on the success of their affiliates.
In addition, the company recently announced a partnership with mobile game studio Azur Games to create mini-games on Telegram. On 9 August, they announced a new game for mobile devices, and it will be centered around Pixelverse characters.
As these Telegram-based cryptocurrency games continue to gain popularity, they are changing the way people interact with cryptocurrency and online gaming. The simplicity and accessibility of these games are the main factors behind their popularity. Players receive rewards in the form of cryptocurrency or game tokens, which can often be exchanged or withdrawn. This method attracts a wide audience, especially newcomers to cryptocurrencies, as it offers a low barrier to entry into the crypto space.
Specifically, this year, several tap-to-earn games have captured the attention of crypto users. For example, TapSwap is a crypto game on Telegram that allows users to earn TAPS coins by simply clicking on an icon in the app. Users can use the coins to upgrade various in-game assets and participate in daily tasks and missions.
Pocket Rocket is a mini-game from WhiteBIT. In it, pilots can travel through galaxies, mine crystal stones, upgrades, bonuses, and invitations to take the highest position in the leaderboard, and compete for awards from the Whitechain Foundation.
OKX has also recently launched its clicker game, OKX Racer, which offers players the chance to choose whether the price of Bitcoin will be ‘’moon‘’ or ‘’‘doom’’ in the next five seconds.
Crypto Startup Fabric Raises $33M for New Data Privacy Chip
Fabric Cryptography, a Silicon Valley hardware startup, announced on 19 August that it has closed a $33 million Series A funding round, jointly led by Blockchain Capital and 1kx, to develop new computing chips with a focus on data privacy.
Offchain Labs, Polygon, and Matter Labs also participated in the round. The investment follows a $6 million seed round led by Metaplanet with participation from Inflection and Liquid2 Ventures, among other investors.
The post notes that the startup is developing a new cryptography processing unit called the Verifiable Processing Unit (VPU), a silicon chip that uses a command-based architecture for cryptography. According to the company, this means that any cryptographic algorithm can be broken down into its mathematical components, which are accelerated and supported by the chip. Production of the new chip is expected later this year, and it is expected to improve the speed and cost of cryptographic workloads compared to central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs).
Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin Promotes Railgun
On 19 August, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin transferred $1 million worth of Ether to the Railgun privacy protocol, demonstrating once again his support for a privacy-focused interface. This was reported by Spot On Chain, an on-chain analytics service, on the social network X. This is not the first time he has converted his ETH to the crypto mixer Railgun. In particular, the Ethereum co-founder is a strong advocate of privacy protection tools and has previously cited Railgun as an effective method of protecting user privacy.
Buterin has been a frequent user of the platform over the past 10 months and in 2024 transferred 662 ETH worth $1.91 million to Railgun. The latest transaction underscores Buterin’s continued support for privacy-enhancing technologies in the cryptocurrency space. This development comes after Vitalik Buterin transferred 500,000 ETH worth $500,000 to an unknown address last week. Although Ethereum has made significant progress as a public blockchain network, user privacy continues to be in demand, and Buterin is trying to address this issue.
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Vladislav Hryniv
Vladislav Hryniv is a digital journalist. For several years, he has worked as a copywriter for Web3 companies, where he gained interest in the industry. Currently, he writes articles on blockchain technology, finance, statistics, and digital asset analytics for various publications.