GM and happy Friday ☀️

As bearish as the market may seem at the moment, it never fails to hold surprises.

Let’s dive into this week’s highlights ✨

🎨 NFT & Metaverse News

✨ John Karel aka jjjjjjjjjjohn is dropping on Fxhash today

Today there is a drop you won’t want to miss!

At 11 am EST John Karel aka @jjjjjjjjjjohn on Twitter will be dropping on fxhash, an open platform to create and collect generative NFTs on the tezos blockchain.

John is an artist from Lancaster currently living in Philadelphia, where he brings to life one of a kind low-poly animations.

✨ Apple’s VR headset to release in 2023

All rumours for now, but during the Worldwide Developers Conference (2022) voices from insiders have it that Apple’s mixed reality headset reveal is imminent.

A device that, in direct competition with the renowned Oculus, is expected to provide a mix of virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) experiences.

Meanwhile, a tweet by analyst Ming-Chi Kuo revealed that the EVT testing of the mixed reality headgear is planned for sometime in Q3 2022. Following the testing, a dedicated media will take place in January 2023, followed by the release onto the market shortly after via pre-order.

📈 Crypto & DeFi News

✨ A Bear Market that carries along hacks & hiccups: what has been going on with Maiar, Osmosis and Optimism this week

A recent analysis by CoinTelegraph, showed how since the beginning of 2022, approximately $1.6 billion in cryptocurrency have been stolen, with 90% being hacked specifically from DeFi protocols such as DEXs.

This week has been pretty wild, as 3 well-known players in the space got their own share of being hacked.

On Monday, the Maiar Exchange (DEX), native to the Elrond blockchain, was temporarily taken offline after an attacker utilized a bug in the network to exploit $113 million worth of Elrond eGold (EGLD).

Luckily, the team was fast in implementing an “emergency fix” and update with little to no damage as all lost funds are set to be covered by the Elrond Foundation.

On Wednesday, it was Osmosis’ turn, as the decentralized exchange (DEX) built on the Cosmos network, was halted shortly before 3:00 am EST on Wednesday after attackers exploited a liquidity provider (LP) bug, stealing nearly $5 million in value.

Before the exploit, the bug had been identified and posted within a Reddit post on the official Cosmos Network page, by user Straight-Hat3855 that went into detail how this bug could allow users arbitrarily grow LPs by 50% simply by adding and removing liquidity.

The Reddit post was since then removed, however not quickly enough to stop the wrong eyes from seeing this opportunity.

According to a Twitter thread from Osmosis, four attackers were responsible for 95% of the total exploit amount, with two of the attackers voluntarily stepping forward to return stolen funds.

Last but not least, an exploit that happened on May 26th, but is finally coming out now: on Thursday, the Optimism team shared how 20 million OP tokens ($1.3 million) intended to be dropped to the Wintermute crypto market-making firm were exploited due to a technical oversight.

During the facts, Wintermute discovered that it could not access the tokens because the smart contract it used to accept the tokens was still on L1 and had not been updated to be deployed on Optimism. Shortly after, Wintermute began a recovery operation, but it was already too late as the hacker was even faster.

✨ Paypal announces it will allow users to move their crypto to other wallets

Paypal has finally accepted a long-asked feature: the ability to transfer crypto. 

In not too long, PayPal users will be able to withdraw crypto assets from external wallets such as MetaMask and other exchanges, but not only - PayPal users will also be able to transfer them between themselves along with the ability to transfer their assets directly into PayPal.

For now, this feature is expected only for US users. A step forward in mass adoption?

✨ Ethereum: huge news as the Merge finally goes live on the ropsten testnet

With all the delays and deadlines postponed, there has been a lot of frustration, but Ethereum has finally taken a huge step as the Merge goes live on the Ropsten testnet…One step closer to Ethereum’s transition to the Consensus Layer ( ETH 2.0) previously pushed to August 2022.

A developer's first glimpse of what things will look like as soon as Ethereum is ready to make the move to a less energy-intensive PoS algorithm mechanism.

Client softwares participating in the Ropsten Merge include Lighthouse, Lodestar, Prysm, Nimbus, Teku, Besu, Erigon, go-ethereum (geth) and Nethermind.

“Merging Ropsten is a huge testing milestone towards Ethereum's mainnet Merge later this year,” - Ethereum Core developer Preston van Loon

✨ The FED takes the opportunity to release a 69 page proposal for a Crypto Bill.

Here is the summary of the proposal:

• No taxes will be applied on crypto transactions below $200

• People should have the right to have full self-custody and control over their digital assets

• As some crypto assets are viewed as commodities rather than securities, the CFTC (Commodity Futures Trading Commission) should be in control of further regulation.

• Miners should be taxed only once they sell.

• Stablecoins must have enough liquid assets in their reserves to cover all stablecoins, in order to cover future exploits and protect users.

🐋 FakeWhale Spaces

Retracing the steps of artistic discovery: the value of sharing the process and stories behind every artwork.

🔊 FakeWhale Spaces, hosted by @JesseDraxler w/ @skygolpe and @Izzygodinz

📅 Saturday June 11th, at 12 pm EST / 6 pm CEST

📍FakeWhale Twitter Profile @fakewhale_xyz

🍿 Events this Month.

MetaVanity. A meta-exhibition.

📅 Ongoing exhibition.

📍HADEM.

📚 Book of the Month.

This month’s book is a recent release by one of my favorite futurists in the space, Cathy Hackl, who collaborated with Dirk Lueth and Tommaso Di Bartolo to bring “Navigating the Metaverse: A guide to limitless possibilities in a Web 3.0 world” to life.

A must-read for anyone who wants to stay up to date on the Metaverse, whether already deeply in, or just getting acquainted with it!

🐥 This Week's Highlights