Kazakhstan pilots tenge-backed stablecoin with Solana and Mastercard

Nearly five years have passed since South Korea’s second-largest city Busan was designated as a blockchain regulation-free zone (blockchain zone) in July 2019. This designation has allowed blockchain companies to run their businesses within the region’s regulatory sandbox, freely exploring the potential of the cutting-edge industry. Busan is the only city in Korea to have won the bid for running more than two regulation-free blockchain projects approved by the SME ministry. However, Busan city may soon lose its status as the blockchain zone, unless it develops and attracts new blockchain-related businesses, local news media KBS News reported. The city has been struggling to attract new blockchain businesses after its 10-month-long preparation to enact a law, which would have enabled startups to enroll in indemnity insurance, resulted in failure.  Photo by Alexander Smagin on UnsplashBlockchain startups on the brink of closing its services Among the blockchain companies operating in the blockchain zone is Busan Blockchain Real-estate Investment Currency (BBRIC), which allows users to invest in real estate with a budget as small as KRW 1,000 ($0.75). Park Hyo-jin, Vice CEO of Sejong Telecom operating BBRIC, expressed his concerns in an interview with KBS News, saying that the termination of the city’s status as the blockchain zone would make it difficult for BBRIC to continue its services. Another blockchain startup in the region’s blockchain zone emphasized the importance of maintaining the city’s status in an interview with the press. Kim Yong-gil, the chief research officer at a blockchain-driven solution firm, said the company he’s working for was able to lay the foundation for its business growth after it was selected as one of the first companies to operate within the blockchain zone in 2019. The company currently aims to expand its distribution business from fisheries to coffee industry.  At the moment, 43 blockchain companies like these are operating their offices at the Busan International Finance Center (BIFC). Among 15 of them have relocated to Busan from the outside region to benefit from the sandbox. Busan’s loss of its status would also result in these companies leaving.  Busan’s desperate bid to retain its status as blockchain zone To retain the blockchain startups, the Busan government must maintain its status as the blockchain zone by getting permission to extend the designation period. Kwon Ki-kwang, Head of the Blockchain Regulation-free Zone team at Busan Technopark – a public foundation that supports SMEs – stated that it is looking for businesses specialized in blockchain technology, including those focused on blockchain-driven voting systems.  

South Korean entertainment production company Blade Entertainment has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Cardo, a firm specializing in custodial services for digital assets, to start a tokenized securities business, according to local news outlet Newspim on Wednesday. Blade Entertainment revealed plans to leverage its IP and content distribution rights to issue fractional investment-based tokenized securities based on underlying assets like waste landfills, electroceuticals and digital therapeutics.Photo by Verne Ho on UnsplashForging the future to tokenized securities"We will do our best to become a leader in tokenized securities by securing various underlying assets and building technology to facilitate valuation modeling for those assets," said Choi Young-in, head of the STO (security token offering) department at Blade Entertainment. "Through this agreement, we will cooperate in multiple ways with Cardo, who has expertise in blockchain and an understanding of financial products, to list our tokenized securities on the Korea Exchange’s (KRX) new securities market."  This market refers to an on-exchange market for new securities based on fractional investments that was recently designated by the South Korean Financial Services Commission (FSC) as a service under the financial regulatory sandbox system, according to a press release on Dec. 13.  The regulatory sandbox is a system run by the Korean government that exempts or suspends existing regulations for a designated amount of time for companies releasing new products and services and regulates them post-mortem if there is a problem.  Strategic collaborationBlade Entertainment said that it sought out Cardo – whose investors include one of South Korea’s major banks Nonghyup Bank – as a business partner to carry out this endeavor due to its accumulated knowledge and expertise in the blockchain sector. Cardo has also previously demonstrated its capabilities in the security token business by providing fintech solutions to financial service firm Galaxia Moneytree. "Currently, due to issues with the valuation of token securities, it is not easy for businesses in this area to operate smoothly, but we plan to issue and distribute tokenized securities of various assets soon," said Sohn Kyung-hwan, CEO of Cardo. "Based on the know-how we’ve accumulated from the two contracts we signed this year agreeing to supply security tokens platforms, we will actively help Blade Entertainment with the planning, design and platform construction of their security token venture to help establish a successful service."

Linear Finance Dealing With LUSD ExploitLinear Finance, the Hong Kong-based DeFi protocol, made an announcement by way of a blog post published to the project’s website on Thursday, suggesting that the project’s native stablecoin, LUSD, has come under attack.Photo by Markus Spiske on UnsplashTaking precautionary actionThis security breach has prompted the team to take immediate action to safeguard user accounts and the project’s integrity. The project team is actively investigating the exploit attack on LUSD. It has issued a stern warning to its users, advising them against buying or trading LUSD until the team can confirm the situation’s status.This measure is aimed at preventing further complications and ensuring the community’s interests remain protected. Furthermore, the project has temporarily suspended liquidations to secure users’ accounts. This step has been taken to mitigate immediate concerns and ensure that no user faces undue losses as a result of the exploit.Assets disposed on PancakeSwap & AscendexAmid the ongoing investigation, Linear Finance’s team has pledged to provide timely updates as soon as more information becomes available. In explaining away the nature of the attack, the project team clarified:”The attacker was able to mint an unlimited supply of LAAVE and subsequently traded the liquid asset to LUSD on the Linear Exchange, prior to selling it on PancakeSwap and Ascendex.”Project responseIn its efforts to deal with the issue, the Linear Finance project team has engaged an on-chain data specialist to track down the attackers. The Linear bridge contract has been disabled relative to LUSD. All protocol contracts that allow tokens to be minted, exchanged, or burnt have been paused. Meanwhile, wallets identified as having been involved in the protocol exploit have been shared with the authorities and major cryptocurrency exchanges.Synthetic asset protocolLinear Finance creates synthetic assets with the protocol design enabling unlimited liquidity. The network has been built on top of the Ethereum blockchain. As a consequence of activity surrounding the exploit, trading of LUSD over the course of the past 24 hours has proven to be out of the ordinary. At the time of writing volume over the past 24-hour period had increased by 8412%. The current market price of the stablecoin stands at $0.9874.Protocol and network hacks and exploits have been coming in thick and fast in recent days. Hong Kong crypto exchange CoinEx has been trying to recover from a $70 million hack on the platform over recent days. Meanwhile, Seychelles-headquartered peer-to-peer crypto platform Remitano suffered a $2.7 million hack late last week.On Wednesday, the project team behind DeFi protocol Balancer warned network users that the Balancer front-end user interface was under attack. The Ethereum-based DeFi network fell victim to another exploit last month, resulting in losses in the region of $900,000.In the dynamic crypto sector, unforeseen events like potential exploits can disrupt the market and sow uncertainty. The issue remains a major challenge both for centralized exchange platforms and DeFi protocols.