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  • Coinbase provides institutions with trusted access and storage for DeFi tokens | by Coinbase | Mar, 2022

    Coinbase provides institutions with trusted access and storage for DeFi tokens | by Coinbase | Mar, 2022

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    Coinbase

    By Sonia Pinto, Senior Product Marketing Manager and Alexis Hamel, Product Manager, Custody

    Coinbase Prime offers custody and trading for more than 50 DeFi coins and tokens, across a wide range of segments, including DEXs, lend, and borrow.We facilitate governance for a growing number of tokens including UNI, COMP, and MKR. This gives our customers the opportunity to directly participate in the governance of DeFi projects.

    Asset managers, like Grayscale and Bitwise, are increasingly stepping into DeFi beyond Bitcoin and Ethereum. FinTechs are also expanding their DeFi offerings to cater to growing demand. Venture capital funding for blockchain startups reached $25 billion last year, up 713% from $3.1 billion in 2020. Coinbase Ventures, A16Z and Paradigm are some of the VCs doubling down on DeFi.

    As one of the most trusted names in the industry, Coinbase offers access to a broad range of assets, customized account support, and a rapidly growing number of capabilities for our clients to participate in DeFi.

    DeFi Opportunities

    While Bitcoin or Ethereum are the currency of the blockchains, Defi tokens are built on top of the blockchain and represent a wide range of new opportunities for institutions. As of January 2022, nearly $200 Billion was deposited through smart contracts across major blockchains. This measure is referred to as the Total Value Locked (TVL). Ethereum-based projects alone account for 60% of DeFi TVL.

    Defi offers a global, open alternative to financial services consumers utilize today — including savings, loans, trading, and insurance — creating a financial system that is automated, accessible 24/7, permissionless and more transparent. DeFi protocols with the highest adoption rates include Compound and Aave for lending, Curve for stablecoins swap, Uniswap for token swaps, or DYDX for derivatives.

    Where do I start?

    Gain access to our prime broker by navigating to coinbase.com/prime. Click “Get started” and fill in the required information to apply for a Coinbase Prime account. For our existing clients who have a Coinbase Custody, or Coinbase Exchange account, please contact your account manager or PrimeOps@coinbase.com.

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  • Ledger CTO warns crypto users about the dangers of ‘blind signing’

    Ledger CTO warns crypto users about the dangers of ‘blind signing’

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    With the recent attack on OpenSea highlighting blockchain vulnerabilities, Charles Guillemet, the CTO of Ledger warns users about “blind signing” which he defines as “consenting a transaction to be signed blindly, without understanding what it means.” 

    In an interview with Cointelegraph, Guillemet broke down the problems and highlighted issues with blind signing. The Ledger CTO notes that consenting to transactions requires signing a message to be sent to the blockchain. A user is the only one capable of signing transactions with the private key, while others can verify if it’s correct. “The issue is that this message is not intelligible by default. It’s a digital payload,” says Guillemet.

    Guillemet also explained that when a coin transfer is signed, it’s normally supported by a wallet that “properly parses the payload and displays its intent.” However, when it comes to signing complex interactions with smart contracts, Guillemet says that “parsing the display is not always properly supported and you have no choice but consenting blindly for a transaction that you don’t understand.”

    “It’s risky because you can think you’re signing a transaction to move part of your funds to address A while you actually sign a transaction to move all your funds to address B.”

    Related: OpenSea disables features temporarily as contract migration completes

    The security expert also gave examples where blind signing led to significant losses. In the most recent OpenSea exploit, users encountered a phishing attack that resulted in the loss of $1.7 million worth in nonfungible tokens (NFTs). Guillemet notes that in this incident, the attackers tricked their victims into blind-signing a message that made them consent to sell all their NFTs for 0 ETH.

    “The attacker had only to sign a transaction saying ‘I’m ok to buy these NFTs for 0 ETH,’ and then presented these two messages to OpenSea to actually execute the transaction swapping 0 ETH against all the victims’ NFTs.”

    When asked what he thinks is the solution to the issue of blind signing, Guillemet turned to an old crypto adage, “don’t trust, verify.” He tells crypto users to “always verify the transaction you consent to sign.” One suggestion that the security expert brought up is signing transactions using trusted displays that can be found on hardware wallets.