Huawei NFTs, Toyota’s hackathon, North Korea vs. Blockchain: Asia Express 

Our play roundup of quality from East Asia curates the industry’s astir important developments.

Huawei moves to trademark its NFTs

According to a Jan. 28 report by Sina News, Chinese telecom elephantine Huawei has precocious filed for 8 trademarks related to its Huawei “YunYunBao” nonfungible tokens (NFT) series. The trademarks see integer collectibles successful the technological instruments, furniture, education, jewelry, advertizing and telecom sectors. Last April, Huawei unveiled its YunYunBao NFTs, featuring characters inspired by its namesake unreality service. Huawei NFTs are minted connected its proprietary Huawei Petal Chain, which the telecom elephantine says has implicit 1,000 nodes and tin grip implicit 50,000 transactions per second. 

A Huawei unreality NFT. Source: Huawei

Toyota sponsors blockchain hackathon

In a Feb. 1 Medium post, Sota Watanabe, the laminitis of Japanese blockchain Astar Network, announced that Astar had received a sponsorship from Japanese automobile shaper Toyota for its latest Web3 hackathon. Astar is presently a parachain built connected the Polkadot blockchain. 

According to Watanabe, implicit $100,000 successful prizes volition beryllium distributed to projects that make “intra-company DAO [Decentralized Autonomous Organization] enactment tools for this hackathon which Toyota employees whitethorn really usage successful the future.” The hackathon volition tally from Feb. 14 to March 25.

The Toyota hackathon prize structure. Source: Hakuhodo

“Needless to say, Toyota is the largest institution successful Japan and 1 of the world’s starring planetary companies,” Watanabe wrote. “We are precise excited to beryllium hosting the Web3 Hackathon connected Astar with Toyota. During the event, we purpose to make the archetypal PoC DAO instrumentality for Toyota’s employees. If a bully instrumentality is produced, Toyota employees volition interact regular with products connected Astar Network.”

North Korea devastates crypto

On Feb. 2, blockchain forensic analytics steadfast Chainalysis revealed that North Korean hackers stole an estimated $1.65 cardinal retired of the $3.8 cardinal funds siphoned from decentralized concern (DeFi) protocols successful 2022. For context, North Korean-related entities lone stole $299.5 cardinal successful 2020 and $428.8 cardinal successful 2021. The steadfast besides warned that contempt the United States Treasury Department imposing sanctions connected cryptocurrency mixer Tornado Cash connected Aug. 8, North Korean hackers person progressively turned to different integer plus mixers, specified arsenic Sinbad, to launder stolen funds. Chainalysis said:

“North Korea-linked hackers thin to nonstop overmuch of what they bargain to different DeFi protocols, not due to the fact that these protocols are effectual for wealth laundering — they’re really rather atrocious for wealth laundering fixed their accrued transparency compared to centralized services — but alternatively due to the fact that DeFi hacks often effect successful cybercriminals acquiring ample quantities of illiquid tokens that aren’t listed astatine centralized exchanges. The hackers truthful indispensable crook to different DeFi protocols, usually DEXes, to swap for much liquid assets.”

On Jan. 29, decentralized concern expert Zachxbt claimed helium had traced different 17,278 Ether (ETH) — worthy astir $27.18 million — laundered by North Korean hackers successful the aftermath of the $100 cardinal Harmony Bridge hack past June. According to Zachxbt, the funds were past moved to 14 wallet addresses dispersed crossed 4 exchanges. On Jan. 24, the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation confirmed that North Korea’s Lazarus Group was the mastermind down the attack. 

North Korean hacking activities person seen a crisp emergence arsenic portion of the country’s hopeless propulsion to “earn” overseas currency reserves amid sanctions. Source: Chainalysis

No Binance metaverse for now 

In an ask-me-anything league connected Jan. 14, Changpeng Zhao, CEO of cryptocurrency speech Binance, said that the steadfast “is much unfastened to conscionable investing successful different virtual world oregon metaverse games,” arsenic the steadfast is not a game-builder and doesn’t person a crippled gathering team. 

“Nobody truly knows what metaverse means. Everybody has a antithetic conception of it,” the crypto enforcement said, according to a transcript published connected Jan. 27.

Instead, Zhao says that Binance volition absorption its “next large product” connected releasing aggregate proofs-of-reserves and proofs-of-solvencies to summation its transparency. The speech has acceptable a extremity of 1 cardinal users passing Know Your Customer verification for the caller year. 

Huobi denies information sharing allegations 

Although based successful the Seychelles, Huobi has a sizable fig of unit moving successful mainland China, who reportedly revolted against the firm’s stringent caller labour policies aboriginal this month. 

Huobi founder’s caller ventures

After selling his full involvement successful Huobi to Sun’s About Capital past October, Chinese businessman Lin Li has dedicated his clip to managing Hong Kong blockchain concern holdings steadfast New Huo Technology. On Jan. 30, New Huo launched a staking method enactment service, dubbed “Sinohope Staking,” that volition archetypal service the Cosmos assemblage earlier expanding into Ethereum, EOS and ChainLink. 

According to developers, Sinohope Staking volition supply “multi-node deployment, real-time monitoring of node cognition process, 7*24h online support, 3-layer wallet operation and aggregate signature technologies” for users funny successful staking their assets connected nationalist blockchains. New Huo says it volition assistance clients acceptable up their involvement nodes and show their operations “without handling oregon holding immoderate clients’ assets,” and claims clients volition clasp “100%” of their staked cryptocurrencies during the process. 

Bitzlato allegedly defiant contempt sanctions

The co-founder of Hong Kong-based cryptocurrency speech Bitzlato says the level volition reopen aft being shut down by United States authorities past month.

In a Jan. 31 YouTube interview, Russian nationalist Anton Shurenko said that the speech would unfastened aboriginal astatine an unspecified clip and claimed up to 50% of funds held successful seized blistery wallets would beryllium disposable for withdrawal astatine that time. In addition, the expected laminitis claimed helium had nary thought wherefore his institution was singled out. 

On Jan. 18, Bitzlato was unopen down aft an probe by instrumentality enforcement officials, including the U.S. Department of Justice, revealed that the speech imposed lax Know Your Customer rules and allegedly laundered implicit $700 cardinal worthy of illicit funds via crypto-fiat transactions. Shurenko’s chap co-founder, Anatoly Legkodymov, was arrested successful Miami astir the aforesaid day. After revelations that Binance was 1 of the apical counterparties to Bitzlato, the speech froze a fig of accounts related to the entity.  

According to caller reports, Spanish constabulary have detained 3 executives from the firm, namely the CEO, a income enforcement and the selling director.

Despite its notoriety, galore users successful the crypto assemblage accidental they’ve ne'er heard of Bitzlato earlier the incident. Source: Twitter