Polkadot’s ecosystem remains robust despite recent market downturns that briefly pushed DOT’s value to a seven-month low.

Polkadot ecosystem thriving

Data from DotLake shows a 33% month-on-month increase in transactions within Polkadot’s ecosystem, rising to 16 million in June from 12 million in May.

The growth was primarily driven by One Frequency, a Layer 1 blockchain enabling decentralized social apps, which saw a 3 million transaction increase to reach 5.4 million.

Additionally, Mythos Chain, a gaming network associated with developer Mythical Games, processed about 800,000 transactions during the reporting period.

Meanwhile, the number of unique addresses with non-zero balances on Polkadot rose slightly to over 7 million, up from 6.96 million in May and 6.8 million in April. DotLake commented:

“Number of Unique Accounts was stable at 7 million with Mythos’ strong entrance bringing in 800,000 new accounts, and from what we hear of what’s to come, that’s just the tip of the iceberg.”

Polkadot’s open governance platform, OpenGov, saw a 66% month-on-month increase in proposals, reaching 151. The platform allows DOT token holders to directly influence the network’s operations through different proposals focusing on marketing, business development, and other network development.

Furthermore, DotLake reported that Polkadot’s treasury assets comprise 26 million DOT, $3.9 million USDC, and 3.8 million USDT, totaling $167 million.

Over the past week, concerns arose when reports suggested that the treasury only had a “two-year runway.” However, Polkadot stakeholders debunked this news, assuring that the treasury could never run out of funds as it was continually replenished.

DOT price briefly falls under $5

Despite Polkadot’s rising metrics, DOT’s price has struggled considerably amid the broader market trend.

During the past day, Bitcoin, the bellwether digital asset, saw its price crash following heavy selling activity, triggering the fifth biggest realized loss since FTX collapsed in 2022.

This event impacted other top assets, such as DOT, which fell to a seven-month low of $4.98 due to the bearish market situation. However, it has slightly recovered to $5.79 as of press time.

Meanwhile, market observers noted that Whales are taking advantage of the price drop to scoop tokens for staking. On-chain data shows that a whale purchased 2.6 million DOT tokens, valued at $15 million, via the Binance exchange and directly sent them to the network’s staking address.

The post Polkadot sees 33% transaction growth as DOT hits seven-month low appeared first on CryptoSlate.

Blockchain security firm ScamSniffer’s mid-year report revealed that over 260,000 individuals lost $314 million to phishing scams across all Ethereum virtual machine (EVM) chains during the first half of this year.

Also Read: FBI warns of new crypto scams involving fake law firms

According to the firm, this figure exceeds the $295 million lost to phishing attacks throughout 2023, highlighting a significant increase in scam activity within the crypto industry. Market analysts have attributed the rise to the growing sophistication of phishing attacks and the higher value of cryptocurrencies

Around $60 million was lost in top 20 phishing thefts

ScamSniffer’s data indicates that March was the peak month for crypto scammers in 2024, with $71.5 million stolen from over 77,000 victims. Although this amount dropped to around $40 million in April, it has gradually increased, showing that scammers are regaining momentum.

A breakdown of the stolen funds reveals that the top 20 victims lost $58 million, each losing more than $1 million. The largest incident during the reporting period involved a MakerDAO delegate losing $11 million in staked Maker and Pendle tokens.

For the top 20 cases, nearly all victims unwittingly signed phishing signatures, allowing scammers access to their wallets. Common phishing signatures include Permit, IncreaseAllowance, increaseApproval, and Uniswap Permit 2.

Notably, most of these large thefts involved assets used for staking, Aave collateral, Pendle tokens, and restaking. While these decentralized finance (DeFi) activities offer great yields, they come with significant risk due to the tokens’ support for Permit, making them vulnerable to phishing attacks.

Twitter impersonators are responsible for most phishing attacks

An analysis of victim reports and on-chain data shows that most phishing scams begin with comments from impersonator accounts on Twitter. Verified accounts, including those with the gold checkmark for businesses, often impersonate popular crypto projects, posting comments with phishing links under their posts.

Also Read: Blockchain security firm warns TON users about phishing attacks

According to a SlowMist survey, approximately 80% of the first comments under a major crypto project’s Twitter post come from phishing scam accounts. These scammers purchase accounts similar to real ones and use promotion tools to boost interactions and followers, increasing their credibility.

SlowMist added:

“For example, a fake account named ‘Optimlzm’ can look almost identical to the real account ‘Optimism.’ After purchasing the highly similar account, phishing groups use promotion tools to boost the account’s interactions and follower count, thereby increasing its credibility.”

Despite efforts by many projects to signify the end of their tweets, the prevalence of impersonators means many still fall victim to the comments. Considering this, the blockchain security firm has advised that avoiding clicking on random links is the best protection against these scams.