#infrastructure

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has teamed up with India-based crypto fund Crypto Relief and Polygon co-founder Sandeep Nailwal to contribute a substantial sum of $100 million towards COVID-19 research and the development of medical infrastructure in India. Recognizing the ongoing threat of COVID-19 and potential future pandemics, Buterin took to Twitter on June 8th to highlight the urgent need for a comprehensive global solution. He emphasized the importance of combining cutting-edge scientific innovation with effective on-the-ground implementation to address these challenges head-on. The generous donation will be directed towards critical areas of research, with a particular focus on studying COVID-19 airborne transmission and advancing the development of improved medical equipment. By prioritizing these aspects, the initiative aims to enhance understanding and mitigation strategies, ultimately curbing the spread of the virus and improving healthcare outcomes for affected individuals.

Blockchain technology has been used to pilot Brazil's digital real. Execution took place on the Stellar infrastructure of the local Mercado Bitcoin exchange. The experiment included a KYC procedure, a fraud protection check using decentralized identity identification, and direct fund transfers. All worked well, no violations of the country's laws were detected (thankfully, the tests had not yet been banned), though Mercado's head teased that the Central Bank's real motive was to see how things would unfold if it lost its direct control over money.

The russian Solaris platform was hacked by the Kraken trading platform, which also targets the russian-speaking audience. Kraken claims to have taken control of Solaris' infrastructure and Gitlab repository, as well as locking and emptying its crypto wallets. Both platforms are linked to a Russian operator and both have about 25% market share of the total volume of drugs and weapons sold on the dark web. It is known for certain that Solaris used the services of pro-Kremlin hackers Killnet, which launched DDoS attacks on Ukrainian and European government servers in 2022. All Solaris clients are now automatically redirected to the Kraken website because the hackers not only took control of the code and wallets but also set up a redirect. There are three things you can watch forever: fire burning, water falling, and Russians destroying each other. It is still unknown what kind of Kraken it is. Maybe it's some of ours