Arbitrum's Airdrop is Coming

GM Readers!📪 It's BitDegree Insider, and it's time to capture the moment.

⭐️Today's selection:

• 🎁Arbitrum Airdrop
• 😇Hacker's Change Of Heart
• 🧩️Thursday Quiz
• 👌Selected Meme of The Day
• 📰Bite-Sized News

ARBITRUM AIRDROP

You've read that right. Big things are incoming. Soon.

Arbitrum just announced an Airdrop!

Arbitrum is a Layer-2 solution project designed to enhance Ethereum smart contracts regarding speed scalability while adding additional privacy features to boot. Read here to learn more.

Previously, Arbitrum raised $123.7M from Pantera Capital, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Redpoint and others.

So, if you were an Arbitrum user before the 6th of February, here's what to do:

First, check eligibility here. Then, claim your Airdrop on March 23rd, at 14:00 PM UTC.

Here's a more detailed view of ARB tokenomics:

Let's get it!

TL;DR: Arbitrum announced an Airdrop. Those who are eligible, will be able to claim it on March 23rd.

HACKER CHOOSES THE LIGHT SIDE

Okay, brace yourself for somewhat heartwarming stuff. 

This week, the massive hack of the Euler Finance protocol via a Flash Loan is on everyone's mind.

The hacker, who stole almost $200 million, remains relentless in the face of the project's requests.

They refuse to return the funds (despite being offered to transfer 90% and be forgiven for the actual crime).

However, yesterday the criminal revealed an unexpected side of their character.

One of the affected users of the protocol sent the hacker a transaction with a comment. He told that he lost all his savings of 78 ETH (~$122K).

Here's what the affected user told the hacker:

'Please consider returning 90%/80%. I'm just a user that only had 78 wstETH as my life savings deposited into Euler, I'm not whale or millionaire. You can't imagine the mess I'm into right now, completely destroyed. I'm pretty sure 20M is already life changing for you and you'll bring back joy to a lot of affected people.'

In response, the hacker sent 100 ETH to the wallet of the victim.

That's 22 ETH more than the victim even asked for. Imagine his face when he received ETH worth over $165K.

Meanwhile, Euler Finance has offered a $1 million reward for catching the hacker. They too, had a change of heart, apparently.

But how did the attacker end up with $200M of stolen money? How was this possible?

The hacker found a way of how to manipulate and exploit Flash Loans and outplay the Euler Finance protocol. But wait, what's a Flash Loan?

A Flash Loan is a type of loan in the cryptocurrency world that allows traders to borrow a large amount of funds without providing any collateral, as long as they repay the loan within the same transaction.

You can even borrow over $100M only if you pay back in a block transaction (within seconds).

Usually, In DeFi lending system, loans are over-collateralized meaning you lock up more than the amount you borrow. That's a problem. And Flash Loans solve it.

No collateral? No problem. Just pay back on one block transaction. 

Flash Loans are facilitated by smart contracts on the blockchain, which allow for automatic and immediate borrowing and repayment of funds.

They are often used for arbitrage trading, which involves taking advantage of price differences between different cryptocurrency exchanges.

Here's how they work. First, Flash Loans rely on a smart contract Here's how it functions:

• Requests the loan from a lender (e.g. Aave, Compound, Dydx)
• The lender transfers the loan to your smart contract.
• This triggers the contract to carry out the operations given to it (e.g. arbitrage)
• After the operation is completed, the loan returns to the lender + 0.09% Fees (taken from your profit).
• If the loan is not completely refunded, the lender reverses all the transactions.

Sounds nice right? Here's a practical example of what Flash Loans can do.

• Imagine that a user borrowed 2,048,000 USDC from dYdX.
• Swapped it all for 2,028,367 DAI.
• Bought 2,064,182 USDC with the DAI.
• Then repaid the loan of 2,048,000 USDC.
• And ended up with a profit of $16k.

However, as seen in the recent hack of the Ethereum-based protocol, Flash Loans can also be used for malicious purposes.

An attacker can borrow a large amount of funds through a Flash Loan and use them to manipulate the market, causing the value of certain cryptocurrencies to drop and then buying them at a lower price to make a profit.

Nevertheless, Flash Loans are not illegal.

So here you are. A heartwarming story AND a dose of free DeFi knowledge!

TL;DR: Hacker exploited the Flash Loan system, and ended up stealing $200M worth of stolen crypto from the Euler Finance protocol. One affected user asked the hacker to return their 78 ETH that got stolen. Hacker went through a change of heart and returned them 100 ETH.

THURSDAY QUIZ

Hello, dear puzzle-solvers, and answer-finders.

Last week we went with a 'Where's Waldo?' kind of thing.

And many of you loved it! So... Let's do this again.

This time we're about to go looking for a... Ethereum enthusiast. 

The Ethereum enthusiast has the Ethereum logo on their body. It's so integrated... It has become a part of them. 

Hint: the enthusiast can smell the success of Ethereum in the long term.

Good luck!

SELECTED MEME OF THE DAY

BITE-SIZED NEWS

• Circle Almost Done with Clearing All USDC Redemptions and Minting Requests. Investors redeemed around $3.8 billion worth of USDC
• Bidders for Signature Bank Instructed to Close Doors for Crypto-Related Services. It sounds pretty direct: "no more crypto business at the bank".
• Shiba Inu Price Plunges 10% amid Shibarium Code Plagiarism Accusations. Meme coin, non-meme allegations.