Despite the lack of recognition from most African governments, cryptocurrency traders are still utilizing various exchanges across the continent. These exchanges offer different transaction costs and trading options, allowing customers to track their investments. Among the recommended exchanges are Bybit, Kraken, Coinbase, Binance, and Gemini, with the latter two prioritizing security and offering tools for passive income generation. Gemini is also a qualified custodian under the New York State Department of Financial Services, emphasizing its regulatory compliance.

The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) has created a seven-point plan to help countries prevent cyber attacks on their developing digital national currencies, as around 130 countries explore central bank digital currencies (CBDC). The BIS has warned that CBDC systems are complex and have a large attack surface, and called for central banks to use the global "MITRE ATT&CK" database of past cyber attacks and adopt modern enabling technologies to support security and resilience.

Traditional game publishers are embracing Web3 technologies to offer a new platform and give players more control and ownership. Leading brands such as SEGA and Ubisoft are among those adopting this shift, which promises exciting developments in Web3 gaming through decentralisation, true asset ownership, and security.

Binance, the largest cryptocurrency trading platform, has announced plans to retire deposit addresses and memos for several cryptocurrencies, including BTC, XRP, DOGE, AVAX, ICP, SOL, and XMR. The retirement of these addresses is scheduled for Q3 2021, with the aim of migrating them in batches to ensure a smooth experience for users.

July 4 (Cointime) -According to The Block, members of the Ethereum community have proposed a new ERC-7265 standard to improve the security of DeFi protocols. The proposed ERC-7265 standard will enable a "Circuit Breaker" that allows DeFi protocols to easily add backup plans to their smart contracts and prevent tokens from leaving the contract in the event of a hack. As the ERC-7265 standard is a proposed standard, it remains to be seen whether the Ethereum core team will accept and implement it as the final standard.

July 2 (Cointime) - Poly Network suffered a hack over the weekend, with the attacker exploiting a vulnerability in the platform's cross-chain bridge tool to create billions of tokens that did not previously exist. The hacker's digital wallet held almost $43 billion worth of cryptocurrency at one point, but the overall attack was somewhat stifled due to lackluster liquidity preventing any ill-gotten gains on some networks.

June 30 (Cointime) - Layer-2 blockchains built on top of Ethereum offer increased throughput and security, but assessing their level of security is complex and not always clear-cut. L2Beat provides a risk analysis framework for comparing active layer-2 options based on security-related criteria, with state validation being the most important factor. Four widely accepted varieties of Layer-2s exist, each with its own tradeoffs and suitability for specific use cases.

Vault1317 is an authenticated key exchange protocol with public key concealment and participant deniability designed for secure messaging.

June 22 (Cointime) - Despite the downturn in the crypto market, the Web3 ecosystem is still expanding, with an increasing number of developers entering the blockchain-based universe governed by smart contracts. With the Web3 developer community maturing into an established industry, the security of the technologies that hold the ecosystem together is becoming increasingly important.