a protocol specializing in privacy and fast transaction speeds for large institutions is spinning out of Polygon and has raised $25 million in a seed round.The funding will be used to develop the Miden's roadmap including ecosystem expansion and developer tooling.Miden is spinning out of Polygon and has raised $25 million in a seed round STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.The funding will be used to develop the Miden's roadmap including ecosystem expansion and developer tooling with participation from Finality Capital Partners which makes use of zero-knowledge technology is geared for large institutions that need transaction confidentiality when executing large payment batches the protocol could be used for “every single time Apple needed to pay a supplier and people started to mess with their public stock price because of a misunderstanding of what's going on [on-chain],” said Azeem Khan Khan shared that many of those large institutions and investors are telling the Miden team that they need some kind of privacy solution that is compliant with regulation but also doesn’t compromise on performance and decentralization which should launch its main network by the end of the year works by allowing institutions and applications to choose whether they want to execute transactions in a public or private fashion at scale relying on the network for fast speeds and privacy "It's very different from most other blockchains on a technical level and it had to be different because of the type of use cases and functionality we want to enable,” said Bobbin Threadbare “I don't think something like this is possible to build on top of Ethereum or Solana.” “Miden is what the future of blockchains looks like,” said Sandeep Nailwal it’s not just an upgrade — it’s the blueprint for the final form of blockchain architecture.” Read more: Polygon Starts Aggregator Program, Successful Projects Will Airdrop Up to 15% Native Token to POL Stakers Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds BTC and ETH above CoinDesk's disclosure threshold of $1,000. TV2GO International and Multi-Link Holland have announced that their new teleport in Nijkerk The new facility is part of a strategic joint venture between TV2GO and Multi-Link Holland a leading provider of satellite solutions with SNG trucks and fly-away packs serving clients such as Formula 1 (for its entire racing circuit) The new teleport is designed to serve as a pivotal hub for satellite and IP-based transmissions enhancing TV2GO’s ability to cater to the growing demand for high-quality broadcasting solutions in Europe “We are thrilled to collaborate with TV2GO International on this venture,” Bob Snieder “By combining our strengths and resources we are now delivering unparalleled teleport services to clients across Europe and beyond.” “This joint venture represents a significant step forward for TV2GO,” added J “The establishment of a Teleport in Europe reinforces our commitment to delivering exceptional services to clients worldwide.” is equipped with state-of-the-art technology and staffed by a team of experienced engineers ensuring seamless and reliable transmission for live events and broadcasts The addition of this facility allows TV2GO and Multi-Link to streamline their transmission processes reducing the logistical challenges of international transmission and offering greater flexibility This ensures broadcasters can deliver their content with confidence and precision and it further solidifies both companies' positions as leading providers of broadcasting solutions on a global scale The professional video industry's #1 source for news TV2GO International provides end-to-end solutions for the new age of broadcasting Multi-Link Holland offers top-tier satellite solutions through their advanced satellite news gathering (SNG) trucks and fly-away packs for some of the world's most prestigious events George WinslowGeorge Winslow is the senior content producer for TV Tech media and technology industries for nearly 30 years for such publications as Broadcasting & Cable including Multichannel News International and World Screen and moderated panels at such major industry events as NAB and MIP TV He has published two books and dozens of encyclopedia articles on such subjects as the media Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski was named in a lawsuit from BANKEX which alleged ZKsync was built using stolen technology the company behind layer-2 blockchain ZKSync STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.According to a complaint filed Mar former BANKEX employees Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev allegedly stole the company's technology to start Matter Labs which received over $450 million in venture capital funding and has become a major player in the blockchain industry The complaint, which names BANKEX CEO Igor Khmel and the BANKEX Foundation as plaintiffs, alleged BANKEX was approached by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 2017 to build operational software for "Plasma," a technology that was seen at the time as a way to make Ethereum cheaper to use Alexandr Vlasov and Petr Korolev were BANKEX employees at the time and were tasked by BANKEX CEO Igor Khemel with completing the Plasma project The complaint alleged that Vlasov and Korolev instead secretly developed “a competing company through which they intended to appropriate the blockchain technology of BANKEX for their own use and benefit and to compete with BANKEX.” In addition the complaint claimed that the two developers were secretly transferring “BANKEX’s technology to Matter Labs and covertly developed and stored operational code bases” using the company’s resources and funding Vlasov is currently the head of R&D at Matter Labs and Korolev is the founder of blockchain security firm OXORIO a partner at Placeholder Capital and a former co-director at Matter Labs are also being sued for their alleged involvement and knowledge of the theft “We believe these claims are entirely without merit," a spokesperson at Matter Labs told CoinDesk in an emailed statement "The thrust of the complaint is that Matter Labs built ZKsync on top of code that was originally developed at Bankex ZKsync is original technology that is not based on or derived from any code developed by Bankex We stand by the integrity of our work and look forward to addressing these baseless allegations in court once we are served." Burniske and Korolev did not respond to multiple requests for comment BANKEX lawyer Clayton Mahaffey told CoinDesk in a statement that the firm "prefers not to comment further on the case at this time other than to reiterate its belief that the allegations in the complaint are well founded and that it looks forward to its day in court." Read more: Matter Labs Accuses Polygon of Spreading "Untrue Claims" With Code-Copying Allegations (Max Böhme/Unsplash) Welcome to The Protocol CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development the Ethereum protocol reporter on CoinDesk’s Tech team What to know: The Ethereum community fears it will lose its competitive edge if the chain doesn't address layer-2 fragmentation and security issues Layer-2 networks—fast and cheap networks that pass transactions down to Ethereum layer-1—have become more heavily trafficked than Ethereum itself.Some developers are pushing “based rollups,” which use Ethereum's onboard sequencing rather than offloading it to the layer-2.The Ethereum community has been in turmoil over the past few weeks with members raising the alarm that the chain will lose its competitive edge if it doesn’t address some core design issues STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.A key focus of the outrage has been layer-2 fragmentation Ethereum has embraced a layer-2 scaling roadmap—a plan that encouraged the development of third-party auxiliary networks called "layer-2 rollups"—to help scale the base Ethereum ecosystem Offloading activity to these upstart networks has helped bring down fees and improve speeds for end-users While layer-2 networks all post data back down to Ethereum they often struggle to communicate directly with one another meaning passing assets and data between them can become expensive and cumbersome There's also the risk of centralized sequencers: reliance on company-controlled black boxes to pass transaction data between blockchain layers some Ethereum developers are pushing rollup tech that takes a new approach to security and interoperability: “based rollups." Based rollups differ from most existing rollups because they shift execution duties—such as processing transactions—back to Ethereum's layer-1 rather than handling them on a separate layer-2 network When someone transacts on a layer-2 rollup, their transaction is processed through a component called a “sequencer.” The sequencer batches multiple transactions and submits them to Ethereum for settlement meaning a single entity (usually the company that built the rollup) controls the ordering and posting of transactions Centralized sequencers are currently a topic of debate in the Ethereum community While sequencers provide efficiency and generate revenue for rollup operators by strategically ordering transactions they also introduce a single point of failure A malfunctioning or malicious sequencer can delay or manipulate transactions raising concerns about censorship and reliability Based rollups avoid this vulnerability by using Ethereum’s built-in sequencing—its massive community of validators—rather than a single centralized sequencer In 2022, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin laid out his vision for a rollup-centric roadmap. The plan proposed using layer-2 rollups to side-step the base chain's high fees and slow transaction speeds Different rollups employ different strategies for keeping down costs and boosting speeds, but they are all designed to uphold decentralization and security—meaning (in theory) the networks shouldn't be centrally run and the transactions they shepherd to Ethereum are free from tampering Rollups like Optimism, Arbitrum, Base, zkSync, and Blast have quickly grown to support larger transaction volumes than Ethereum itself. According to L2Beat there are currently 140 live layer-2 networks but the experience of operating between them—passing assets and other data between networks—has become clunky As Ethereum becomes bigger and layer-2 networks become more integral to its functioning improving communication between layer-2s—in other words improving "composability"—has become more important than ever Because based rollups share the sequencer from the layer-1 chain (sometimes referred to as the layer-1 "proposer") they can call on smart contracts on other based rollups within seconds making it easier to access and exchange data across layer-2s “They effectively share a sequencer with each other and also with the layer-1 and that allows the sequencer now to coordinate messages passing between different based rollups whereas normally message passing happens in an asynchronous fashion,” said Ben Fisch Since based rollups all use Ethereum’s built-in sequencing they can interact with one another instantly in blockchain terms—all within the same Ethereum block.1 do something in the layer-2 and withdraw assets again,” Fisch told CoinDesk A few projects are looking to use based technology While rollups like Taiko present clear benefits they will need to overcome some technical hurdles before they can be more widely adopted which take up to seven days to suss out potential fraud proof generation speeds would need to align with Ethereum’s block time—a significant technical leap Fisch says a breakthrough on this front could be "imminent The other pitfall is Ethereum's block producers or "layer-1 proposers." In based rollups these proposers take over the role of sequencing transactions But their primary motivation isn’t necessarily fairness—it’s profit “Layer-1 proposers are not trusted entities that are working in the interest of the layer-2 they are economically motivated to make as much money as they can,” Fisch said “So they may confirm some transactions for end users which causes them to publish something totally different.” MEV, or maximal extractable value, refers to the practice of reordering transactions to maximize profit it could create instability in based rollups developers are working on solutions like based pre-confirmations which aim to add economic incentives for proposers to act in the interest of rollups So while based rollups may present a promising way to reduce fragmentation between layer-2s “My personal opinion is that based rollups are one part of the solution and not all layer-2s necessarily should or will be based,” Fisch said Read more: ‘Sequencers’ Are Blockchain’s Air Traffic Control. Here’s Why They’re Misunderstood is getting its first application-chain that settles on the network Nums itself is an on-chain game that lets players try to sequence a series of 20 generated numbers Users will be able to earn $NUMS tokens by playing the game Despite various layer-2 stacks already live and layer-3 games existing on those chains the team behind Nums claim that their decision to build with Starknet’s technology is because it allows for more “computationally complex and more ambitious” applications which uses Cairo as its programming language is “much easier to express these types of applications,” van As added Cartridge is one of the core developer teams building on Starknet, known for releasing its Dojo framework a tool engine that lets developers build games and applications on the network Read more: StarkWare Launches Appchains on Starknet with New Developer Toolkit The team claims that having a layer-3 benefits the restaurant industry because “by handling payments and loyalty programs entirely on Flynet Blackbird eliminates traditional middlemen and introduces a new model for rewarding both diners and partners.”Blackbird the restaurant loyalty platform founded by Resy and Eater co-founder Ben Leventhal shared Thursday that its Flynet mainnet is live allows users to transact on top of Ethereum for faster and cheaper and introduces a new model for rewarding both diners and partners.” Blackbird had previously released a payments platform letting users pay for their meals with $FLY which users could earn through the programs loyalty program by dining at participating restaurants or by purchasing it in the Blackbird app using the USDC stablecoin but now restaurants can use the token to pay platform fees as well The team said that they will airdrop 13% of the $F2 token supply to early users and restaurants with distribution depending on certain activity metrics The remaining 87% of $F2 will go to “insiders and we have another six seasons after this that we will allocate tokens to the participants,” Leventhal told CoinDesk in an interview According to the team, Blackbird has $85 million in funding with backers from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Coinbase, Spark Capital, and American Express. In 2023, a16z raised more than $24 million for the platform in a Series A round Blackbird currently is available in New York and lets diners earn rewards at some of their favorite restaurants Leventhal told CoinDesk there are roughly 500 restaurants as part of their loyalty program “What we think we can do is build something where transactions become much more cost effective and the levers that restaurants have to attract and retain customers will become vast,” Leventhal told CoinDesk on how he sees the restaurant industry and blockchain intersecting is the reason why we're building on-chain.” Read more: Blackbird, Web3 Startup From Resy Co-Founder, Wants Diners to Pay for Meals in Crypto Bank vault (Wikipedia) What to know: Under Lido's newly proposed 'V3' upgrade the largest staking service on Ethereum would be rebuilt around modular staking "vaults."Users could soon be able to stake into "stVaults," which will be customizable for institutions and more complex investment strategies like restaking.If the Lido DAO approves the proposal V3 could go live on Ethereum’s mainnet as early as the third quarter of 2025 have proposed revamping the staking platform with modular "vaults." STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.The new framework would introduce stVaults a customizable component designed to help Lido accommodate institutions and more complex staking strategies Lido currently allows investors to pool their ether (ETH) together and "stake" their crypto — locking up their tokens with the network helping to secure it in exchange for interest Lido pioneered liquid staking: users get a receipt on their deposits called Lido staked ETH (stETH) that they can trade at any time entering and exiting staking positions became as simple as buying and selling stETH tokens Lido V3's stVaults are “modular smart contracts designed to meet the diverse and evolving needs of Ethereum participants,” according to a press release shared with CoinDesk The upgrade would enable staking setups beyond cut-and-dry liquid staking stVaults will be able to help institutional stakers who want to personalize their staking setups node operators who want to attract high-volume stakers and asset managers who want to create new staking use cases The move reflects the growing institutional interest in Ethereum staking as financial firms explore ways to integrate yield-generating crypto products into their portfolios The stVaults are supposed to accommodate that interest by introducing modular building blocks that cater to different staking needs “What is important to understand with customizable infrastructure is that you can in general build even more complex products,” said Konstantin Lomashuk The goal is "for Lido to be rebuilt as a foundation layer," said Lomashuk."It’s neutral infrastructure: everybody can use restake or leverage and have more liquidity.” The developers vision for V3 is to evolve Lido into an "open staking marketplace,"user will be able to opt into whichever staking setup fits their objective and risk profile — a departure from Lido's catch-all approach to staking The shift brings Lido further in line with other modular decentralized finance (DeFi) products which employ vault mechanisms for lending and restaking The upgrade also makes Lido more useful for restaking — where ETH is "restaked" to secure other protocols in addition to Ethereum “You can restake your stVault," explained Lomashuk "Liquid restaking tokens can utilize this infrastructure to grow the APR." Lido V3 was formally presented by a group of core developers to the Lido DAO the decentralized autonomous organization that governs the protocol “Now it's a new phase,” Lomashuk told CoinDesk Read more: Lido Co-Founder Teases 'Second Foundation' for Ethereum Amid Community Backlash modified by CoinDesk) Banking giant Deutsche Bank is building out a layer-2 rollup network on Ethereum with ZKsync technology developed by Matter Labs and a representative for Matter Labs confirmed the story The project is a sign of a renewed interest in blockchain technology among institutions, as prices for various cryptocurrencies reach all-time highs. It also echoes the private enterprise blockchains that were in vogue nearly a decade ago Those systems were disconnected from public chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin though they sometimes borrowed code from them According to the Bloomberg report the bank is creating the layer-2 network in order to address regulatory compliance issues that come with public blockchains in finance (Regulated institutions have to know who they are dealing with which is hard in completely open networks like the main Ethereum chain) The bank believes that by creating a layer-2 on top of Ethereum it will improve the speed of transactions as well as address those compliance needs The ZKsync-based rollup could allow banks to experiment with blockchains and let them select which validators could run said blockchain Deutsche Bank’s Asia-Pacific industry applied innovation lead The L2 blockchain may also give regulators “super admin rights,” allowing them to look more deeply into the movement of funds Memento Blockchain announced the L2 endeavor on Nov but it received little attention at the time The chain is currently in a test network environment a customizable toolkit that lets developers build their own blockchains based on ZKsync’s technology The L2 is part of Dama 2, a multi-chain initiative led by Deutsche Bank is part of the Singapore Monetary Authority's Project Guardian which is bringing together 24 major financial institutions that are looking into ways to use blockchains to tokenize their assets Read more: Deutsche Bank Invests in Blockchain Payment Network Partior Wang has been at the EF since 2017, where she helped do research on concepts like sharding, as well as contributed to Ethereum’s major overhaul known as “the Merge.” Stańczak founded Nerthermind one of the largest software or clients that operate the Ethereum blockchain the Ethereum ecosystem needs to navigate the challenging transition from being an early-stage project serving a small number of enthusiasts to being a robust permissionless censorship-resistant base layer of the global finance and software stack,” the Foundation said in their blog post In addition to Wang and Stańczak assuming their new roles, ex-EF researcher Danny Ryan shared that he would be joining Etherealize, the new project aimed at bringing ETH to Wall Street The firm was founded by former banker Vivek Raman who shared previously with CoinDesk that one of the goals of Etherealize is to bridge the gap between Ethereum and the banks by educating institutions and marketing ETH as a serious crypto asset In a post shared on X Ryan said that he intends “to build a new Ethereum institution with Real World Ethereum as its north star.” and we’re here to do the hard work necessary to make it happen,” Ryan added Read more: Ethereum Foundation’s Aya Miyaguchi Leaving Executive Director Role one project in particular appears to be pulling away as the clear leader And as is often the case in blockchain development a crucial factor is the money changing hands behind the scenes STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.Optimism has managed to get a slew of clients and firms to deploy their own blockchains using Optimism’s technology It's a crucial development in the evolution of the broader blockchain universe since layer-2 networks stand at the heart of developers' efforts to make transactions faster and cheaper in the Ethereum ecosystem while the second-largest blockchain after Bitcoin is currently the leading smart-contracts network — meaning it can handle programs and support applications — and it has become the dominant home for decentralized exchanges and lending platforms Layer-2 blockchains work like auxiliary networks atop Ethereum providing a venue for transactions to be executed quickly and at a low cost Part of the Optimism Foundation's strategy to get new networks to use their technology is to give out large sums of OP tokens in the form of grants Officials within the Optimism ecosystem claim that those tokens are supposed to help different projects kickstart their building on OP Stack while contributing to Optimism’s Superchain a network of OP chains that are connected amongst each other as well as to Optimism’s governance system Ultimately, the goal is to reach critical mass — perhaps not unlike the ascendance in the 1980s of VHS over Betamax as the dominant videotape technology Kraken's OP token grantThe deal with Kraken came with a sizable grant, which included an allocation of 25 million OP tokens, worth about $42.5 million when CoinDesk broke the news recently Representatives for World (the recently renamed Worldcoin project), Uniswap and Sony all declined to comment on how many tokens their projects received as part of their packages, but according to Kraken’s Andrew Koller other OP Stack participants also got sizable amounts Optimism Foundation officials say they leave it up to the projects to disclose the amounts of their grants In an industry that prides itself on transparency the unwillingness to share how many OP tokens are designated to those chains raises some questions on how big of a factor those grants played into those deals A spokesperson with the Optimism Foundation shared with CoinDesk that the Optimism ecosystem has been transparent about their treasury and that the Kraken deal falls under their “partnerships fund,” which goes “to certain projects to help support initial development of the chain.” According to the data as of Sept. 30, there are about 841 million OP tokens designated towards that kind of funding, with just under 480 million OP tokens already committed. That works out to 361 million remaining, or nearly $480 million at the current OP token price of $1.32 Some smaller projects building layer 2s on the OP Stack have also received tokens. Celo’s governance forum previously disclosed that it would receive up to 6.5 million OP tokens for building on OP Stack, and the Bitcoin-focused BOB project shared that it was still in the negotiating process, but at the time of writing the deal was for about 500,000 OP tokens The tokens designated to BOB come from a different grant bucket and projects looking to scale their projects can apply for these grants with the Council Chains can also apply for grants from the Retroactive Public Funding Goods (RPFG) bucket there’s just shy of 860 million OP tokens under the RPGF bucket “which goes towards rewarding on-chain impact across Optimism and the Superchain,” according to a spokesperson at the Optimism Foundation Projects like Kraken’s Ink will also be eligible for RPGF funding So has Optimism ultimately won the layer-2 race and does their grant strategy play into it The spokesperson at the Optimism Foundation told CoinDesk over email that we view grants as ways to support projects and developers and allocations are earned by achieving agreed-upon growth milestones that are ROI-positive for the whole Collective We’re all working together to scale the future of Ethereum and when teams in the Superchain are successful it benefits the entire Ethereum community.” ROI stands for return on investment Has OP Stack Won The Layer-2 Race?Optimism Foundation’s chief growth officer told CoinDesk in an interview that “the adoption of OP Stack being the de facto choice for scaling L2s is starting to happen Whether you want to call that winning or whatever The OP token price has fallen a staggering 65% this year, based on pricing from the website DigitalCoinPrice. But that's less than the declines for other major layer-2 tokens Wyatt added: “Whether we're at a point where it's just a fact that if you're going to launch an L2 you're going to just go with OP Stack the main developer firm behind layer-2 Arbitrum have taken a different approach in trying to get users to build with its technology “There's a strategy that prioritizes announcements and there's a strategy that prioritizes actually on-chain success and metrics,” Steven Goldfeder said to CoinDesk “Our strategy is to empower real users and real builders and build real technology that's empowering new interesting as well as established different use cases of technology.” As for Kraken’s Ink decision to pick OP Stack Koller told CoinDesk that the reasoning came down to “what is going to allow me to spend the resources of engineering the most effectively," he said "Do I want to worry too much about security and the protocol upgrades or do I want to be able to use resources effectively and just make good UX and bring our clients on-chain and make the applications?" Koller said "That's really what we cared about.” He added: “Let's just focus on experience so we don't have to worry about the complexities of running a blockchain I think that's why Optimism was a clear choice.” Read more: Kraken Picked Optimism's 'Superchain' After Getting a Pile of OP Tokens CORRECTION (17:38 UTC): Corrects to show that BOB token grant came from Grants Council, not the RPGF. which will allow applications to make use of “based” technology by leveraging Ethereum validators STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.SSV 2.0 will be the most ambitious project for the SSV Network according to a press release shared with CoinDesk and will bring based applications (bApps) to Ethereum especially “based rollups,” are a new type of technology attracting the attention of Ethereum developers as it allows for better interoperability while improving the security of networks on top of Ethereum Based rollups specifically can be seen as a solution to the many layer-2 networks on Ethereum today which have caused much fragmentation across the space those protocols or applications can “base” their security and execution operations off of Ethereum’s layer-1 validator set Currently, layer-2 networks use “sequencers” to order transactions and post those back to Ethereum The issue with sequencers today is that they remain to be a centralizing component and can be a single point of failure By using the validators from the layer-1 to do the execution and security work networks can avoid the downfalls of using centralized sequencers Furthermore, Ethereum developers agree that based rollups allow for better interoperability in the network. Ethereum ecosystem members have gathered over the last few weeks to find ways to solve this issue and based rollups are seen as a major breakthrough for that Now the SSV Network will also tackle these issues by bringing applications with based technology to Ethereum bApps gain “security directly from the L1 instead of utilizing different tokens like in current restaking models making them more Ethereum-aligned and not exposing Ethereum or its validators to cascading risks.” the DAO is suggesting to turn the SSV Network into a bApp “Transforming the SSV Network from a DVT-powered staking infrastructure into a multidimensional network for the based economy will necessitate an evolution of SSV tokenomics,” the team shared refers to a type of tech that allows an Ethereum validator to run on multiple nodes simultaneously.) “This announcement marks a transformative leap for bootstrapping Ethereum security addressing the growing demand for Layer 1 (L1)-anchored interoperable solutions - as seen with base sequencing and based validator commitments - amid increasing ecosystem fragmentation,” the SSV team said in the press release Read more: SSV DAO Starts $50M Fund to Push Ethereum's Decentralization Plan What to know: Sam Altman's blockchain venture is breaking into the messaging game with its newest feature: World Chat.The new feature a "mini app" accessible via the World App wallet will offer special features to holders of World Network's digital passport which lets users scan their iris in exchange for an account that verifies their "proof-of-personhood."World Chat is the latest iteration of World's ongoing quest to help people discern bots from humans in the age of AI is breaking into the messaging game with its newest feature: World Chat STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.The new feature which lets users scan their iris in exchange for an account that verifies their "proof-of-personhood." World Chat is the latest iteration of World's ongoing quest to help people discern bots from humans in the age of AI World Chat allows you to know when you’re chatting with a verified human," World developer Tools for Humanity said in a statement to CoinDesk Those who haven’t peered into World's iris-scanning Orb will still have access to the new chat feature The new messaging app takes design cues from Apple's iMessage which uses blue chat bubbles for iPhone users and green bubbles for everyone else "Conversations with verified World ID holders feature a blue chat bubble as well as a unique World ID gem in the upper right corner," Tools for Humanity explained "Conversations with non-verified accounts feature a grey chat bubble and no such gem." Mini Apps were launched back in October 2024 and there were more than 250 million Mini App opens in the first two months of 2025 “The World App has grown so much over the past year we've continuously heard requests for a DMs layer And we think that for some actions like sending money that is just way more natural and fun than going to a wallet “People have been asking for the chat product specifically.” World Chat will be available on the World App for Android and iPhone iOS users starting Thursday World and social protocol Friends With Benefits Blockchain Capital and Variant Fund to launch an incubator program called World Build and a demo day and is meant to encourage developers to build "Mini Apps." Read more: Sam Altman's Eye-Scanning Orbs Can Now be Summoned 'Like a Pizza', Say Worldcoin Execs (Photobank Kiev/Unsplash/Photomosh) Welcome to The Protocol built on the Ethereum layer-2 network Starknet Snapshot X, the new governance protocol, makes use of storage proofs – a cryptographic feature that StarkWare The technology allows users to prove that assets exist on one blockchain without needing to use a third party to move them to another STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.“By mathematically verifying data across chains storage proofs eliminate the need for third-party intermediaries making the process more secure and cost-efficient,” StarkWare wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk this means users can vote based on assets held on one chain without transferring tokens or paying gas fees.” Snapshot Labs COO Jeremy Musighi told CoinDesk in a message over Telegram that when a user casts a vote on the platform a proof of their holdings is sent to the layer-1 blockchain we can be certain that the user indeed has the balance he claims to have on L1.” The first vote on Snapshot X, scheduled to take place this week, pertains to a proposal regarding Starknet itself. Community members of Starknet are being asked to decide on the minting mechanism for the project’s new staking proposal STRK token holders will vote on a staking proposal through the Starknet Governance Hub a custom-built interface for Snapshot X,” StarkWare wrote Read more: Starknet, Layer-2 Chain on Ethereum, to Open Staking By End of Year A group of top Ethereum developers and leaders released Wednesday a new framework that would simplify and standardize cross-chain token transfers STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.The initiative was kickstarted by contributors from the Ethereum Foundation and is supported by 25 projects including teams building layer-2s like Arbitrum The goal of the initiative is to bring “intents” to all corners of the Ethereum ecosystem, which is a technological feature that lets a blockchain user accomplish a specific goal by asking an intermediary to fulfill that goal (like a trade or transaction they want to make.) There are some standards out there that are already trying to make cross-chain transactions easier by using intents. ERC-7683, which was introduced by the team behind the decentralized exchange Uniswap and the Across protocol, is one of those standards circulating the Ethereum space lately and is supposed to address fragmentation and allow more chains in the Ethereum ecosystem to interoperate But the OIF team claims that they will build on that standard through their framework allowing intents to function at scale “By offering shared infrastructure and execution coordination OIF makes intent-based transactions permissionless and accessible for all projects,” the press release said “As Ethereum's ecosystem becomes increasingly multichain intents help streamline fragmented user experiences by enabling seamless near-instant cross-chain transactions through specialized solvers integrating intents remains complex and resource-intensive making an open intents framework essential to standardize infrastructure and foster broader collaboration across the ecosystem,” the team shared with CoinDesk Read more: 'Intents' Are Blockchain's Big New Buzzword. What are They, And What Are the Risks? What to know: The Avalanche Foundation said its much-anticipated Avalanche Card a Visa credit card that allows users to purchase items with their cryptocurrency is live.The card enables users to spend their Avalanche tokens (AVAX) as well as stablecoins USDT and USDC at any store that takes Visa.The Avalanche Foundation the non-profit that helps steward the development of the Avalanche blockchain STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.The card was developed in collaboration with Rain It enables users to spend their Avalanche tokens (AVAX) and stablecoins USDT and USDC at any store that takes Visa It's good for in-person or online transactions While other teams have also released credit cards tied to a user's crypto holdings the news signals the further integration between traditional financial technologies and cryptocurrency The Avalanche Foundation said in October that it planned to introduce the card focusing on signing up users from Latin America and the Caribbean the team said sign-ups had accelerated in that region as well as Southeast Asia and Africa According to the card’s website the credit card will be linked to users' “new self-custody wallet and unique address per asset.” “In a move to double down on mainstream adoption of decentralized finance (DeFi) Avalanche remains committed to powering accessible inroads to blockchain for every type of user,” the team said Read more: Avalanche Blockchain’s Largest-Ever Upgrade, 'Avalanche9000,' Is Live What to know: Ethereum’s Pectra upgrade successfully launched on the Sepolia testnet early Wednesday.The update includes EIP-7251 enabling smart contract functionality for wallets.A failed test on the Holesky testnet last week raises questions about the timeline for a mainnet rollout.Ethereum’s long-awaited Pectra upgrade took a major step forward early Wednesday with its successful deployment on the Sepolia test network The biggest upgrade to Ethereum since 2024, Pectra consists of 11 major features or "Ethereum improvement proposals" (EIPs) Testnets mimic a main blockchain and are used by developers to test code changes in a low-stakes environment. Holesky, which has a validator structure closer to Ethereum’s mainnet than Sepolia, was seen as a critical proving ground for Pectra. (Developers are still working to get Holesky back into operation and have set up an alternative developer network as a temporary testing ground for validators.) Ethereum developers are set to meet on Mar 6 to discuss Pectra's mainnet release timeline developers may opt to delay the mainnet deployment to ensure stability One key Pectra proposal that will benefit Ethereum validators is EIP-7251 which increases the maximum amount of ETH one can stake from 32 to 2,048 The change is meant to address today's clunky staking system where validators who stake more than their 32 ETH must split their stake across multiple nodes would let crypto wallets temporarily function as smart contracts The change moves Ethereum closer to account abstraction enabling wallets to offer more user-friendly features users could pay transaction fees in stablecoins instead of ETH set up automatic payments for subscriptions or recover access to their wallets without relying on complex seed phrases Pectra's rocky test cycle comes as Ethereum's developers are under pressure to ship upgrades more quickly Some Ethereum fans fear the network is losing its edge to newer chains like Solana which has gained mindshare in recent months due to its popularity among meme coin users The price of ETH has also recently underperformed relative to other major coins and the Ethereum Foundation—the non-profit steward of the network's development—has been beset by leadership drama Read more: Ethereum’s Pectra Upgrade Goes Live on ‘Holesky’ Testnet, but Fails to Finalize South Korean conglomerate taps Arbitrum to integrate with web3 users the largest layer-2 network on top of Ethereum the multibillion-dollar South Korean conglomerate known for its vast portfolio of shopping malls media companies and entertainment properties STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.According to Offchain Labs the non-profit that stewards the project's development a financial deal is in the works that would cement Arbitrum as the main blockchain infrastructure provider for "Caliverse," Lotte's metaverse gaming platform A representative for the Arbitrum Foundation told CoinDesk on Tuesday that Lotte had received the project's "biggest-ever" grant of $ARB tokens the Foundation and Offchain Labs retracted this statement later in the day clarifying that such a deal has not been finalized Caliverse is mainly a venue where the South Korean megacompany experiments with emerging tech trends like artificial intelligence Caliverse users can explore virtual worlds featuring differing kinds of media content and futuristic shopping experiences The app currently features content from a grab-bag of big brands ranging from 7-Eleven to the Tomorrowland music festival play games and experience other kinds of media within the Caliverse app The planned integration with Arbitrum would give users the ability to pay for all of these services using crypto The Arbitrum blockchain has become a popular choice among gaming platforms with the network experiencing a 72% year-over-year growth in 2024 for gaming According to a press release the company shared with CoinDesk Arbitrum currently hosts 119 game titles and 23 gaming-focused blockchains through its Arbitrum Orbit stack a customizable toolkit that lets developers create their own blockchains based on Arbitrum’s technology "Arbitrum’s blockchain is the ideal home ground for Caliverse thanks to industry-leading 250ms block times that can enable seamless virtual world and gaming use cases," said Steven Goldfeder "The Arbitrum technology stack will provide users of Caliverse a seamless and consumer-friendly experience setting a new standard for Arbitrum-based interactions in virtual worlds." Read more: Trading Platform Robinhood, Layer-2 Arbitrum Team Up To Offer Swaps To Users CORRECTION (1/8/25 00:49 UTC): Representatives for the Arbitrum Foundation originally told CoinDesk they had awarded Lotte the "biggest-ever" $ARB ecosystem grant. After this article was published, the Foundation said it misspoke and clarified that a deal has not been finalized. Newton will allow for wallet solutions to plug into the AggLayer which is a Polygon-backed effort to connect affiliated chains and allow tokens to freely move between them Magic Labs claims its the first dedicated network for wallet solutions and chain unification STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.Newton is supposed to enable liquidity sharing across multiple blockchains plugged into the AggLayer The AggLayer is one of Polygon’s latest innovations aimed at unifying liquidity and fragmentation across various blockchains Blockchains that are not built with Polygon’s technology also have the option to plug into the AggLayer to gain access to other networks in Polygon’s ecosystem “Chain unification is inevitable — like ACH or SWIFT for crypto,” said Sean Li “Developers can build user experiences that eliminate barriers Users should only care about transaction cost and speed Eliminating UX barriers will unlock the best use cases.” Memorably, Magic Labs was one of the first users of magic links in Web3, a passwordless sign-in method that numerous crypto wallet providers have embraced. In February 2023, crypto wallet startup Dfns found a critical vulnerability in magic links which Magic Labs patched and resolved quickly thereafter Read more: Crypto Wallet Firm Dfns Says ‘Magic Links’ Have Critical Vulnerability UPDATE (17:22 UTC): Adds paragraph about magic links. declining a statistically insignificant 7% from a year earlier and the number of monthly active developers went to 23,613 in November was the most popular blockchain among new developers an 83% increase in its ecosystem compared to a year earlier this community became the first since 2016 to bring on board more devs than Ethereum Solana attracted 7,625 new developers in 2024 the most of any chain and a little over 1,000 more than Ethereum The results underscore the challenge Ethereum faces as rival smart contract platform Solana's low fees and fast transactions attract investment and talent the share of developers who have worked in crypto for more than two years grew in 2024 “These are people who effectively joined during the bear market and haven’t really seen anything since then,” Shen told CoinDesk in an interview The stability of the developer population is an auspicious sign “When we look at the sector of established developers it's growing and looking very healthy," she said "When we look at full-time developers . and mainly because of the losses from people who joined less than a year ago and then less than two years ago.” Despite Solana’s momentum and massive increase in new developer talent “Ethereum absolutely dominates,” said Shen “Ethereum has very The number of monthly Ethereum developers shrank by 17% over the last year but Shen said this blockchain still has the biggest developer ecosystem by far “Ethereum dominates by overall developers everywhere But Solana is currently number two,” Shen said Growth in Ethereum development can mainly be attributed to the vast number of layer-2 networks that have popped up and Arbitrum seeing many developers working on their chains Slightly more than half – 56% – of Ethereum developers are working on the layer-2s on top of it brought in a period of massive developer innovation for its ecosystem as protocols deployed their Actively Validated Services (AVS) in the ecosystem Eigenlayer was the fastest growing developer ecosystem in 2024 with a 167% increase by monthly overall developers Electric Capital’s report also showed that crypto is becoming more global as Asia became the continent with the biggest number of blockchain developers and North America dropped from first place to third remains the number one country for now for developers brought on board more new crypto developers in 2024 than any other country there's a lot of education programs and developer education programs there's a lot of hackathons in India,” Shen said The geographic diversification of developers is another salubrious trend and North America continues its dominance is not only unlikely "You do want to see more global diversity in crypto and I think there's a lot of great engineering talent outside of the U.S." Read more: Crypto Developers Grew in Numbers Amid Bear Market, VC Firm Electric Capital Says one of the "seven sisters" in the star constellation known as Pleiades shown in an artistic rendering here inside the ring of circles modified by CoinDesk using PhotoMosh) Ethereum developers agreed on Thursday to split their upcoming hard fork in a move to make the massive upgrade less unwieldy and reduce the risk of missteps or bugs The decision to split up the upgrade wasn't unexpected. Developers had discussed previously that Pectra was becoming too ambitious to ship all at once floating the idea of splitting it up in order to minimize the risk of finding bugs in the code (A hard fork is the technical term for when a blockchain splits from its original and is the method used by Ethereum to implement major software upgrades.) Now developers will be able to focus on a much narrower scope developers shared they would aim to have the upgrade live in early 2025; that is still the case for the first part of the Pectra package The core developers decided that eight Ethereum improvement proposals (EIPs) will be included in the first package, which includes EIP-7702, aimed at improving the user-experience of wallets, and famously scribbled by Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin in 22 minutes The second package is up to be changed over the next few months, but as of now could include proposals that aim to make changes to the Ethereum Virtual Machine, known as EOF, along with introducing a feature called PeerDAS which improves data availability sampling and ultimately is beneficial for layer-2 blockchains The developers acknowledged that the scopes of these upgrades can change over time so solidifying this upgrade wouldn't be wise in this moment "There seems to be agreements to split current Pectra somehow," said Ethereum Foundation researcher Alex Stokes it can be tricky to not want to put new things in just because then that's going to maximize our chances of actually shipping the second fork very quickly with respect to this first one,” Stokes added Read more: Ethereum Devs Poised to Split Blockchain's Next Big Upgrade, 'Pectra,' in Two said Thursday that it is launching its own layer-2 network atop the Ethereum blockchain based on technology borrowed from Optimism – the same provider that powers rival Coinbase's layer-2 network The disclosure comes nearly a year after CoinDesk broke the news that Kraken was considering its own layer-2 network following the runaway success enjoyed by Base after it launched in mid-2023 a customizable toolkit that lets developers create their own blockchains using Optimism’s technology The network is expected to go live in early 2025 Creating one’s own layer-2 is hardly new at this point Starknet and Arbitrum have all come out with their own stacks hoping to convince firms to opt into its technology But Kraken's choice might help cement OP Stack as the undisputed leader among technology providers for new Ethereum layer-2 networks Rival Arbitrum is the biggest layer-2 project, with total collateral value locked (TVL) of about $13.6 billion, according to the website L2Beat That's far ahead of Optimism's flagship network But in terms of the family of layer-2 projects using Optimism's technology they are branded by Optimism project leaders under the term "Superchain." there's 29 projects using Arbitrum tech “An L2 is only as good as the value it brings to users and that value is created by a thriving ecosystem of developers,” said Andrew Koller Ink is laying the groundwork for an interoperable and pluralistic on-chain ecosystem that will attract developers and make Ink the ideal platform for the next generation of DeFi applications and protocols.” Read more: Kraken Said to Seek Partner to Help Build It a Layer 2 Blockchain Network (Sumaid pal Singh Bakshi/ Unsplash+/Photomosh) Welcome to The Protocol activated its highly anticipated Avalanche9000 upgrade Monday marking the ecosystem's biggest technical changes to date with new features that will cut the costs for sending transactions operating validators and building applications on the network Leaders at Avalanche have previously told CoinDesk that part of the goal with the upgrade is to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage them to create customized blockchains using its technology The two biggest changes that were implemented were known as ACP-77 and ACP-125 ACP-77 is a proposal that introduces a new type of validator These new nodes are less costly to operate with the aim of therefore bringing in more people to spin them up and create their own Avalanche-based networks where users can stake AVAX and operate validators; and the X-chain which is used for sending and receiving funds.) The Avalanche Foundation announced that ahead of the upgrade Read more: Avalanche Raises $250M Amid Major Overhaul of Layer-1 Blockchain The news comes as as Celestia's native token, TIA, is down 54% since the beginning of 2024, according to CoinMarketCap. Celestia had one of the hottest airdrops of 2023 “When Celestia launched last year as the first modular data availability layer, it scaled blockspace from the dial-up era to the broadband era,” said Mustafa Al-Bassam, co-founder of Celestia, in a blog post shared with CoinDesk the core developers have introduced the technical roadmap to scale blockspace to the fiber optic era – while keeping it verifiable and low latency.” Celestia is part of a growing field of modular blockchains aimed to solve scalability issues with features that enhance the speed or execution of transactions It is also a provider of data availability which is pitched as a cheaper alternative to storing data on layer-1 blockchains like Ethereum Read more: Celestia's TIA Token Surges 25%, Leaves Crypto Traders in Disbelief The network, called Ink, is based on the OP stack, a customizable framework that lets developers build their own rollups using Optimism’s technology. The team had originally planned for Ink to go live in early 2025 so the launch of its main network is ahead of schedule Kraken agreed to receive 25 million OP tokens (worth about $58 million) as part of a deal to build on the OP Stack. Optimism has acknowledged that handing out developer grants for participants building on the stack is part of its strategy which in turn contributes back to the wider “Superchain” ecosystem Kraken competitor Coinbase said in August 2023 that it would build a layer-2 network with OP Stack. The product, called Base, is now the second-largest rollup network according to L2beat. At the time, Optimism said the Base team would receive up to 118 million OP tokens and would contribute the higher of 2.5% of its sequencer revenue or 15% of its profits to the Optimism Collective Other participants building a layer 2 with the OP Stack — including Uniswap and Sony Blockchain Labs — have not said how many OP tokens they expect to receive as part of their deals and now our boldest work really begins – growing Ink,” said Andrew Koller “We’re pushing the boundaries of on-chain experiences to unlock new applications and opportunities for builders and users alike security and UX enhancements on a foundation of deep liquidity.” Read more: Kraken Picked Optimism's 'Superchain' After Getting a Pile of OP Tokens is moving ahead with a major technical makeover The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment (testnet) Monday bringing the changes one step closer to the main network (mainnet) The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2 networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend but the two most significant changes are ACP-77 and ACP-125 The ACP-77 proposal would allow for a new type of validator with which users can launch their own subnets The new validators will be significantly cheaper to operate The validators will also be permissionless from the operator of a decentralized exchange to the developers of another blockchain it wasn't possible for a dYdX or Monad to use Avalanche to launch their own L1 And that was because all the chains were permissioned and that was the only functionality that was available,” said Luigi D’Onorio Demeo we can have a chain with thousands of validators that wasn't possible before.” “This basically puts C-chain fees equivalent to Arbitrum and Polygon,” D’Onorio Demio said referring to two of the leading L2s on the Ethereum chain In addition to Avalanche9000 going live on testnet, the blockchain’s grants program opened up Monday for developers to register and start building subnets in the testing environment The foundation will reward them retroactively when they launch those subnets on mainnet “We'd love to see people experiment with different types of infrastructure like staking contracts We'd love to see people experiment by building their own L1s,” D’Onorio Demio told CoinDesk “If you're more in the market for building a chain Retro9000 has $40 million in rewards to distribute, with $2 million designated for business development executives, influencer-investors ("key opinion leaders") and the like who refer others to build on Avalanche “For the referral component: the idea there is if you're a KOL or a BD person and you know people that are potentially viable to build this kind of stuff And you will be eligible to also receive parts of the $2 million as well in retroactive grants,” D’Onorio Demio said Read more: Avalanche Unveils $40M Grant Program Ahead of 'Avalanche9000' Upgrade Ethereum Name Service Founder Nick Johnson (ENS) The company behind the ENS blockchain domain service has cinched a plan to build its own layer-2 blockchain dubbed “Namechain.”Namechain will be a zero-knowledge rollup and will likely go live around the end of 2025.ENS Labs the company behind the Ethereum Name Service is moving ahead with a plan to launch its own layer-2 network Namechain, as the new network is called, should go live around the end of next year, ENS Labs' chief operating officer, Katherine Wu, told CoinDesk. It will use zero-knowledge rollups a scaling technology that speeds blockchain transactions and reduces the cost of executing them by compressing the amount of data published on-chain but at a fraction of the cost,” ENS Labs said in a press release Monday The new network will leverage the infrastructure of an existing zero-knowledge chain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine The team is in the final stages of choosing which zkEVM it will use ENS is blockchain's answer to the web's domain name service. Just as domain names (Amazon.com, WhiteHouse.gov) are human-readable and easier to remember than numerical IP addresses ENS names are more relatable than crypto wallet addresses Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin's ENS handle which rolls off the tongue better than his address (0xd8dA6BF26964aF9D7eEd9e03E53415D37aA96045 In May, ENS Labs proposed overhauling the project's registry system by transforming it into an L2. At the time, it had not yet committed to the ZK rollup model will see a complete re-architecture of the ENS protocol "The heavy technical lift here will be in making sure that Namechain is backward compatible with ENSv1 (the current set up on Ethereum mainnet) from day one of launch," Wu wrote there should be no difference on the front end/user experience as we launch Namechain which allows developers to clone its code to create their own blockchains “Namechain represents ENS' next evolution and I'm excited for the huge improvements it will bring in scalability and cost and the new applications it will enable,” said ENS Labs' co-founder and lead developer Read more: Ethereum-Based Domain Protocol ENS Seeks Own L2, Possibly With ZK Rollups shared last week that it would launch a layer-2 called Ink relying upon the Optimism's blockchain ecosystem's OP Stack framework – and become part of the fast-growing "Superchain" that also includes layer-2 networks from the crypto exchange Coinbase along with the electronics giant Sony and decentralized exchange Uniswap But there was a price: Both projects have confirmed to CoinDesk that the Optimism Foundation agreed to provide grants to Kraken in the amount of 25 million OP tokens – worth roughly $100 million earlier this year a customizable toolkit that lets users create their own layer-2 rollups based on Optimism’s technology Kraken clarified with CoinDesk that under the deal, the token allocation would be paid to Kraken in grants over a time period. On Jan. 1 , the OP token was worth $3.99, according to CoinGecko The Optimism Foundation confirmed the number of tokens involved in the deal and declined to comment further the number is similar to various other deals that are part of the Superchain ecosystem “And it was actually Optimism that proposed that number first and it was very in line with what other Superchain participants have gotten,” Koller told CoinDesk in an interview AI pioneer Sam Altman’s blockchain project, World, known for its controversial iris-scanning orbs, went live with its layer-2 Worldchain in August In a series of posts on X after CoinDesk published this story, the Optimism Foundation's chief growth officer, Ryan Wyatt, wrote that the deal included "5M OP to help fund the engineering efforts for Ink 20M for massive txn milestones to drive fees to the Collective." "The Collective is not going to stop investing in developers," Wyatt added the grant with the Optimism Foundation is based on transactions per month then there's different tranches that get unlocked and then the rest gets unlocked at each month.” Base has a slightly different setup, being one of the first in the space under this program. Base disclosed in a blog post in August 2023 that it would receive up to 2.75% of the OP token supply over a six-year period The total supply of OP tokens is currently close to 4.3 billion which makes Base eligible to receive up to 118 million OP tokens I think all Superchain participants are really driving that around activity,” Koller said Deals between layer-2 projects and big firms are not unheard of in the blockchain industry. In 2022, Polygon paid Starbucks $4 million in grants to build an NFT-powered loyalty program At the time of the Starbucks deal, Polygon was led by Wyatt, who was ousted in 2023, according to a CoinDesk report. Wyatt joined the Optimism Foundation in November 2023 in charge of onboarding more developers to build across the Optimism ecosystem so you're gonna make good decisions and bad decisions in this space There's not a lot you can lend at,” Wyatt told CoinDesk in an interview this week conducted before CoinDesk learned about the Kraken deal Read more: Kraken Picks Optimism for New Layer-2 Network, Joining Coinbase's Base on 'Superchain' UPDATE (15:34 UTC): Adds comments from Optimism Foundation's Wyatt, from posts on X. The news comes as Fabric announced last month a $33 million series A round to create "verifiable processing units," or VPUs a custom chip designed for cryptography and blockchains Provers are a key component of blockchain systems built around zero-knowledge cryptography which emerged last year as one of the crypto industry's hottest design features The AggLayer is a Polygon project to make token transfers seamless between affiliated blockchain networks Fabric will work closely with Polygon Labs to accelerate the AggLayer’s roadmap by developing software to run Plonky2 and Plonky3 on the VPU and Polygon Labs will work closely with Fabric to ensure future generations of the VPU will accelerate the AggLayer’s long-term roadmap,” Polygon wrote in their press release The team also shared that Polygon Labs will acquire $5 million worth of VPU-based server systems as part of today’s announcement in order to accelerate ZK-proof generation projects on the AggLayer “Fabric’s VPUs can accelerate the timeline for wider adoption of zero-knowledge technology from three to five years to six to 12 months,” Polygon co-founder Mihailo Bjelic said in the press release shared with CoinDesk implementing this tech will massively accelerate the development of the AggLayer affordable proofs that nobody thought would come for years and much lower proving costs than previously thought possible in the medium-term.” Read more: Fabric, Startup Building 'VPU' Chips for Cryptography, Raises $33M Sony's layer-2 blockchain Soneium goes live the 78-year-old Japanese electronics giant is the latest legacy megacorp to explore blockchain technology the company announced that it is officially launching "Soneium," a general-purpose blockchain platform describes Soneium — technically a layer-2 network atop Ethereum — as "a versatile general-purpose blockchain platform" built to support a diverse ecosystem of gaming the launch comes after a four month-long test period that involved participation from 14 million wallets Sony's network is yet more evidence that traditional technology companies might again be keen on blockchain's ability to connect and commercialize the future of media The chain is aimed towards "bridging the gap between web2 and web3 audiences fans and community,” SBSL said in a statement shared with CoinDesk “The platform prioritizes user-centric design simplifying blockchain interactions and evolving web3 from a niche hobby into an everyday experience.” The team tapped Optimism’s OP Stack to build out their network — a customizable framework that lets developers use optimistic rollup technology to transact on Ethereum quickly and at a low cost Other companies using the OP Stack include the U.S. crypto exchanges Coinbase and Kraken, which use the tech to power their popular Base and Ink networks also use OP Stack to power their layer-2 blockchain networks In many cases, the Optimism Foundation, which stewards the development of the OP Stack, has awarded grants to companies that agreed to use its tech. SBSL declined to comment on how many OP tokens they would receive as part of this deal, though previous reporting indicates that Optimism's grants can be substantial In August 2023, Coinbase received up to 118 million OP tokens — worth $182 million at the time, or $192 million at today's prices — to use OP Stack for Base chain. CoinDesk also reported that Kraken received up to 25 million OP tokens when it agreed to use the OP Stack in January 2024 (now worth $42 million) Similar grants are doled out by Optimism competitors like Polygon and Arbitrum each of whom is dueling to build its own interconnected web of blockchains Read more: Sony, Electronics Pioneer Behind Walkman, Starts Own Blockchain 'Soneium' Polygon Labs CEO Marc Boiron (Polygon Labs) Polygon a layer-2 network atop the Ethereum blockchain was on track to activate an upgrade on Wednesday that swaps out its longstanding MATIC token for a new POL token allowing for more flexibility on issuance of new supply The swap was due to start at 4 a.m. ET (8 a.m. UTC). The planned switch was originally disclosed more than a year ago The migration comes as a part of Polygon's planned revamp laid out last year in its “2.0” roadmap to make POL the native token of its main chain – known as the Polygon PoS chain – and eventually other chains in the ecosystem essentially a system for aggregating affiliated blockchains built using Polygon technology There are proposals for POL to support broader roles in the Polygon staking hub – to be released in 2025 – including block generation zero-knowledge proof generation and participation in Data Availability Committees (DACs) “This community-driven upgrade comes at a crucial moment when every aspect of Polygon is changing," according to a blog post The migration from POL to MATIC will also bring some tokenomics changes. Polygon shared that the token will have a new emission rate of 2% annually, where part of the supply goes to validators on Polygon PoS for rewards and the other part to the community treasury “a self-sustainable ecosystem fund that can support the above activities.” “The biggest reason why the upgrade was needed from a technical perspective is that the MATIC upgrade keys were burned very intentionally years ago Which basically means that we can't make changes to that token,” said Marc Boiron “So one of the things that we wanted was to introduce emissions that way It was literally impossible to do that otherwise.” Boiron reiterated that introducing emissions is supposed to help the Polygon community ecosystem by introducing a grants program as part of the community treasury allowing them “some form of control by the community over the funds so that you can grow the ecosystem.” validators to receive emissions,” Boiron added if you think of these new chains that pop up what's going to happen is that with time they're going to want to decentralize And so instead of just having a centralized sequencer they're going to need to incentivize people to actually run a decentralized group or a decentralized prover or if they don't want to launch a token yet what this does is that a portion of that POL emissions can actually be used to decentralize their network and then POL holders will then receive fees from that network.” Read more: Polygon Sets September Date for Migration to POL Token from MATIC Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin speaks at the EthCC conference on Wednesday in Brussels (Margaux Nijkerk) There's the bully pulpit Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin wrote on X that he will be weighing in on layer 2 networks differently in his public posts from now on – omitting mentions of those projects that aren't decentralized enough etc) L2s that are stage 1+,” Buterin wrote or if you're my friend; stage 1 or bust.” I take this seriously. Starting next year, I plan to only publicly mention (in blogs, talks, etc) L2s that are stage 1+, with *maybe a short grace period* for new genuinely interesting projects.It doesn't matter if I invested, or if you're my friend; stage 1 or bust.Multiple… pic.twitter.com/4cGxgsfmUc In 2022, Buterin proposed a set of stages for rollups to classify them in their pursuit of decentralization The criteria is meant to showcase that rollups tend to rely on “training wheels” and deploy their protocols to users before it's ready to fully decentralize “While a project’s tech is still immature, the project launches early anyway to allow the ecosystem to start forming, but instead of relying fully on its fraud proofs or ZK proofs, there is some kind of multisig that has the ability to force a particular outcome in case there are bugs in the code,” Buterin wrote in a blog post in 2022 multisig is short for a key that can be controlled by combining multiple signatures – often representing a small group of people who could make changes under emergency conditions essentially bypassing the typical consensus process used to validate the network Buterin has categorized the projects in three different stages Stage 0 is when a layer 2 network relies on full training wheels Stage 1 is when it has limited training wheels but is running with fraud proofs – an important cryptographic process that avoids the need for a single centralized entity to settle any layer-2 transactions to the base Ethereum blockchain Stage 2 means a project is fully decentralized L2Beat tracks how the different layer-2 protocols rank in terms of those different stages none of the leading rollups has reached Stage 2 “The era of rollups being glorified multisigs is coming to an end," Buterin wrote on X "The era of cryptographic trust is upon us.” Read more: Vitalik Buterin Reflects On Strengths, Weaknesses of Ethereum, 'Hardening' the Blockchain Ava Labs CEO Emin Gun Sirer (Ian Allison/CoinDesk) The foundation supporting the Avalanche network is releasing a $40 million grant program to reward developers for building new protocols in the blockchain ecosystem is supposed to encourage developers to build on Avalanche ahead of a much-anticipated upgrade known as Avalanche9000 the Avalanche Foundation said Thursday in a press release STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.“Normally and then you hopefully get adoption for it,” said Luigi D'Onorio DeMeo “We kind of want to spin that on its head a little bit and instead elongate the testnet process and do sort of what you can call an incentivized testnet.” Builders and users will have to register with the Retro9000 platform to build on Avalanche where the users receive some voting credits “They'll be able to effectively vote with those credits during the incentivized testnet on the builders and this is going to be used as a signal for the Avalanche Foundation to then retroactively grant the participants afterwards,” D'Onorio DeMeo said “For a builder to actually qualify for the retroactive grant they will have to eventually deploy on mainnet," D'Onorio DeMeo said The goal here is to allocate a substantial amount of funds Avalanche9000 is expected to be Avalanche’s largest upload since its mainnet launch in 2020 It’s supposed to make launching layer 1s on Avalanche cheaper easier to customize and smoother to maintain The project's native token, AVAX, is down about 29% this year – underperforming Ethereum's ETH The date for Avalanche9000 has not been set but the testnet will be launched in October we will hope that people will deploy their projects at mainnet and then reward them retroactively,” he said Read more: Avalanche Becomes Latest Blockchain to Support Franklin Templeton's Tokenized Money Market Fund Matter Labs CEO Alex Gluchowski (Margaux Nijkerk/CoinDesk) Matter Labs laid of 16% of of its team which could amount to more than 30 people."We went through a large org planning exercise and it became clear that the talent and roles we have today do not perfectly match our needs," CEO Alex Gluchowski wrote.Matter Labs the main developer behind the Ethereum layer-2 protocol ZKsync laid off 16% of its employees as part of a restructuring to adapt to "the different type of technology and support" developers building on system now require "We went through a large org planning exercise, and it became clear that the talent and roles we have today do not perfectly match our needs," Gluchowski wrote in his Tuesday post. Matter Labs may have as many as 200 employees according to its LinkedIn profile so the layoffs could amount to more than 30 people with the goal of doing so faster and cheaper The proliferation of layer 2s may indicate that the sector needs to be reframed and looked at through a use case-specific lens, Gluchowski suggested in a recent interview with CoinDesk. Matter Labs released its Elastic Chain in June to tackle fragmentation between this multitude of layer 2s by enabling them to plug into its interoperability layer "I think that we will not need too many general purpose layer 2s but we do need some application specific L2s or community specific L2s,” he said in the interview "We have projects launching on the Elastic Chain that are just gaming chains which does not really need to be sharing infrastructure block space with DeFi or financial applications.” The protocol's ZKSync (ZK) token has dropped 3.14% in the past 24 hours according to CoinGecko ZK has lost about 64% of its value since its June debut See also: Solving Fragmentation Is Next Blockchain Race as Layer 2s Multiply, ZKsync Developer Says UPDATE (Sept. 3, 15:18 UTC): Adds detail and background throughout. Jamie has been part of CoinDesk's news team since February 2021, focusing on breaking news, Bitcoin tech and protocols and crypto VC. He holds BTC, ETH and DOGE. The news comes just eight months after Tune.FM shared it had raised $20 million in a funding round STORY CONTINUES BELOWDon't miss another story.Subscribe to the The Protocol Newsletter today. See all newslettersSign me upBy signing up, you will receive emails about CoinDesk products and you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy.Tune.FM which describes itself as a decentralized music-streaming project atop the Hedera Hashgraph blockchain aims to help artists earn more in royalties from their music by “streaming royalty micropayments and digital music collectibles,” with its native JAM token “Artists can expand their fanbase by promoting their music with JAM, so first-time listeners can play-to-earn JAM to discover newly promoted music. This allows artists to earn an ROI on their promotion as new fans discover and stream their music again and again,” Tune.FM wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk The new capital will go towards growing its users as well as towards efforts to promote its token, marketing, development, and new product offerings, Tune.FM said “Tune.FM will soon launch a desktop application for Mac and Windows to complement our mobile apps in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store,” the team shared in the press release Read more: Hedera-Based Tune.FM Raises $20M for Artist-Friendly Web3 Music Platform But there are so many developer priorities for what to tackle next that there's a growing realization they can't all happen at once Ethereum developers are considering dividing the highly anticipated Pectra upgrade into two parts is the technical blockchain term for the software upgrade.) But some developers argue that the entire package of new features has become unwieldy and they have expressed a desire to split it due to its complexities During an All Core Developers call last week Ethereum developers started to play with the idea that splitting the hard fork into two might be feasible who was one of the core developers pushing to split Pectra told CoinDesk over Telegram that “we’re talking about splitting it into two forks mainly to reduce the risk of a bug and to enable faster shipping of both forks.” On Thursday, Ethereum developers will decide in their upcoming All Core Developers Consensus layer call if Pectra will be split into two forks Ethereum developers haven’t disagreed much with the potential of splitting the fork, though EF researcher Ansgar Dietrichs toldCoinDesk that one downside would be pushing EIP-7594 PeerDAS aims to improve data availability on Ethereum and with the delay in the feature going live there might be slightly higher fees for layer-2 blockchains for the time being “PeerDAS is crucial to make sure L2s have more room for future throughput growth the more certain we can be that we can support whatever throughput L2s might need over the next year,” Dietrichs told CoinDesk we still have some room to go even before PeerDAS L2s will have slightly higher fees again for a few months while we wait for the second half of the Pectra fork.” I think a split is likely still the right decision.” “I think everyone agrees that it's a really big fork so a natural thing to do is just to break it into two,” said EF Researcher Alex Stokes on last week’s call Read more: Ethereum Set for Overhaul of Crucial Programming Standard With 'EVM Object Format' the Japanese electronics giant famous for developing the Betamax and Walkman in the 1970s Sony Block Solutions Labs, a joint project between Sony Group and Singapore-based Startale Labs said Friday it's coming out with a new layer-2 network atop the Ethereum blockchain called Soneium Soneium, expected to go live on a test network in the next few days, will make use of optimistic rollup technology, which allows users to transact on networks on top of Ethereum for cheaper. It will be built using the Optimism blockchain ecosystem’s OP Stack a customizable toolkit that lets developers create their own networks using Optimism’s technology with connections to other networks in the ecosystem via the “Superchain.” Other networks that have famously chosen to use of OP Stack are the U.S. crypto exchange Coinbase’s “Base” and decentralized-identity project Worldcoin’s “World Chain.” but making use of Polygon’s zero-knowledge technology Startale will be focusing its efforts and resources from now on only on Soneium “Astar zkEVM will be integrating its assets and underlying infrastructure with Soneium,” Sony Block Solutions Labs wrote in a press release shared with CoinDesk The “first year is all about onboarding Web3 people because technology-wise and the community-wise it is a little bit early to onboard the general users,” Watanabe told CoinDesk So we would like to integrate Web3 and blockchain technology into Sony's product but also all enterprises and all general dapps on the top of it.” We're going to try to onboard enterprises as many as possible from the first year,” Watanabe added Read more: Sony Network Communications Invests $3.5M in Singapore Web3 Company Startale Labs the main developer firm behind the layer-2 network Polygon said Wednesday that it will be performing the technical upgrade that swaps out its MATIC token for its new POL token starting on Sept The migration comes as a part of Polygon’s planned revamp laid out last year in its “Polygon 2.0” roadmap. The change was initially proposed in July 2023 to its community and would make POL the main token for all Polygon networks “POL is a hyperproductive token that can be used to provide valuable services to any chain in the Polygon network including the AggLayer itself,” Polygon wrote in their blog post MATIC holders on the Polygon PoS chain won’t have to do anything for this upgrade and their tokens will show up in POL For those using MATIC on Polygon’s zkEVM rollup they will need to go through various steps Polygon will tested the token upgrade on July 17 in a test network environment in order to identify or fix any issues before POL is live on mainnet Read more: Polygon Takes Wraps Off Version 2.0 built with the aim of allowing users to transact for cheaper on top of Ethereum laid out its roadmap on Monday for what it's describing as a native interoperability solution addressing issues of fragmentation between the various Optimism chains which is the developer firm behind the ZKsync blockchain Among the top 20 layer-2 blockchains tracked by the data site L2Beat those have some $16 billion of total value locked which exceeds the $15.1 billion boasted by the biggest individual layer-2 network When teams launch their own networks using OP Stack, they agree to sign on to Optimism’s Superchain ethos: a series of economic and cultural agreements that contribute to Optimism’s ecosystem the best way to think about the Superchain is that it's a set of people and organizations that are aligned towards the common goal of elevating humanity and upgrading capitalism,” said Mark Tyneway “All of the chains that are a part of the Superchain they pay a part of the revenue that they make at running their sequencer to the Optimism governance and Optimism governance does retroactive public goods funding,” meaning it distributes tokens and grants to those who contribute to Optimism’s ecosystem One drawback stifling growth has been that the networks that are part of the Superchain rely on Ethereum to communicate with each other in order to move assets which tends to make such moves slow and expensive Optimism is coming out with its own native interoperability layer so networks in the Superchain have an easier time communicating with each other “The Superchain needs to feel like one chain,” the Optimism team wrote in a blog post shared with CoinDesk we're setting out to build a unified Superchain where users and developers move seamlessly across the network and beyond.” The Optimism team plans to have the native interoperability solution up and running on mainnet by early 2025 the Optimism team will launch the interoperability layer on a developer network soon it lets you basically read information from one chain and process that information on another chain,” Tyneway told CoinDesk Read more: Optimism Finally Gets Its Mission-Critical 'Fault Proofs' Polygon Co-founder Daniel Lubarov (Polygon Labs) Polygon Labs the main developer firm behind the layer-2 blockchain Polygon released on Tuesday the latest version of its zero-knowledge proving system “Plonky3” – designed to be more flexible than the previous model A proving system is at the heart of zero-knowledge rollups and a crucial component in the cryptographic security of distributed networks with multiple layers It is the piece of technology responsible for creating proofs that summarize off-chain transactions so the information can then be fed back to a base blockchain The system ensures “that a transaction was correctly executed or that a blockchain’s state has been updated properly,” according to a press release The company's previous proving system was introduced in 2022 as “a single proving system focused on lightning-fast recursion by optimizing for hardware,” Polygon wrote in the press release whereas Polygon Plonky3 is an "open-source toolkit that empowers ZK developers to build their own" virtual machines based on ZK cryptography When Polygon released Plonky2 in 2022, the project's developers claimed that it was 100 times faster than existing alternatives at the time “Plonky2 partly had some performance issues and partly didn't quite have the generality that we needed,” said Daniel Lubarov “We see it as more part of the future direction of Polygon technology.” “The proving system is the underlying thing that kind of allows us to do that [proving] efficiently and sort of within a practical level of performance,” Brendan Farmer Polygon has fully embraced zero-knowledge technology, seen as one of the hottest trends in blockchain. In 2021, Polygon acquired the Hermez and Mir teams among the most prominent zero-knowledge cryptography teams at the time Farmer and Lubarov co-founded Mir together Since then, Polygon was one of the first teams to launch a zero-knowledge rollup in 2023, and acquired a third firm to continue building out its zero-knowledge expertise and we also had a few other separate prover libraries one by the Miden group and one by the Hermez group within Polygon,” Lubarov told CoinDesk “Our plan now is to bring it all together under one code base and one framework.” Read more: Polygon Acquires Zero-Knowledge Cryptography Firm Toposware "By publicly giving the impression that you support 'pro-crypto' candidates just because they are 'pro-crypto,' you are helping to create an incentive gradient where politicians come to understand that all they need to get your support is to support 'crypto,'" Buterin posted on his blog Wednesday and favor political parties and candidates almost entirely on whether or not they are willing to be lenient and friendly to 'crypto,'" Buterin added and in particular I argue that making decisions in this way carries a high risk of going against the values that brought you into the crypto space in the first place." widely viewed as Ethereum's intellectual leader stand in stark contrast to the strongly pro-Trump rhetoric from other well-known crypto figures this is about electing politicians who will make the U.S an easier place for crypto businesses to operate Read more: Crypto Giants Notch Wins in Expensive Quest to Sway U.S. Politics – Without Mentioning Crypto On X, Selkis blasted Buterin for the post. "I respect Vitalik but he has always been among the most naive and useless political commentators in crypto. Idealism is not realism, and he pretends we aren’t dealing with a cultural cancer and infestation of Marxism. He's wrong." UPDATE (July 17, 2024, 21:24 UTC): Adds comments from Ryan Selkis. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin speaks at the EthCC conference on Wednesday in Brussels (Margaux Nijkerk) BRUSSELS – Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin gave a keynote talk about hardening the Ethereum blockchain as a base layer in front of a packed room full of an estimated 1,100 attendees at a developer conference in Brussels on Wednesday Buterin spoke at length during his presentation at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) about the strengths and weaknesses of the largest smart-contracts blockchain and its sprawling ecosystem including his concerns about transaction censorship as well as a proposal to increase the “quorum threshold” from 75% to 80% Weaknesses of the blockchain still need to be addressed including the difficulty of solo staking given the requirement for 32 ETH to become a validator for the blockchain and that running a node is technically complicated He said both of these issues “are very addressable.” The Ethereum community's intellectual leader ran through an array of technical improvements – meant to fix the various weaknesses that exist on Ethereum – that would allow for “protocol simplification.” it needs to be simple," Buterin told the crowd 73 random hooks and some kind of backwards compatibility because of some random dumb thing that this random guy called Vitalik came up with in 2014.” Buterin also expressed concerns about a 51% attack on the blockchain sharing that the collective Ethereum community assumption would be that everyone rally together force a minority soft fork and slash the attacker “It depends on a lot of assumptions around coordination and it's not clear how to do something like that as well in 10 years,” Buterin said One of Buterin’s more concrete proposals that he was advocating for came from the idea that recovering from chain attacks becomes very hard if that chain finalizes; increasing the quorum threshold to 75% to 80% might help prevent that “I think there's value in really doubling down on these strengths recognizing and fixing our inadequacies and making sure that we actually live up to our very high standards,” Buterin told the crowd Buterin has frequently made an appearance at EthCC in past years. In 2023 he spoke about challenges surrounding "abstraction," and the year before that he spoke about Ethereum ahead of the Merge Read more: Vitalik Buterin's Ethereum Wallet Proposal, Scribbled in 22 Minutes, Gets Positive Reviews known for its affiliation with the popular messaging app Telegram an investor focused on the TON blockchain ecosystem will rely on technology from the Ethereum-focused layer-2 developer Polygon The team made the announcement on Tuesday at the Ethereum Community Conference (EthCC) in Brussels which is akin to the Ethereum blockchain's operating system Such compatibility is crucial because developers who have built applications under the widespread Ethereum standard could easily port over to the new TAC layer-2 network within the TON ecosystem According to a press release shared with CoinDesk TAC is “designed to enable EVM-based decentralized applications to TON’s ecosystem” while also allowing Ethereum developers to build new programs for Telegram’s users The project's arrival could facilitate development of decentralized finance (DeFi) applications within the TON ecosystem as well as gaming and decentralized identity solutions “We chose to build on the Polygon ecosystem for its EVM compatibility seamless availability of liquidity from EVM chains via AggLayer and Polygon's EVM expertise,” Pavel Altukhov “The vibrant community surrounding Polygon was also a crucial factor in our decision.” The news comes as other major blockchain companies have pursued their own layer-2 networks over the past year Read more:Crypto Exchange OKX's Polygon-Powered Layer 2, 'X Layer,' Hits Public Mainnet CORRECTION (18:15 UTC): Corrects to show that the new project is being developed by TON Applications Chain, not the team behind the TON blockchain, as stated in an earlier version of the story.) RedStone Oracles co-founders Jakub Wojciechowski and Marcin Kazmierczak (RedStone) RedStone a provider of oracle data feeds for blockchains announced Tuesday that it raised $15 million in a series A round The fresh round of capital will go towards hiring new team members Participation in the round included SevenX Christian Angermayer's Samara Asset Group and HTX Ventures the largest restaking service on EigenLayer securing $500 million to help bring RedStone's data oracles to its ecosystem “Restaking is one of the areas where we are developing and very attractive for various reasons,” said Jakub Wojciechowski we have a first mover advantage," Wojciechowski said "A lot of LRTs (liquid restaking tokens referring to the liquid restaking protocols) started working with us it is a pretty complex challenge to technically start providing price points We have a very modular and flexible design to cater for that In addition to providing oracles for restaking protocols Read more: Ether.Fi Inks $500M Restaking Deal With RedStone Oracles announced Tuesday that it raised $12.5 million in a seed round led by Polychain Capital as well as angel investors including the Ethereum Foundation's Justin Drake and EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kanaan Pi Squared’s first product is its “Universal Settlement Layer,” which settles blockchain transactions – or as they call them, “claims” – in any programming language, Grigore Rosu, CEO of Pi Squared, said in an interview with CoinDesk. Rosu is a professor in computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the idea for Pi Squared came out of his career in academia. “I've done this research with my students over many, many years,” Rosu told CoinDesk. The company is also building a “Universal ZK Circuit,” which uses zero-knowledge technology to enable “trustless remote computing, AI and interoperable smart contract for any blockchain or dApp,” Pi Squared wrote in a press release. “This will be made possible through the creation of a universal and disarmingly small ZK circuit that checks the integrity of mathematical proofs, which will provide verifiable-computing correctness guarantees to all languages and virtual machines (VMs) alike directly from their formal semantics, without any translation to a common language, VM or instruction set architecture (ISA),” according to the company. Pi Squared is still in its proof-of-concept phase. Rosu said the project should be in testnet by the end of 2024. the main developer firm behind a new Ethereum scaling protocol designed to be so fast it's considered "real-time," announced Thursday that it has raised $20 million in a seed round led by Dragonfly Capital The round also saw participation from Figment Capital and included angel investors such as the co-founder of Ethereum Vitalik Buterin with the aim of having a testnet go live in the next few months MegaETH calls itself a “real-time blockchain,” meaning that it focuses on the speed of processing transactions with plans to stream “100,000 transactions per second with millisecond-level responsiveness.” “We define a real-time blockchain to be a blockchain that can process transactions as soon as they arrive,” said Yilong Li “Then you produce the resulting outputs at a very high frequency.” MegaETH achieves its scaling in two ways: through its “heterogeneous blockchain architecture which boosts performance by allowing network nodes with different hardware configurations to specialize on specific tasks,” as well as a “hyper-optimized EVM execution environment that pushes throughput latency and resource efficiency to hardware limits.” An EVM execution environment is a blockchain operating system compatible with Ethereum's programming standard The idea of MegaETH was partly inspired by Buterin’s 2021 blog post, titled “Endgame,” where he addresses scaling Ethereum. "Creating hyper-scalable EVM implementations is a key prerequisite for truly scaling Ethereum,” Buterin wrote in a message about MegaETH, forwarded by a MegaLabs representative over Telegram. “I am excited to see brilliant developers taking on this challenge."