A monthly update on Layer 2 protocols, 20th April — 12th May
TL;DR
- On April 6th, 2022 The Arbitrum Nitro Devnet built on Ethereum’s Görli testnet went live. Arbitrum Nitro is the most advanced rollup stack ever built, and it enables massively higher throughput and lower fees.
- The Optimism Collective has been introduced: The Optimism Collective is a large-scale experiment in digital democratic governance, built to drive rapid and sustainable growth of a decentralized ecosystem, and stewarded by the newly formed Optimism Foundation. The Collective is a band of communities, companies, and citizens united by a mutually beneficial pact to adhere to the axiom of impact=profit. This is outlined in depth in the Optimistic Vision. OP governance token with the first airdrop in Q2.
- Boba Network’s WAGMIv3 is here. WAGMI is the enhanced liquidity mining program, where the team rewards those who contribute to the sustained growth of the Boba ecosystem: their users and developers. Boba as a fee token is here.
- In collaboration with ImpactScope, the Metis team presented their Metis Earth Day Hackathon. The team has selected 55 applicants out of over 800 applications to be Metis Global Ambassadors.
- Polygon Supernets have been introduced, dedicated, scalable blockchains that aim to ignite mass adoption of Polygon and Web3. To support this ambitious product and goal, the team announced a $100M support fund. Meta is making a major foray into Web3, and Polygon will be powering it.
- The first version of StarkNet Bridge, StarkGate Alpha, StarkGate Alpha is live on mainnet.
- Maker announced the StarkNet Dai Bridge launch.
- As Loopring L2 continues to get a big influx of new users each week, please be sure to check out their knowledge base for all things Loopring L2. New video tutorial added to Loopring University. New community (wearable) NFT airdrops are coming. Make sure you have your Loopring L2 wallets activated.
- ZKSpace Mobile App for Android and iOS is here, bringing ZKSpace Layer 2 DEX, payment and NFT features to your fingertips. You can now use the Mobile App to perform almost all of the activities that are possible on the ZKSpace Web App (Eco Deposit and Fast Withdraw will be included in future versions).
- dYdX iOS app is now available to the public. This makes dYdX one of the first DeFi protocols to launch a dedicated mobile app and puts our user experience even more on par with centralized exchanges. CELO-USD, RUNE-USD, and ICP are now live.
- Earlier this year, GameStop announced it was building its first NFT marketplace on Ethereum, and Immutable X has been chosen to integrate its Ethereum L2 protocol marketplace to bring the next-gen of gaming NFT projects to GameStop customers. Also, the Immutable X Developer Launch Rewards program is back with bigger prizes. This program celebrates early-stage NFT collectibles in their journey on Ethereum, powered by Immutable X.
- The DeversiFi team launched a bug bounty scheme, offering rewards of $30,000+ for finding security issues on their app, website, API, or Discord.
- The state of the Layer 2 ecosystem by L2BEAT.
- Optimistic rollup price differences due to data compression.
- Potential future hybrid ZK/Optimistic rollup.
- Disaggregated blockchain layers.
- And more!
Stats
How much does it cost to use Layer-2?
Optimistic rollups
Arbitrum One
- On April 6th The Arbitrum Nitro Devnet built on Ethereum’s Görli testnet went live. Arbitrum Nitro is the most advanced rollup stack ever built, and it enables massively higher throughput and lower fees.
🚀Live on Arbitrum:
- The Raiden Network is now live on Arbitrum.
- Utopia Labs just deployed on Arbitrum and they’re building a great payment/payroll platform for DAOs on L2.
- SushiSwap’s MISO v2 launchpad has been unlocked on Arbitrum as well as on Polygon, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and Ethereum Mainnet.
- BitKeep has added support to Arbitrum.
- Hashflow launched their bridgeless cross-chain swap platform: You can trade between different assets on Ethereum Avalancheavax, BNB Chain, Arbitrum, Polygon, all while retaining the Hashflow experience you’ve come to love — better prices, guaranteed execution, and as always, complete MEV resistance.
- $350k ETH Staking QF Round: Quadratic funding for public goods in the Ethereum staking ecosystem has come to Arbitrum. Thanks to clrfund, ethStaker, and the Ethereum foundation for leading this initiative.
- Deri Protocol is now live Arbitrum.
- DeFIL is now available on Arbitrum.
- Inferno will be using Arbitrum DeFi smart contracts for token staking in the Infernoverse. Once staking goes live, Keys minted on Ethereum mainnet may be staked on Arbitrum to earn our native token for use in crafting & trade.
- Game of Silks will be building their metaverse game on top of Arbitrum to take advantage of the low fees, high security, & all the Ethereum compatible tooling that comes with building on Arbitrum.
- You can now buy ETH on Arbitrum using the FLUID web app, in less than a minute.
- ChainHop now supports Arbitrum.
- How to Setup an Arbitrum Node by NOWNodes
Projects based on Optimism’s codebase:
Optimism
- The Optimism Collective has been introduced: The Optimism Collective is a large-scale experiment in digital democratic governance, built to drive rapid and sustainable growth of a decentralized ecosystem, and stewarded by the newly formed Optimism Foundation. The Collective is a band of communities, companies, and citizens united by a mutually beneficial pact to adhere to the axiom of impact=profit. This is outlined in depth in the Optimistic Vision. $OP governance token with the first airdrop in Q2.
The Optimism Collective will be governed co-equally by two houses:
-The Citizens’ House
-The Token House
Together, they will drive rapid, sustainable growth in Optimism, Ethereum, and the new internet.
- The Optimism Foundation will be led by two of the founders of Optimism: jinglejamOP (formerly CEO) and Ben Jones (formerly Chief Scientist). Joining them are Eva Beylin (The Graph Foundation), abbey_titcomb (Radicle Foundation), and Brian Avello (Maker Foundation). Liam Horne, formerly Head of Engineering at the PBC, is stepping into a new role as the CEO of OP Labs PBC (the new name for Optimism PBC) with continued support from Karl Floersch, Julien Boedec, b0bby, optimisticjosh, and the PBC’s new General Counsel, Trevor Dodge. Over the past 2 years, Liam has been key to leveling up the PBC’s culture of excellence and we’re incredibly excited to have him at the helm of OP Labs. OP Labs will be focused on building and decentralizing the protocol as well as product and business development.
- The team will be releasing a series of posts regarding governance, incentives, and protocol upgrades over the next few weeks to provide the community with every detail.
- The team refactored the whole bridge codebase and designed a new UI. It’s now cheaper, faster, and easier to move assets between Optimism, L1 Ethereum, other L2s, and CEXs.
- A New Chapter: Optimism mainnet launched over a year ago.
Since then, the team has:
- Saved users over $1.1B in gas fees
- Deployed over 6,800 contracts
- On-boarded over 300k unique addresses
- Secured over $900M of value
- Facilitated over $17.4B in transaction volume
- Generated over $24.5M in revenue
- Donated over $1M to public goods funding
As a company, they’ve grown right alongside the network. They now have:
- More than 40 employees
- Over $175M in funding led by a16z and Paradigm
- Depositing small (≤ 0.5) amounts of ETH to Optimism just became ~5x cheaper and ~15x faster.
- A Summer of Optimism
- Optimism Community AMA (pt2):
- Introducing: The Optimism Collective & $OP Airdrop #1 on Bankless.
- Synthetix & Lyra Incentivize sUSD liquidity on Optimism.
🚀Live on Optimism:
- Elk Finance now live on Optimism
- MAI is now on Optimism
- Nested has gone optimistic
- VelodromeFi, a new AMM based on Solidly launching soon on Optimism.
Metis Andromeda
- Metis Earth Day Hackathon: In collaboration with ImpactScope, the team presented their Metis Earth Day Hackathon. Submit your proposal to Metis here by Friday, May 6th, 2022 23.00 ET and tweet about it. Tag @MetisDAO and @impactscope
- The Tech Journey: Lower Gas Costs & Storage Layer on Metis
- Metis Fest: Your Destination for DAOs, Dapps and Dancefloors
- Enhanced Security & Gas Efficiency on Metis. Integrating API3 QRNG.
- The team has selected 55 applicants out of over 800 applications to be Metis Global Ambassadors. Didn’t get selected but still wants to be an ambassador? Join the Ambassadors TG, as active members will be chosen randomly.
- April CEG Nominations — Week 2 Metis Community Ecosystem Governance.
- AAVE V3 on Metis & Cross-Chain Interoperability ft. AAVE, Metis & deBridge.
- The Metis Crypto Protocol: What Is METIS Token? by Gemini.
- Analyzing Layer2 Metis: The Road to Decentralization.
- Congratulations to Metis’s first Community Verified Projects (CVP) from their Community Ecosystem Governance (CEG) Program.
- DCENTRAL: Metis DAO W Elena Sinelnikova.
- web3 Governance ft. Metis, AAVE Grants DAO, DAOist & Diana Chen.
- The Role of Decentralized Storage ft. MemoLabs x Metis:
🚀Live on Metis:
- Revenant is now live on Metis
- The Hermes (Maia DAO) scraper is now live, enabling the DIA platform to source market data from the Hermes DEX, operating on the Metis network.
- Defi Projects Landscape On Metis
Boba Network
- BOBA Token Receives Utility Boost, Now Used for Gas Fees on Boba Network: Boba as a fee token is here.
- Boba Network April Recap
- Boba Network WAGMI v3 Release Notes: WAGMI v2 was the most successful WAGMI, with the highest transaction volume and liquidity of any WAGMI cohort so far. OolongSwap destroyed their $25 million swap volume KPI with over $120M monthly swap volume when all was said and done; Bodh Finance saw an ATH of deposited liquidity; Sat.is held three awesome trading competitions; and Domination Finance, Celer, and Symbiosis Finance all came out with strong performances. Moreover, the team introduced the next iteration of their WAGMI incentives program, WAGMI v3. WAGMI is the enhanced liquidity mining program, where they reward those who contribute to the sustained growth of the Boba ecosystem: their users and developers. The ecosystem page continues to grow, with more and more projects taking advantage of Boba Network’s lightning-fast transaction times and cheap gas fees, with special interest in the Hybrid Compute platform.
- Application Guide: Boba Network Hackathon: Boba Network and DoraHacks announced the Boba Network Global Hackathon. From Mar 27 to May 22, developers from around the world are invited to compete for $100,000 in prizes, to be judged by a panel of Boba Network core members and tech leads from key ecosystem projects and partners, and to showcase your project to global Web 3.0 community.
- Boba is a proud sponsor of the L2 Rollathon, a virtual hackathon focused on scaling Layer2 ecosystems. Kickoff starts this Monday, May 2nd.
- Crowning someone special.
- Get to Know: Symbiosis Finance.
- Why L2s are key to crypto mass adoption with BOBA Network.
- Importance of L2 in crypto Mass adoption.
- Decentralized cross-chain protocol EYWA has received a grant from Boba Network developer.
- Gin Finance receives Boba Developer Grant to buidl the best DeFi solution on Boba.
- Gate supports L2 withdrawals / deposits to Boba Network.
- Coinexcom now supports BOBA for L2 Bridging. You can now withdrawal/deposit $BOBA from CoinEx to Boba Network.
- Boba Network (BOBA) Gets Listed on KuCoin
🚀Live on Boba Network:
- Shibui joins the WAGMI cohort.
- Olympus DAO joining the Boba Ecosystem. Olympus is building OHM, a community-owned, decentralized, and censorship-resistant reserve currency that is deeply liquid, asset-backed, and used widely across Web3.
- UniDex Exchange is deploying on the Boba Network.
Zero-knowledge rollups
Aztec
- Dollars and Sense: Cheap Privacy with Aztec Connect: How Aztec Connect grants Ethereum cheap privacy today.
- Aztec Community Call Recap.
Loopring
- New video tutorial added to Loopring University.
- New community (wearable) NFT airdrops are coming. Make sure you have your Loopring L2 wallets activated.
- As Loopring L2 continues to get a big influx of new users each week, please be sure to check out their knowledge base for all things Loopring L2.
Polygon
- Introducing Polygon Supernets, Powered by Polygon Edge; $100M Ecosystem Fund. Polygon Supernets are dedicated, scalable blockchains that aim to ignite mass adoption of Polygon and Web3.
- 4 Reasons Why Top VCs Invest in Polygon
- SX Network Secures $9.5 Million in Funding Led By Polygon & Hack VC
- Polygon Hits 19,000 DApps Milestone. That’s a 6x increase from 3,000 in October ’21 as per Alchemy Platform.
- DeFiForAll: Polygon Protocols Ally to Win QiDAO Wars
- These 5 Web3 Trends Are Reshaping the Business of Real Estate
- Citi has released a compelling report on Ethereum, highlighting Sandeep Nailwal’s belief in the mass adoption of Web3 and how Polygon is making blockchain more accessible for everyone.
- Polygon & CopeStudio created Finity, a design system for Web3. All the UI elements you’ll ever need are right at your fingertips. And the best part? It’s fully customizable.
- How to Bootstrap a Blockchain With Polygon Edge
- PolygonInsights — WEEK17
- PolyPulse #19: Stripe enables crypto payments in USDC on Polygon.
- A thread on Polygon’s success on Uniswap V3.
- Improving Staking Experience for Lido on Polygon.
- Check out the latest Polygon integrations here.
- PolygonTuesday with Meshswap ft. Sandeep Nailwal
- Episode 2 of this season’s Weekly Briefing is live:
🚀Live on Polygon:
- Facebook/Instagram NFTs to be powered by Polygon.
- Petaverse Network will make virtual NFT cats using Polygon.
- Stripe chose the Polygon network for “its low fees, speed, integration with Ethereum, and broad wallet compatibility (including MetaMask, Coinbase Wallet, and Rainbow)”. Find out more here.
StarkWare
- StarkGate Alpha is live on mainnet.
- Live thread of StarkNet Hackathon finalist presentations.
- Recap & thoughts by Hackathon judge & mentor @0xmarcello.
- Twitter thread recap of Devconnect’s crypto-native gaming day, featuring many StarkNet projects.
- The latest StarkNet Roundup with protocol and dev tool updates, ecosystem and media highlights.
- Weekly stats:
🚀Powered by StarkWare:
- The continually updated list of projects building on StarkNet.
- Celer’s Layer2.finance Launches in ZK Proofs Mode Built with StarkEx from StarkWare: This new version is built by integrating StarkWare’s StarkEx solution and aims to further reduce costs for the end user. This initial alpha release integrates with Compound protocol on Ethereum and will act as a starting point for a gradual expansion to other protocols and chains via Celer Inter-chain Messaging Framework as an inter-chain yield aggregation protocol.
- MakerDAO is creating instant liquidity on StarkNet.
- Chainstack announces support for StarkNet.
- CANVAS Connect — L2 for DeFi Pooling, gasless DeFi transactions powered by StarkWare ZK-Rollups, has been introduced.
- Topology announces Isaac, the first physics-powered onchain universe on StarkNet. Dedicated blog post here.
- Realms drop an explainer about their “modular game concept”, and tease a Pre-Alpha of their native StarkNet NFT Marketplace.
- Starkswap is proud to introduce Iron Fleet together with their friends at Yearn finance. Introducing Iron Fleet which will allow users on StarkNet to pool their assets together for interactions with layer 1 DeFi protocols such as Yearn and split the gas fees with each other.
- PlayRedline, a virtual and weather-influenced Robot Racing Game set in real cities and building on StarkNet, releases a charming preview showing off their 3D graphics.
- 120+ projects are on StarkNet and StarkEx:
zkSync
- devX upgrade: hardhat-deploy now supports zkSync:
🚀Live on zkSync
- Trustlessfi integrated with zkSync.
- Bundlr Network is now live on zkSync.
- NFTScan will be indexing NFT data on zkSync v2, and allow developers to easily query it through our open API.
- Fox Wallet is now live on v2 testnet and ready for devs to show off their dapps. The team has integrated zkSync zkevm testnet.
- Homespace Metaverse will officially become a part of the zkSync ecosystem.
- tofuNFT supports the zksync testnet in their frontend.
- UTORG is live in zkSync wallet.
- The Sell Outs rewards will be paid in Eth via zkSync L2.
ZKSpace
- Introducing ZKSpace Mobile App for Android and iOS Users: The much awaited ZKSpace Mobile App for Android and iOS is here, bringing ZKSpace Layer 2 DEX, payment and NFT features to your fingertips. You can now use the Mobile App to perform almost all of the activities that are possible on the ZKSpace Web App (Eco Deposit and Fast Withdraw will be included in future versions).
- ZKSpace Monthly Report — — March 2022
- James Rodriguez will launch 1500 NFT at Layer2 NFT Marketplace ZKSea late May. Details are to be revealed soon.
- Announcing Winners of ZKSpace Mobile App User Survey
Projects build using StarkEx
dYdX
- dYdX iOS app is now available to the public: After over 200,000 people signed up for the beta, the team announced that the dYdX iOS app is available to the public. This development makes dYdX one of the first DeFi protocols to launch a dedicated mobile app and puts the user experience even more on par with centralized exchanges. The app offers the same functionality and unparalleled product experience that are available on the main exchange website with the added convenience of being able to trade on your iPhone.
- CELO now live: CELO-USD is now live. Start trading Celo (CELO) today on dYdX, with up to 10x leverage.
- ICP is now live.
- RUNE-USD is live.
- dYdX Foundation announced the first wave of Ambassadors starting season 0 (May 1 — May 31).
- Should the Liquidity Provider Rewards formula be updated to include a maker volume parameter and weights v = 0.45, d = 0.35, s= 0.2?
Validium
Projects build using StarkEx
DeversiFi
- An update on aUST and your investment on DeversiFi.
- DeversiFi’s bug bounty programme: Report security issues, earn $30,000+: The DeversiFi team launched a bug bounty scheme, offering rewards of $30,000+ for finding security issues on their app, website, API, or Discord.
- Stake in Ethereum 2.0: no gas, no limits: The Ethereum Merge is approaching fast — and with DeversiFi you can help secure the future of the blockchain. It’s totally gas-free and the fees are only 0.05%.
Immutable X
- GameStop NFT Marketplace: bringing NFT gaming collections to players with Immutable X: Earlier this year, GameStop announced it was building its first Non-Fungible Token (NFT) marketplace on Ethereum. As the preferred platform partner, Immutable X has been chosen to integrate its Ethereum Layer 2 protocol marketplace and work closely with GameStop’s teams to bring the next generation of gaming NFT projects to GameStop customers, creating significant opportunities for participation and liquidity for all players.
- Immutable X Developer Launch Rewards V2: The Immutable X Developer Launch Rewards program is back with bigger prizes. This program celebrates early-stage NFT collectibles in their journey on Ethereum, powered by Immutable X. In the last round, the team celebrated CyberGalz for achieving more than $100,000 NFT L2 trades since their launch on Immutable X. To continue the efforts in recognizing exceptional projects building on Immutable X L2 ecosystem, the team will be giving away a reward pool worth up to 3,700,000 IMX tokens.
- Immutable update for Q1.
- In all of 2021 Immutable transacted ~$90m worth of NFTs…in the first quarter of 2022, it beat that by 109%.
- Immutable Studios’ Justin Hulog on His Time at Riot Games and The Future of Blockchainю
- A Guide to NFT Platform Security.
- Twitter 101: Growing Web3 Community on Twitter.
- Binance.US lists Immutable X $IMX.
🚀Powered by Immutable X:
- World Overlay x Immutable X: World Overlay is launching faction banner mints for their virtual world Aetheron with trading of assets supported by Immutable X carbon-neutral and gas-free transactions.
- Illuvium is launching its land sale on L2 ethereum with Immutable X.
- Immutable X announces one of their most anticipated games of the year — Bitverse powered by Kongregate.
- eterlast launches of House of Boxing.
- Habbo X NFT-based hotel will debut later this year.
MISC
- The top Total Value Locked of the reputable players:
- L2BEAT — The state of the layer two ecosystem.
- Optimistic rollup price differences due to data compression:
- Potential future hybrid ZK/Optimistic rollup:
- Disaggregated blockchain layers.
- OurNetwork #118: Coverage on L2s.
- Layer 2, Decentralized Exchanges Show Strong Growth on Ethereum in Q1 2022 on CoinDesk:
- Ethereum Layer 2 Networks Hit ‘Critical Mass’ as The Merge Approaches on Defiant:
- KZG commitments explainer (danksharding commitment scheme), more efficient than Merkle trees but requires trusted setup:
That’s all for today! Your feedback is highly appreciated! Let us know what you think about the format & content.
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