L2 report vol. 14

Paradigm

Published in

Paradigm

13 min readJan 24, 2023

A biweekly update on Layer 2 protocols, 9th January — 24th January

TL;DR

The sum of all funds locked on Ethereum converted to USD is $5.36 B at the time of writing.
A new Arbitrum Nitro release is here. Nitro nodes now support RPC queries with the “safe” and “finalized” block numbers. This release also includes various bug fixes and improvements. While this release isn’t tied to a consensus upgrade, please upgrade when possible. The Norwegian government is testing a cap table platform on Ethereum using Arbitrum layer 2 scaling. New blog post: Open Source Ethereum Infrastructure: A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Resources. What’s Hot in Arbitrum? on Bankless: Tune in to learn why and how Arbitrum is shaping the future of L2s, gaming, and NFTs. Twitter Spaces: Arbitrum x Axelar, Arbitrum x Celer, Arbitrum x Lyra, Arbitrum x CUT. Arbitrum devs can use Chainlink Automation to save time, scale faster, & create new features. On 1/24 at 1 PM ET, attend an online workshop with Arbitrum, Chainlink, & DefiEdge to get started automating your smart contracts. Livestream link. Ask An Arbinaut: Episode 2. The Graph Network is adding support for Arbitrum. Arbitrum Nova will be fully integrated into the Elixir.
OP Labs has completed the successful upgrade of Optimism’s Goerli Testnet to Bedrock. Deposits and withdrawals are re-enabled, and the Optimism Goerli Sequencer is back up & running. Curious about the kind of security measures that went into creating Optimism Bedrock? Well, you’re in luck, because OP Labs published a blog post outlining just that. The nomination window for RetroPGF Round 2 is officially open. This is your chance to put forward the projects you’ve seen create a positive impact for the Optimism Collective over the past year. In other governance-related news, the members of the Season 3 Grants Council have been announced. Twitter Space: OP Radio #15: Tally Ho Web3 Wallet. The contest with Sherlock starts today. Break Bedrock to earn your share of up to $700k in prizes. The Graph Network is adding support for Optimism.
Metis Reveals KORIS, The First Operating System for DACs: After a long await for DACs on Metis, the team announced the reveal of KORIS, the realization of the Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC). KORIS is the only end-to-end operational system for DACs, an evolution of the DAO tailored to meet the unique needs of businesses by using smart contracts for company operations, incubated by the MetisDAO Foundation. MetisDAO Foundation 2023 Strategy is out. Multi-Layer Solution Stack and Econode will be the 2 key concepts helping the team pave the way to their end goal: Empowering the Web3 Economy. The newest network candidate for an Aave v3 deployment is Metis Andromeda. Twitter Space: Special AMA w/ Stargate — Metis Community Space. Stargate has officially deployed in Metis Andromeda mainnet.
In late December Boba Voyage was launched on Galxe to deliver an experience across multiple Layer-1 blockchains and their Boba Layer-2 instances. Over that time period, valuable insights from the community about UX in this cross-chain voyage were gathered. State of Boba Q4 2022 by Messari is live. Hunting for bugs with Immunefi — introducing the new bug bounty program on Boba Network. Join in improving the ecosystem and get rewarded for your contributions. BOBA is available in NOW Wallet.
Aztec Connect has crossed 1 million network transactions since launch. Aztec Monthly Active Users hit a new ATH of 45,000 wallets. The team launches the Aztec Connect Local Developer Testnet to facilitate more control, higher configurability and faster testing cycles. Aztec crossed the $20M DAI deposit milestone. Mean Finance is partnering with Aztec network to bring the project into the network leveraging their Aztec Connect Bridges.
Loopring Quarterly Update (Q4/2022) is out. Despite the bear market, the team has continued building + has seen an explosion of NFT activity on L2. Loopring and Protocol: Gemini Partner to Build the Future of Gaming: The team announced a partnership with Protocol: Gemini to bring the immersive Web3 games to Ethereum L2. Loopring Wallet Upgrade Giveaway. As Loopring L2 gets a big influx of new users each week, please be sure to check out their knowledge base for all things Loopring L2.
EY and Polygon’s Nightfall ‘zk optimistic rollup’ privacy protocol launching in May. The Go Fast Machine: Adding Recursion to Polygon zkEVM. Last month, the second and final public testnet for Polygon zkEVM went live. Included in that rollout were meaningful improvements to the throughput, latency, and efficiency of the prover. Hardfork Incoming: Upgrading Polygon PoS Chain to Boost Performance: Longer-term technical upgrades to Polygon PoS are being worked on, like parallelization, even while another promising tech for scaling, like Polygon zkEVM, is being built. But there are also more immediate steps to improve Polygon PoS performance and predictability–proposals that require the network’s approval to become a reality. Based on forum discussion and feedback from the community, a critical hardfork will be proposed that will aim to: reduce the severity of gas spikes; and address chain reorganizations (reorgs) in an effort to reduce time to finality. Polygon Insights for 2022 are out. How to Use Reddit Vault as Springboard to Web3 on Polygon: Guide.
The Scroll Pre-Alpha testnet reset was carried out successfully. The testnet now has about 270k unique users. Twitter Space: Scroll’s Competitive Features Go Through. BlockPI has added support for Scroll’s Pre-Alpha testnet.
Papyrus: An Open-Source StarkNet Full Node Announced: Papyrus will be a key component of the decentralized StarkNet infrastructure. New version of starknet-devnet (v0.4.4) has been released. StarkWare partners with Node guardians for Solidity and Cairo 1.0 educational challenges. StarkWare and Braavos released a case study on how secure enclaves & account abstraction can combine on StarkNet to provide wallet users with face-ID signing. Uniswap Foundation and Nethermindeth plan Uniswap V3 StarkNet launch. StarkNet Roundup #50. Over 3300 ETH have been bridged to StarkNet so far. StarkNet TVL overview. Detailed StarkNet Ecosystem metrics. In the last month, StarkNet has seen a 145% increase in TVL and has now surpassed $1 million in TVL. StarkNet Community Call #30: Introducing StarkNet Governance.
Immutable X games collected the largest Web3 funding of 2022. Search for Animera and ImmutableX: The Quest of Web3 Interplanetary Exploration: Search for Animera will provide all players with ownership of their in-game digital assets as fully-carbon neutral NFTs, all while leveraging the security of the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, ImmutableX will offer a seamless, gas-free trading experience with speeds of over 9,000 transactions per second. Tiny Colony and ImmutableX: Humanoid Ants, Epic Tales, and Digital Ownership: Using Immutable’s powerful ZK-rollup technology, Tiny Colony will empower players with full ownership of their in-game digital assets as fully-carbon neutral NFTs, all while leveraging the security of the Ethereum blockchain.
The Illuvium Zero Alpha is officially live on Immutable.
zkSync wants to make zkSync 2.0’s features accessible to more developers and applications, so the team has released a new SDK in Swift. The wave of projects joining zkSync shows no sign of slowing down, and the team shares another five updates from the fast-growing ecosystem. Anthony Rose, Head of Engineering at Matter Labs, shares his thoughts on zkSync as well as the current L2 landscape and its promising future. Twitter Space: Get to know zkSync’s Developer Relations team.
Check out your rhino.fi wrapped for 2022, and see if you can beat it in 2023. Twitter Space: What’s next for DeFi in 2023?
Introduction to zero-knowledge apps.
ZK system benchmarking: standard benchmarks for comparing zk proof library performance.
Tim Beiko launches The Mergooor Pass ZK-SBT with Zkdrop Sismo providing privacy-preserving access to Ethereum events.
L2 stats. Check out how much it costs to use Layer 2.
And more!

Stats

Optimism and Arbitrum transactions flip Ethereum mainnet transactions.
ETH goes Ultra-sound for the third time due to L2 gas consumption.
The sum of all funds locked on Ethereum converted to USD is $5.36 B at the time of writing.

How much does it cost to use Layer 2?

Optimistic rollups

Arbitrum One

A new Arbitrum Nitro release is here. Nitro nodes now support RPC queries with the “safe” and “finalized” block numbers. This release also includes various bug fixes and improvements. While this release isn’t tied to a consensus upgrade, please upgrade when possible.
The Norwegian government is testing a cap table platform on Ethereum using Arbitrum layer 2 scaling.
New blog post: Open Source Ethereum Infrastructure: A Beginner’s Guide to Essential Resources.
What’s Hot in Arbitrum? Arbitrum Ecosystem Guide on Bankless. Tune in to learn why and how Arbitrum is shaping the future of L2s, gaming, and NFTs.
Twitter Spaces: Arbitrum x Axelar, Arbitrum x Celer, Arbitrum x Lyra, Arbitrum x CUT.
Arbitrum devs can use Chainlink Automation to save time, scale faster, & create new features. On 1/24 at 1PM ET, attend an online workshop with Arbitrum, Chainlink, & DefiEdge to get started automating your smart contracts. Livestream link.
Ask An Arbinaut: Episode 2.

🚀Live on Arbitrum:

The Graph Network is adding support for Arbitrum. Soon dapps built on the low-cost L2 can utilize subgraphs on the decentralized network to rapidly load Arbitrum data securely & reliably.
Arbitrum Nova will be fully integrated into the Elixir.
The Neutra finance fair launch raises $391k via Camelot and $NEU launches on Arbitrum One.
Lava network adds support for Arbitrum. Access RPCs via their public APIs.
PARSIQ’s Tsunami API is now live on Arbitrum.
Bubblemaps have just integrated Arbitrum on their platform.
Securo API is now supporting Earn API on Arbitrum.
TalenTale has joined the Arbitrum ecosystem.
UXD Protocol is expanding into the Ethereum ecosystem.
Notifi expands to Arbitrum.

Projects based on Optimism’s codebase

Optimism

OP Labs has completed the successful upgrade of Optimism’s Goerli Testnet to Bedrock. Deposits and withdrawals are re-enabled, and the Optimism Goerli Sequencer is back up & running.
Curious about the kind of security measures that went into creating Optimism Bedrock? Well, you’re in luck, because OP Labs published a blog post outlining just that.
The nomination window for RetroPGF Round 2 is officially open. This is your chance to put forward the projects you’ve seen create a positive impact for the Optimism Collective over the past year.
In other governance-related news, the members of the Season 3 Grants Council have been announced.
Twitter Space: OP Radio #15: Tally Ho Web3 Wallet.
The contest with Sherlock starts today. Break Bedrock to earn your share of up to $700k in prizes.

🚀Live on Optimism:

The Graph Network is adding support for Optimism.
OpenOcean’s 1-click cross-chain swap + aggregator now expands to Optimism.

Metis Andromeda

Metis Reveals KORIS, The First Operating System for DACs: After a long-await for DACs on Metis, the team announced the reveal of KORIS, the realization of the Decentralized Autonomous Company (DAC). KORIS is the only end-to-end operational system for DACs, an evolution of the DAO tailored to meet the unique needs of businesses by using smart contracts for company operations, incubated by the MetisDAO Foundation.
MetisDAO Foundation 2023 Strategy is out. Multi-Layer Solution Stack and Econode will be the 2 key concepts helping the team pave the way to their end goal: Empowering the Web3 Economy.
The newest network candidate for an Aave v3 deployment is Metis Andromeda.
Twitter Space: Special AMA w/ Stargate — Metis Community Space.

🚀Live on Metis:

Stargate has officially deployed in Metis Andromeda mainnet.

Boba Network

State of Boba Q4 2022 by Messari is live.
Hunting for bugs with Immunefi — introducing the new bug bounty program on Boba Network. Join in improving the ecosystem and get rewarded for your contributions.
BOBA is available in NOW Wallet.
In late December Boba Voyage was launched on Galxe to deliver an experience across multiple Layer-1 blockchains and their Boba Layer-2 instances. Over that time period, valuable insights from the community about UX in this cross-chain voyage were gathered.

Zero-knowledge rollups

Aztec

Aztec Connect has crossed 1 million network transactions since launch.
Aztec Monthly Active Users hit a new ATH of 45,000 wallets.
Aztec network launches the Aztec Connect Local Developer Testnet to facilitate more control, higher configurability and faster testing cycles.
Aztec crossed the $20M DAI deposit milestone.
Mean Finance is partnering with Aztec network to bring the project into the network leveraging their Aztec Connect Bridges.

Loopring

Loopring Quarterly Update (Q4/2022) is out. Despite the bear market, the team has continued building + has seen an explosion of NFT activity on L2.
Loopring and Protocol: Gemini Partner to Build the Future of Gaming: The team announced a partnership with Protocol: Gemini to bring the immersive Web3 games to Ethereum L2.
Loopring Wallet Upgrade Giveaway.
As Loopring L2 gets a big influx of new users each week, please be sure to check out their knowledge base for all things Loopring L2.

Polygon

EY and Polygon’s Nightfall ‘zk optimistic rollup’ privacy protocol launching in May.
The Go Fast Machine: Adding Recursion to Polygon zkEVM. Last month, the second and final public testnet for Polygon zkEVM went live. Included in that rollout were meaningful improvements to the throughput, latency, and efficiency of the prover.
Hardfork Incoming: Upgrading Polygon PoS Chain to Boost Performance: Longer-term technical upgrades to Polygon PoS are being worked on, like parallelization, even while other promising tech for scaling, like Polygon zkEVM, is being built. But there are also more immediate steps to improve Polygon PoS performance and predictability–proposals that require the network’s approval to become a reality. Based on forum discussion and feedback from the community, a critical hardfork will be proposed that will aim to: reduce the severity of gas spikes; and address chain reorganizations (reorgs) in an effort to reduce time to finality.
Polygon Insights for 2022 are out.
How to Use Reddit Vault as Springboard to Web3 on Polygon: Guide.

🚀Live on Polygon:

Check out the latest Polygon integrations here.
Primex finance prime brokerage expands to the PolygonZK testnet.

Scroll

The Scroll Pre-Alpha testnet reset was carried out successfully. The testnet now has about 270k unique users.
Twitter Space: Scroll’s Competitive Features Go Through.

🚀Live on Scroll:

BlockPI has added support for Scroll’s Pre-Alpha testnet.

StarkWare

Papyrus: An Open-Source StarkNet Full Node Announced: Papyrus will be a key component of the decentralized StarkNet infrastructure.
New version of starknet-devnet (v0.4.4) has been released.
StarkWare partners with Node guardians for Solidity and Cairo 1.0 educational challenges.
StarkWare and Braavos release a case study on how secure enclaves & account abstraction can combine on StarkNet to provide wallet users with face-ID signing.
Uniswap Foundation and Nethermindeth plan Uniswap V3 StarkNet launch.
StarkNet Roundup #50.
Over 3300 ETH have been bridged to StarkNet so far.
StarkNet TVL overview.
Detailed StarkNet Ecosystem metrics.
In the last month, StarkNet has seen a 145% increase in TVL and has now surpassed $1 million in TVL.
StarkNet Community Call #30 | Introducing StarkNet Governance.
STARK @ Home 29.

🚀Powered by StarkWare:

A continually updated list of projects building on StarkNet.

zkSync

zkSync wants to make zkSync 2.0’s features accessible to more developers and applications, so the team has released a new SDK in Swift.
The wave of projects joining zkSync shows no sign of slowing down, and the team shares another five updates from the fast-growing ecosystem.
Anthony Rose, Head of Engineering at Matter Labs, shares his thoughts on zkSync as well as the current L2 landscape and its promising future.
Twitter Space: Get to know zkSync’s Developer Relations team.

ZKSpace

Vying for the throne: OP vs. ZK. What is the better Layer2 solution？
Learn with ZKSpace Academy. Crypto 101 Series: NO. 26 What is a Cryptographic Hashing Function?

Validium

Projects build using StarkEx

rhino.fi (previously DeversiFi)

Check out your /rhino.fi wrapped for 2022, and see if you can beat it in 2023.
Twitter Space: What’s next for DeFi in 2023?

Immutable X

Immutable X games collected the largest Web3 funding of 2022.
Search for Animera and ImmutableX: The Quest of Web3 Interplanetary Exploration: Search for Animera will provide all players with ownership of their in-game digital assets as fully-carbon neutral NFTs, all while leveraging the security of the Ethereum blockchain. In addition, ImmutableX will offer a seamless, gas-free trading experience with speeds of over 9,000 transactions per second.
Tiny Colony and ImmutableX: Humanoid Ants, Epic Tales, and Digital Ownership: Using Immutable’s powerful ZK-rollup technology, Tiny Colony will empower players with full ownership of their in-game digital assets as fully-carbon neutral NFTs, all while leveraging the security of the Ethereum blockchain.
The Illuvium Zero Alpha is officially live on Immutable.

MISC

Introduction to zero-knowledge apps.
ZK system benchmarking: standard benchmarks for comparing zk proof library performance.
Tim Beiko launches The Mergooor Pass ZK-SBT with Zkdrop Sismo providing privacy-preserving access to Ethereum events.