L2 report vol. 25

A biweekly update on Layer 2 protocols, 26th June — 10th July

TL;DR

• The sum of all funds locked on Ethereum converted to USD is $9.4 B at the time of writing.
• The Arbitrum DAO overwhelmingly voted for AIP-1.1. AIP-1.1 relates to the Arbitrum Foundation’s budget. It states that the treasury of 700m ARB must be locked in a vesting contract. The treasury should be released to the Foundation over a 4-year horizon. Arbitrum One has recently hit 9 million unique addresses.
• USDC Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) live on mainnet & Arbitrum.
• Here’s how you can reproduce OP Mainnet’s migration to Bedrock: The June 6 Bedrock upgrade went smoothly as can be thanks to diligent planning & preparation by the engineers at OP Labs. Get a rundown of the migration as well as instructions on how to reproduce & verify it yourself in this post from Mark Tyneway. A thread highlighting some great post-Bedrock metrics. The next deep dive in the series exploring justine’s DAO research also went out last week. O(1) Labs submitted a proposal to integrate Kimchi, their zero-knowledge proof system, into the OP Stack. Infura had some very nice things about the Optimism Ecosystem.
• Loopring L3 is now officially live on Taiko alpha-3 zkEVM testnet. This marks the beginning of the L3 journey towards achieving greater scalability & highly optimized experiences tailored for its smart wallet and decentralized applications. Loopring Quarterly Update (Q2/2023) is out. Cloud backup 2.0: A Look Inside. Guest blog post: DeFi’s Final Frontier: Uncompromised Convenience. Check out the knowledge base for all things Loopring L2.
• Polygon 2.0: Protocol Architecture: The protocol architecture for Polygon 2.0 is a breakthrough in how Layer 2 blockspace is delivered. Inborg upgrade for the Polygon PoS Network: State sync with indore. A proposal was published to upgrade Polygon PoS to a zkEVM validium, a first-of-its-kind, decentralized ZK Layer 2.
• Starknet Quantum Leap: Major throughput improvements are here: Starknet alpha V0.12.0 is deployed on testnet. Starknet achieved a remarkable 10x increase in throughput by implementing the Sequencer in Rust. This was driven by a close collaboration between StarkWare and LambdaClass. A new syscall has been introduced, allowing easy retrieval of past block hashes. Starknet alpha V0.12.0 will support a new Cairo syntax that focuses on safety. The network upgrade to this version will undergo a community vote, ensuring widespread participation and input. Starknet meetup in Paris #10: Tuesday, July 11th. The Starknet Summit happening on August 31, 2023, in the San Francisco Bay Area.
• Introducing the ZK Stack: Your framework for building modular, sovereign, ZK-powered Hyperchains. Introduction to Hyperchainsn. Bonjour, EthCC: Here’s how you can connect with zkSync during EthCC Week.
• The dYdX Chain v4 Testnet is officially live: Read this blog post for further details and timelines. Free Trading is Ending: On June 27th at 16:00 UTC, free trading came to an end. ‘Weekly Recap’ is out. Stay up to date with the latest governance conversations and participate in forum discussions.
• Post mortem — PolyNetwork’s exploit: On the night of July 1st, PolyNetwork, a bridge on the Metis ecosystem, was exploited by a malicious actor. The hacker was able to mint, and pull all available liquidity from PolyNetwork. The assets that were affected are METIS on BNBChain, METIS on Ethereum, BNB on Metis, and BUSD on Metis. A detailed document has been prepared in order to explain how these assets became affected, and what measures will be taken. Furucombo deploys on Metis, enabling users to create and optimize ecosystem DeFi strategies. Simplify DeFi with Furucombo on Metis: Video.
• Aztec announced a partnership with Nym project that aims to create a web3 privacy solution that is protected from prying eyes at all levels of the stack. Here’s how Aztec incorporates Nym’s transport layer privacy tech to solve a major privacy hurdle. Aztec now has 3 proposals concerning the big question: Should they fork themselves? The Aztec developer base grew +267% in the past year based on analysis by Electric Capital. Aztec Developer Office Hours Interest Form: Join Aztec weekly open developer office hours hosted by josh every Thursday at 10am ET / 3pm UTC.Boba Network’s monthly Recap: June edition. NOWPayments supports anyone using BOBA as a payment. Witnet deployed their oracle for BobaBNB: Anyone needing a reliable oracle to build can use Witnet.
• Why choose Immutable zkEVM? Unleashing the Potential of Web3 Games: As the team prepares to launch Immutable zkEVM’s testnet, it’s time to pull back the curtain. Join Immutable CTO Alex Connolly in this Immutable zkEVM technical deep dive. SuperDuper x Immutable. Eyeball Pool x Immutable.
• Zora network (OP Stack L2) supported by OpenSea.
• Patrick McCorry: overview of bridges.
• L2 stats. Check out how much it costs to use Layer 2.
• And more!

Stats

• The sum of all funds locked on Ethereum converted to USD is $9.4 B at the time of writing.

Source.

Source.

How much does it cost to use Layer 2?

Source.

Optimistic rollups

Source.

Arbitrum

• The Arbitrum DAO overwhelmingly voted for AIP-1.1. AIP-1.1 relates to the Arbitrum Foundation’s budget. It states that our treasury of 700m ARB must be locked in a vesting contract. The treasury should be released to the Foundation over a 4-year horizon.
• Arbitrum One has recently hit 9 million unique addresses.

🚀Live on Arbitrum:

• USDC Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) live on mainnet & Arbitrum.
• CLRFund round 9 live on Arbitrum, contribute to public goods.
• Cryptex V2 is now live on Arbitrum.

Projects based on Optimism’s codebase

Optimism

• Here’s how you can reproduce OP Mainnet’s migration to Bedrock: The June 6 Bedrock upgrade went smoothly as can be thanks to diligent planning & preparation by the engineers at OP Labs. Get a rundown of the migration as well as instructions on how to reproduce & verify it yourself in this post from Mark Tyneway.
• The Bedrock upgrade transforms the OP Stack into a more modular system, enabling it to support multiple clients & proof schemes while significantly reducing data costs. Speaking of which, here’s a thread highlighting some great post-Bedrock metrics.
• The next deep dive in the series exploring justine’s DAO research also went out last week.
• O(1) Labs submitted a proposal to integrate Kimchi, their zero-knowledge proof system, into the OP Stack.
• Infura had some very nice things about the Optimism Ecosystem.

Metis Andromeda

• Post mortem — PolyNetwork’s exploit: The night of July 1st, PolyNetwork, a bridge on the Metis ecosystem, was exploited by a malicious actor. The hacker was able to mint, and pull all available liquidity from PolyNetwork. The assets that were affected are METIS on BNBChain, METIS on Ethereum, BNB on Metis, and BUSD on Metis. A detailed document has been prepared in order to explain how these assets became affected, and what measures will be taken.
• Furucombo deploys on Metis, enabling users to create and optimize ecosystem DeFi strategies.
• Simplify DeFi with Furucombo on Metis.

Boba Network

• Boba Network’s monthly Recap: June edition.
• NOWPayments supports anyone using BOBA as a payment.
• Witnet deployed their oracle for BobaBNB: Anyone needing a reliable oracle to build can use Witnet.

Zero-knowledge rollups

Source.

Aztec

• Aztec announced a partnership with Nym project that aims to create a web3 privacy solution that is protected from prying eyes at all levels of the stack. Here’s how Aztec incorporates Nym’s transport layer privacy tech to solve a major privacy hurdle.
• The Aztec developer base grew +267% in the past year based on analysis by Electric Capital.
• Aztec Developer Office Hours Interest Form: Join Aztec weekly open developer office hours hosted by josh every Thursday at 10am ET / 3pm UTC.
• Aztec now has 3 proposals concerning the big question: Should they fork themselves?

Loopring

• Loopring L3 is now officially live on Taiko alpha-3 zkEVM testnet. This marks the beginning of the L3 journey towards achieving greater scalability & highly optimized experiences tailored for our smart wallet and decentralized applications.
• Loopring Quarterly Update (Q2/2023) is out.
• Cloud backup 2.0: A Look Inside.
• Guest blog post: DeFi’s Final Frontier: Uncompromised Convenience.
• Check out the knowledge base for all things Loopring L2.

Polygon

• Polygon 2.0: Protocol Architecture: The protocol architecture for Polygon 2.0 is a breakthrough in how Layer 2 blockspace is delivered.
• Inborg upgrade for the Polygon PoS Network: State sync with indore.
• A proposal was published to upgrade Polygon PoS to a zkEVM validium, a first-of-its-kind, decentralized ZK Layer 2.
• Riding the roller coaster: Gas fee spikes demystified.

🚀Live on Polygon:

• Check out the latest Polygon integrations here.

StarkWare

• Starknet Quantum Leap: Major throughput improvements are here: Starknet is about to break through the TPS barrier.

-Starknet alpha V0.12.0 is deployed on testnet

-Starknet achieved a remarkable 10x increase in throughput by implementing the Sequencer in Rust. This was driven by a close collaboration between StarkWare and LambdaClass

-A smoother user experience will be provided as the `PENDING` status for transactions has been removed

-A new syscall has been introduced, allowing easy retrieval of past block hashes

-Starknet alpha V0.12.0 will support a new Cairo syntax that focuses on safety

-The network upgrade to this version will undergo a community vote, ensuring widespread participation and input:

July 5 — Vote ignition.

July 10 — Voting docks.

July 11 — Systems freeze.

July 12 — If they’re green, v0.12.0 goes live

• Starknet meetup in Paris #10: Tuesday, July 11th.
• The Starknet Summit happening on August 31, 2023, in the San Francisco Bay Area.

🚀Powered by StarkWare:

• A continually updated list of projects building on StarkNet.

zkSync

• Introducing the ZK Stack: Your framework for building modular, sovereign, ZK-powered Hyperchains.
• Introduction to Hyperchainsn.
• Bonjour, EthCC: Here’s how you can connect with zkSync during EthCC Week.

🚀Live on zkSync

• Impossible Finance expands to zkSync Era.
• CoolWallet v3.10.0 now supports zksync Era blockchain.
• The Crypto Maze ecosystem is now live on zkSync Era.
• iSafePal announced the integration for zksync.
• zksync Era x carv official integration & ecosystem partnership.

ZKSpace

• ZKSpace Dex ZKSwap is now live on zksync Era mainnet.
• Recently, the team unveiled the audit report from Secure3.

Projects built using StarkEx

dYdX

• The dYdX Chain v4 Testnet is officially live: Read this blog post for further details and timelines.
• Free Trading is Ending: On June 27th at 16:00 UTC, free trading came to an end.
• ‘Weekly Recap’ is out.
• Stay up to date with the latest governance conversations and participate in forum discussions.

Validium

Source.

Projects build using StarkEx

Rhino.fi (previously DeversiFi)

• Unleash the rhino on Layer 3: Dive deeper into the zkSync ecosystem and get even more rewards.
• Real Yield ETH on rhino.fi, now up to 12%.

Immutable X

• Why choose Immutable zkEVM? Unleashing the Potential of Web3 Games: As we prepare to launch Immutable zkEVM’s testnet, it’s time to pull back the curtain. Join Immutable CTO Alex Connolly in this Immutable zkEVM technical deep dive.
• Eyeball Pool x Immutable: An Elevated Pool Shooter Web3 Game: Eyeball Pool is a turn-based mobile pool game where players can choose from a variety of fun game modes, including 9 ball, 8 ball, mini-games and tournaments. The game will be free-to-play and the main objective for the player is to battle for collectible cue cards that can be turned into NFTs. Each cue has different resiliency and efficiency attributes, which impact its degradation, yield, and rakeback capacities.
• SuperDuper x Immutable: Building The Future of Cross-Platform IP on the Blockchain: Using Immutable, players across SuperDuper’s entire portfolio of Web3 games will benefit from lightning-fast, gas-free trading of digital assets at speeds of up to 9,000 transactions per second. And as the Overlord IP and SuperDuper brand ecosystem continues to grow and evolve, all of its assets will be featured across all Immutable-integrated marketplaces, including Rarible, Token Trove, and GameStop marketplace.
• Immutable Games Spotlight: Blood, Sweat, and Pixels in Tollan Worlds: Take a trip down nostalgia lane in the gorgeously pixelated realm of online action RPG Tolland Worlds, built on Immutable.

MISC

• Zora network (OP Stack L2) supported by OpenSea.
• Patrick McCorry: overview of bridges.

That’s all for today! Your feedback is highly appreciated! Let us know what you think about the format & content.

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