Weekly Rollup #17
Native USDC Expands to Arbitrum | Celestia x OP Stack | Introducing Kinto | Will OP Superchain have network effects? | Week ending June 2nd
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📣 News & Announcements
Native USDC Expands to Arbitrum
This past week, Arbitrum announced that native USDC will be coming to the L2 network on June 8th.
Why the need for native USDC?
As many of you already know, stablecoins are one of the most widely adopted assets in web3. If we look at Circle (USDC) alone, we can see that the token can be found across several chains.
Having a few stablecoins deploy across multiple chains is better than having each chain launch its own stablecoin. We’ve seen plenty of stablecoins fail already (shoutout Terra), so it’s important we have a few stables we can rely on to always be liquid, secure, and redeemable for $1 worth (in this case) of value.
That said, one of the issues with having a single token launch across multiple chains is the token fragmentation. In other words, the USDC that is minted natively on Ethereum, is different than the USDC that is bridged to Polygon, Solana, etc.
This leads to some UX issues:
Having multiple types of the same token can lead to some confusion for users, especially for new web3 entrants. “Which USDC should I swap for, aUSDC, fUSDC, or which one?”. Just take a look for yourself:
Another problem is that each one of these different USDC tokens will have its own volume and liquidity, separate from that of native USDC. This is why sometimes we see these bridged USDC tokens deviate in price from time to time.
As such, Circle is making it their mission to have all bridged USDC tokens eventually become the native version of the asset. This mission started after their expansion of native USDC to the Avalanche ecosystem, following the launch of the CCTP protocol just a couple of months ago. This year we should be expecting native USDC to flow across more and more chains, starting with Arbitrum on June 8th.
What exactly is going to happen?
Following June 8th, there will be two different versions of USDC on the L2 chain.
From a user perspective, the apps will take care of helping us transition from bridged to native USDC.
Future plans for CCTP support
According to the Arbitrum team, “Circle expects to bring Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (#CCTP) to Arbitrum after the launch of native USDC”.
“Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP) is a permissionless on-chain utility that facilitates USDC transfers between blockchains via native burning and minting”. In other words, the protocol will take care of performing our cross-chain swaps on the backend, so that we end up with just a single native token across ecosystems. So if I wanted to go from Ethereum to Arbitrum, CCTP will take care of burning my native USDC on Ethereum (after I sign for approval of course), and minting the corresponding amount of native USDC on the Arbitrum side. This is different than using cross-chain liquidity pools, as you wouldn’t have to worry about making sure there is sufficient liquidity deposited inside the pool in order to facilitate the trade.
The main benefit for Arbitrum users (for integrating CCTP) is that we wouldn’t have to wait for the 7-day withdrawal delay that is prevalent across your typical optimistic rollup.
You can learn all about CCTP here if you’re interested. Make sure to follow the Circle team on Twitter to stay up to date with all their upcoming CCTP integrations later this year.
Celestia Releases DA Interface for the OP Stack
On June 1st, Celestia announced “the beta release of a modular DA interface for the OP Stack”.
What is the OP Stack
In short, the OP Stack is the code that powers Optimism. “It’s a series of modules that work together to form coherent, reliable blockchains. Each of these components implements a specific layer of the stack”.
There are different layers in the OP Stack, whereby different modules can be replaced for one another within each layer, like so:
Developers are able to pick and choose from these different modules in order to build a chain that is most appropriate for their own given solution. If you can't find a certain module you’re looking for, then you can build your own - for example, a module that enables the use of zk-proofs for privacy.
If you’re on crypto Twitter, then you’ve probably heard of the “Bedrock” upgrade (which in fact, is expected to take place next week). “Bedrock is the name of the first ever official release of the OP Stack”.
So where does Celestia fit in?
Looking at the image above, we can see three different layers under the “chain” box, the consensus layer, execution layer, and settlement layer.
Celestia added a data availability (DA) interface to the OP Stack, allowing developers to define their own DA layer, whether that’s Celestia, Ethereum, Bitcoin, etc.
So, if you decide to use the OP Stack to build your own rollup, you can now choose to add Celestia as the DA option for your rollup. “This means that all the data that is required to derive the L2 chain can be made available on Celestia as native blob data instead of posting to Ethereum”, while still retaining Ethereum settlement. In other words, OP Stack validiums.
You can check out Celestia’s official blog post to earn all about the technical details behind this initiative.
What’s Next
According to the team, “developers can start experimenting today with a version of the OP Stack that uses Celestia for DA and "settles" on Ethereum. And Caldera will soon release the Taro testnet, which allows developers and users to try out the first public testnet of OP Stack using Modular DA”. The Celestia team also mentioned their plan to leverage the Quantum Gravity Bridge to “explore an upgrade of our OP Stack x Celestia integration to work with fraud proofs on top of Ethereum Mainnet”.
Introducing Kinto
Last week, @ramonrecuero announced the launch of Kinto, “the first KYC-compliant L2 on Ethereum”. This is Ramon’s next endeavor, following the unfortunate ending of his previous project, Babylon Finance, which was one of the victims during the Rari collapse.
What Is Kinto:
Kinto is an optimistic rollup on Ethereum with KYC built in at the protocol level. In other words, in order to launch your own application on top of this rollup, or in order to use any of the applications as a user, you’ll have to be KYC’d.
So, it’s similar to Arbitrum or Optimism in the fact that they’re all optimisitc rollups that settle on Ethereum, however, the difference with Kinto from a user’s perspective is “the difference between owning your identity (Kinto) and having no identity (Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.).”
Features:
Here are some of the features described by the team:
User Privacy: Kinto doesn't store user data.
Non custodial
Seamless UI/UX: native account abstraction
Multi-chain: Ethereum, Optimism, and Arbitrum
Built in insurance
Why Kinto
“No entity with stringent regulatory and compliance requirements can freely create products, transact, or deploy capital on Ethereum Mainnet”.
The team's argument as to why we need a solution like Kinto is that defi has not been able to fully reach its potential due to trad-fi not being able to jump in the space because of regulatory risks. They argue there needs to be a way for developers to permissionlessly launch financial products on top of Ethereum in a regulated manner.
I tend to agree with the need for a solution like this. We’ve explored privacy-enabled solutions in the past that also focus on solving this regulatory issue, but this is the first time we talk about a solution that is 100% KYC enabled. I think it’s foolish to think that trad-fi companies don’t want to tap into the existing value (& infrastructure even) within our web3 ecosystem. Aside from regulatory issues, it’s difficult for these billion-dollar companies to feel secure leaving their funds inside a wallet where they may face the risk of getting hacked and losing everything. Knowing that each founder is KYC’d as well as give them more confidence.
Use Cases
The Kinto team has mentioned a couple of use cases already, including:
“Tokenized traditional ETFs can be provided as liquidity in an AMM”
“Your bank could be linked to your wallet and automatically approves and issues a mortgage using funds from an on-chain money market and the tokenized deed to your house as collateral”
“Corporate treasuries could be held in on-chain assets, and corporate debt issuance could happen through a dapp”
What’s Next
Kinto’s testnet is already up and running for developers to start experimenting with. To learn more about the KYC-enabled rollup, you can check out their docs.
More News & Announcements
Sovereign Labs launches its SDK, allowing developers to start building their own custom, sovereign, zk-rollup.
AltLayer launches the Beacon Layer, “an interlayer between the execution layer and the data availability layer and all the rollups instantiated via AltLayer are enshrined to the Beacon Layer”.
Injective leverages Wormhole bridge to start connecting to the Polygon network, allowing Injective users to start using the $MATIC token on the Injective dapps, while also allowing Polygon users to use IBC assets across Polygon native dapps.
MantisSwap, Polygon’s native stableswap AMM, is now live on zkEVM
XYFinance integrates the Polygon network into its DEX & Bridge solution. This is the 14th EVM chain XYFinance has added support for already.
Giza, who are building an open AI economy, just announced the launch of Orion, “a verifiable, extensible framework to superpower AI & web3”. “Orion leverages the capabilities of Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) and Cairo to guarantee the reliability of inference, providing developers with a user-friendly framework to build complex, verifiable machine learning models.”
The Realms team (on-chain games on StarkNet) recently dropped a new Loot Survivor mini-game. Here’s how you can experience the game for yourself.
Rango, a DEX/bridge aggregator solution, just added support for StarkNet.
Storj integrates Era, “to bring faster more secure payment systems to decentralized storage”. This “will allow Storj (who claim to be the only EVM-compatible cloud storage solution) to perform faster and more secure transactions, reducing gas fees and making the payment process swifter and more efficient”
Taho, a web3 wallet, announces custom network support. “You can now connect to all your favorite EVM networks, such as zkSync, Fantom, Gnosis, Canto, Celo, and many more”. To celebrate the release of custom networks, they’re doing 3 weeks of mints & giveaways on zkSync.
New Arbitrum launches this past week include:
Sender, a web3 wallet
GameSwift, a gaming blockchain originally based on zkEVM (Polygon) integrates the Arbitrum network
Range protocol automated defi vaults are now live on Arbitrum
Dream Quest adds support for Arbitrum, bringing their mobile web3 game to the L2 network
Introducing Chronos Finance, a liquidity layer and AMM on Arbitrum that operates under a (3,3) mechanism
For any BTC holders that want t put their tokens to work, Threshold Network just launched tBTC on Arbitrum, allowing tBTC holders to access defi and other web3 apps on Arbitrum.
Offchain Labs, the development team behind Arbitrum, announced the launch of a working fraud prover for Stylus (Arbitrum’s “EVM+” system).
Circle to launch native USDC on Arbitrum on June 8th. Moving from “bridged” USDC (USDC.e) to “native” USDC. Check out the thread to learn what this means.
Coordinape, a DAO coordination platform, launches on Optimism
OP Labs (Optimism) announced the launch of OP Stack Mods, community-driven modifications to the OP Stack. Celestia just built their own OP Stack mod that allows OP Stack chains to leverage other DA solutions, while still retaining Ethereum’s consensus.
The Scroll team held a Twitter Space to discuss their latest developments.
Here’s a sneak peek at what the UI will look like for Acumen, an RWA platform on the Fuel network.
Introducing Fluid: The Fuel team held a Twitter space with Fluid, to “gain firsthand insights into how Fluid aims to maximize efficiency and create an unstoppable decentralized stablecoin, USDF”.
BIT holders can now vote on MIP-22, which proposed a new conversion rate (1:1) that was suggested by the community. Voting ends on June 7th, but it looks like the proposal should pass with 100% approval.
@ramonrecuero announces Kinto, “the first KYC compliant L2 on Ethereum”.
An IBC channel between Dymension & Celestia is now up
The Eclipse team wrote this thread covering all of their highlights over the month of May.
Introducing the alpha release of the Sovereign SDK. As a reminder, Sovereign is building a rollup framework that allows developers to easily spin up their own dedicated, sovereign execution network (rollup).
Babylon integrates Stride, bringing BTC security to the Cosmos liquid staking solution
Nibiru chain also leverages Babylon to bring BTC security to Cosmos’ defi hub.
Polymer, who is expanding IBC beyond the Cosmos, just held its second Community Call.
Connext launches its chain abstraction toolkit. original thread
Omni Network, the Ethereum interoperability solution that leverages ETH restaking, just integrated the Scroll network.
Keplr2.0 is here
New osmosis testnet is out
Urbit makes it possible to host the osmosis front-end
Stride's next stToken will be stCMDX
Proposal to deploy Mars on Neutron
“The Agamotto network is live, which will be a chain to start pushing price feeds onto mainnets like Juno Network and Secret Network.”
Presenting the DCA+ whitepaper.
Anoma announces its 3rd fundraise, in a round co-led by CMCC Global, and including others like Delphi, Spartan Group, and more. Anoma is a privacy-preserving protocol with support for multi-chain atomic settlement.
📚 Discourse & Education
Will OP Superchain have network effects?
Alana Levin from Variant Fund poses a question about Optimism’s Superchain and whether it’ll “play out as Cosmos 2.0”. To be clear, she is not pointing to Cosmos 2.0 as something to be desired. It’s widely acknowledged that Cosmos (SDK, Tendermint, IBC) failed to build network effects and alignment across chains.
So what’s different about the Superchain?
Here are some bull case takes:
Better shared security. Superchain chains all leverage Ethereum as a base layer. This is different from Cosmos, where every chain has (historically) handled security independently from one another, leaving the system vulnerable to the weakest link.
Better social alignment. This is hard to quantify, but there does appear to be a shared sense of mission and values. Positive sum mindsets can make Superchain participants more likely to opt into standards (e.g. bridging, shared sequencing, upgrades). If this all sounds too kumbaya, you can think about part of the social alignment as economic alignment. If everyone builds on Ethereum and the Superchain succeeds, the value of their ETH goes up.
Here are some bear case takes:
Worse economic alignment. While economic alignment exists at the base layer, it lacks at the Superchain layer. It’s possible that the latter is more powerful than the former and fragments the ecosystem, no different than Cosmos.
It seems like the OP team assumptions are similar to the above, with a strong emphasis on social alignment.
More Discourse & Education
Celestia discusses whether rollups = bridges (?) with Jon from DBA, Kelvin from OP Labs and Toghrul from Scroll 🎙️⚔️
@jon_charb expands on his recent “rollups are L1s and L2s” post which we touched on last week ✍️🌶️
Ether.fi discusses the opposing views around restaking with Sreeram from EigenLayer and Justin from Ethereum Foundation 🎙️
Bell Curve discusses MEV, OFAs and frontier research with Stephane from Flashbots 🎙️🧠
@theSamPadilla and @sunnydece break down and quantify decentralization, analyzing numerous blockchains to uncover risk areas ✍️
@0xQuintus deep dives into intent-based architectures and their risks ✍️🧠
Espresso and Aztec discuss all things decentralized sequencers, including Aztec's plans, Espresso's proposals, and the decentralized future of L2s 🎙️
Coinbase and @jessepollak propose a ZK validity prover for the OP Stack ✍️👀
@ViktorBunin frames the general-purpose vs. app-specific chain argument as variable vs. fixed costs 💬💎
@yuxiao_deng summarizes key insights from Research Day 💬
@kelvinfichter responds to @jon_charb’s post with how he thinks about rollups ✍️🔥
@0xidanlevin responds to @kelvinfichter’s post with an interesting framework, outlining three states of rollup consensus 💬
@smpalladino explains Aztec’s fully-programmable hybrid public-private zero-knowledge L2 in depth 💬
Blockworks Research explains intents in a digestible way 💬
@CannnGurel outlines an ELI5 🍕 mental model for intents 💬
@expctchaos breaks down data availability, highlighting the many solution options and explaining how EigenDA differs 💬
Duality Labs discusses problems with multi-chain UX and how to fix them 🎙️
Zero Knowledge Podcast discusses the state of ZK, covering the past 6 months of ZK applications and tooling 🎙️
Connext walks through their technical design choices in part 1 of a new series ✍️
Zellic explains the rationale and performance behind ZK-friendly hash functions SHA-2 and SHA-3 💬
@katiewav and @0xFunk explain all things smart contract rollups, sequencers, intents and more ✍️
@fede_intern benchmarks STARKs vs. recursive SNARKs 📊
Blockworks Research deep dives into Cosmos Hub and the economics behind the new "ATOM Economic Zone” 💬
@nizhunt explains public and private inputs in zero-knowledge setups ✍️
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬
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