Weekly Rollup #23
Introducing Manta Pacific | New Polygon Token | Babylon Litepaper | AltLayer x Eigen Layer | Optimistic Rollups for High Throughput Apps | Uncommon Core 2.0 | Week ending July 14th
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This week’s issue covers:
Modular Summit Speakers & Agenda Release
Introducing Manta Pacific
Polygon Proposes POL
Babylon Litepaper
AltLayer x Eigen Layer
More News & Announcements
Optimistic Rollups for High Throughput Apps
Uncommon Core 2.0
More Discourse & Education
📣 News & Announcements
Modular Summit is just around the corner!
As a reminder, the Modular Summit will be hosted in Paris this weekend, from July 21st - 22nd.
The list of speakers for the event, along with the agenda for everything they’ll be talking about, was finally posted on the official website for your viewing. The biggest names in the modular space will be attending - take a look!
We’re proud to be one of the media partners for the event, and we look forward to meeting all of you modularists!
Introducing Manta Pacific
Last week, the Manta team announced Manta Pacific, an L2 meant to provide privacy-enabled functions to the EVM world, through the use of zk-proofs.
What is Manta?
The Manta Network was originally deployed as its own L1 parachain on the Polkadot ecosystem. For anyone unaware, Polkadot consists of a relay chain and 100 parachain slots. Teams can bid for one of these 100 parachain slots by staking DOT on the relay chain, which serves as the communication and security hub for the entire Polkadot ecosystem.
Manta eventually won one of these parachain slots, as the community wanted them to bring privacy to the Polkadot ecosystem. Today, this parachain is referred to as Manta Atlantic, and has managed to reach 80+ apps built on top with a combined user base of over 1.5M.
While Manta Atlantic will continue running for the foreseeable future, the team will also be managing Manta Pacific, a new L2 rollup built to bring privacy to the EVM and expand on the network’s current user base.
What is Manta Pacific
Just like Manta Atlantic, Pacific will offer universal zk-circuits, or, “ZK-as-a-service”.
Put simply, Manta will build different zk-enabled modules that teams can plug into their existing Solidity applications in order to offer privacy-enabled features, such as private defi payments, user identity for web3 social, and private features necessary for on-chain games.
Let’s use one of their existing universal zk-circuits, “ZK-Shuffle”, as an example to help further explain the concept.
One of the zk-circuits Manta offers is ZK-Shuffle, which is “designed to decentralize fair on-chain shuffling in the most private way possible”. In other words, for a poker game, it would make sure cards are privately shuffled (no one knows the order). So for my web3 poker game, I would only need to worry about writing my Solidity card game, and then I can plug in a few lines of codes (the zk-shuffle circuit module already created by Manta) to offer private shuffling
Just learn Solidity, and Manta will take care of building the zk stuff.
Architecture
“Manta Pacific is an OP Stack layer-2 solution built on top of the Ethereum ecosystem and using Celestia for data availability.” Let’s break this down a bit more.
As a reminder, there are typically three different layers that make up a modular blockchain:
Execution: Manta leveraged Caldera’s RaaS solution to build its own custom execution environment. As a reminder, Caldera allows developers to build and deploy their own custom, dedicated OP Stack L2 (execution environment) in one click. Leveraging Caldera means Manta can focus on strictly building the best privacy solution possible, rather than also having to worry about managing the rollups infrastructure - they leave that to Caldera.
Data Availability (DA) / Consensus: as you may already know, L2s have to publish and make their transaction data available somewhere. Your typical OP Stack chain publishes its data to Ethereum (an actual rollup), however, as mentioned, Caldera allows each team to make their own customizations, one of them being where to post the data. In Manta’s case, they opted to post their data to Celestia as opposed to Ethereum, thereby making this a validium (a Celestium if you want to be more precise). This was only made possible thanks to a recent integration Celestia made to the OP Stack, which we talked about here. The benefit of posting data on Celestia as opposed to Ethereum is lower fees - most of the gas fees we pay on rollups are to pay for data posting to the L1 Ethereum. Although we have a couple of zkEVMs live in production already, we still have not seen the full power that zk enables, mainly because the technology is still too expensive. Manta is hoping to. tackle this issue with the help of Celestia.
Settlement: Of course, just like any standard OP Stack solution, the proofs generated by Manta will be posted and verified by Ethereum validators. The EVM is where most of the crypto users and liquidity sit today, and so an expansion here is a way for Manta to expand its offerings to a wider set of users and developers.
To summarize, Manta takes care of all the zk-stuff, Caldera takes care of managing the infrastructure, Celestia makes sure data is made available, and Ethereum validators make sure proofs are valid.
What’s next
Manta is expected to launch its testnet soon. If you’re a builder and want to get started with developing the chain, you can reach out to the team today. To learn all about Manta Pacific, you can check out the complete article.
Polygon proposes new token: POL
Last week, Polygon announced their proposal to migrate to a new token, $POL, which will serve as the native token under Polygon’s new 2.0 framework, which we talked about in a previous issue, here. If this proposal passes, then MATIC holders will be able to exchange their token for the new POL token at a 1:1 ratio.
As many of you know, Polygon has been using the MATIC token ever since network inception back in 2017, when the chain was known as the Matic Network. In 2020, the chain rebranded to Polygon, as they felt it represented the network’s new vision of becoming a network consisting of several solutions. Now, they’re proposing a new token that aligns more with today’s branding, offers additional use cases, and new tokenomics.
POL Use Cases
Validator Staking: POL holders can stake their tokens in Polygon’s newly proposed “Staking Layer” in order to join the validator pool. Polygon envisions several L2s within its ecosystem in the future, and if this is the case, then they’ll need to be able to offer an out of the box validator set, and this is what the staking layer is intended for. Validators will be able to opt in to verify blocks from other Polygon L2s in return for token rewards through block emissions and transaction fees.
Validator Rewards: Join the validator pool, help verify other chains and receive more POL in exchange. We’ll talk more about this below.
Governance: The third use case is governance. In the future, Polygon plans to hand control of the network to the POL token holders. They’ll also have a new community treasury to work with, which was also just introduced in the proposal.
While MATIC today is used for gas fees on Polygon PoS, Polygon founder Sandeep has made it very clear already that they plan to use ETH for gas for their zk-rollups. This includes for the newly proposed L2 validium (currently the PoS chain). “No friction”.
POL Tokenomics
$POL will have an initial supply of 10B tokens, which was the original total supply for MATIC. Of course, Polygon implemented its own token-burning mechanism (EIP-1559) so the total supply today sits at around 9.3B tokens.
While MATIC was capped at 10B tokens, POL will introduce new token emissions. Specifically,
1% per year for validator rewards
1% per year for community treasury
These emissions are expected to continue for at least 10 years, at which point the community will get to vote on what to do - whether that’s leaving emissions as is, lowering them below 1%, or removing them altogether.
Expectations are that in 10 years’ time, web3 will be mature enough to the point where block rewards (newly minted POL) are not needed to incentivize network participants (validators) and that transaction fees and token rewards from Polygon consumer chains will be enough of an incentive.
What’s next
Considering Polygon is one of the biggest, most active networks in all of web3, with one of the most diverse sets of token holders, varying across regular investors like you and me, institutions, and exchanges, this token switching process is expected to last a long time (about four years expected).
Babylon Litepaper Release
Last week, Babylon published the first version of its Bitcoin Staking protocol litepaper, which details how they plan to leverage the 21M BTC to secure the PoS economy. Let’s break it down:
PoW vs PoS
As many of you already know, there are two forms of blockchain security that are most prevalent today: proof of work (PoW), and proof of stake (PoS).
PoW security is achieved by miners solving complex math problems, while PoS chains achieve security through validator capital, where the higher the market cap of staked tokens, the higher the security.
The issue with PoS, however, is that it takes a lot of incentivizing to bootstrap a new chain’s security (validator set) - usually in the form of block emissions, which could otherwise be used to incentivize real end-users instead. The problem with BTC is that there isn’t much to do with it aside from sending it peer-to-peer.
So, Babylon’s solution is to have BTC, which is otherwise just sitting idle, secure other PoS chains. For BTC holders, this gives them an extra form of yield on their tokens, while PoS chains get to leverage the most battle-tested network for their own network’s security.
Two Approaches
There are two approaches Babylon could have taken to build this solution:
Bridge BTC to the PoS chains being secured: the problem with this is that we’ll be trusting a centralized custodian (Bitgo for wBTC or a multisig).
Remote staking from the Bitcoin chain: stake your BTC in a self-custody vault on Bitcoin, that only your private key can access. You misbehave on the PoS chain you agreed to help secure, and you get slashed and lose the BTC sitting in the vault.
Babylon went with the second option, remote staking.
Diving Deeper
To be specific, Babylon is a timestamping protocol implemented as its own Cosmos appchain (L1).
So, recall that every PoS block has a corresponding hash (a string of numbers) that is unique to that specific block - if you change any of the contents within the block, you get a different hash. PoS validators use their private keys to sign off on these blocks, basically stating that they agree with the current string of numbers (only one chain to follow). These agreed-upon hashes, along with the corresponding signatures are then sent as a transaction to be recorded on Bitcoin (timestamping). This essentially means that you have to take over the Bitcoin network in order to reorder the blocks of the PoS chain - most likely not going to happen.
To learn all about how this Bitcoin timestamping protocol works, you can check out the complete litepaper here. For those interested in sharing your thoughts on the protocol, there is also this new community forum you can start sharing your thoughts and ideas on.
AltLayer x Eigen Layer
AltLayer just announced phase III of its Altitude campaign, which features a collaboration with Eigen Layer. Here’s what it’s about:
What is the Altitude Campaign?
If you’ve been following our newsletter, then you’re probably already familiar with AltLayer, which is a rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) solution that developers can use to build and deploy their own custom, dedicated “Flash Layer” (a rollup in other words) in just a few minutes - customized execution environments essentially.
The Altitude Campaign is AltLayer’s testnet rolled out in four phases, with each new phase introducing a new infrastructure capability.
Phase 1: introduction of the multi-sequencer network
Phase 2: Introduction of the Beacon Layer and rollup staking
Phase 3: Now, phase 3 introduces ETH restaking
Phase III Details
According to the team, “an end user could submit a Flash Layer request through our rollup launchpad and specify the number of sequencers that should operate this rollup. These sequencers could then be Ethereum validators that have opted-in to service Flash Layers via EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism.”
So what does this mean?
Today, anyone can go visit AltLayer’s rollup launchpad and create their own Flash Layer (rollup). As mentioned earlier, these flash layers can be customized to fit the specific needs of each team. One of the aspects developers are able to customize is the sequencer, which is responsible for ordering and processing rollup transactions.
With this collaboration, rollup deployers will be able to leverage Eigen Layer’s restaking mechanism to power their sequencer.
It may help to understand how Eigen Layer works:
As many of you already know, anyone can stake their ETH in order to become a validator on Ethereum. These validators of course contribute to the security of the entire Ethereum protocol. Eigen Layer allows these validators to “opt-in” and start validating other dapps and protocols, aside from just Ethereum.
So in this case here, once the integration is complete, ETH restakers, or those who have staked their stETH or rETH with Eigen Layer, can opt-in to validate Flash Layer sequencers. An Eigen Layer backed sequencer means you’re trusting Ethereum validators to make sure your transactions are being ordered and processed correctly.
What’s next
Those who are currently restaking on the Eigen Layer testnet can use that same account to deploy a Flash Layer through the launchpad.
For those lucky enough to have staked your ETH with Eigen Layer before they reached max capacity, you can visit the Galxe campaign page to start completing some phase III tasks.
More News & Announcements
Introducing CelestiaGPT, a new chatbot that has been integrated into the Celestia website to answer all of your Celestia and data availability related questions.
Last week, Eigen Layer raised its staking capacity to 30K ETH (from 9,600 originally), and then again to 45K shortly after, considering cap was reached in about 45 minutes. We should note that native restaking remains open however.
Over the weekend, the Celo team proposed to upgrade from its EVM L1 chain, to an Ethereum L2 using the OP Stack. The team plans to have its existing validator set operate a decentralized sequencer for the L2, while DA will be posted on Eigen’s DA solution. Don’t look now, but more and more L1s are transitioning to an L2 ;)
Last week, the highly anticipated Starknet “Quantum Leap” upgrade hit mainnet, bringing a 10x improvement in TPS to the network. The team hosted a Twitter Space following the upgrade to go over the details.
Aztec announces the two finalists for their sequencer selection, which features B52, and Fernet. Aztec partnered with BlockScience, who will now take a look at both contenders and provide a feedback report during Q3.
@bgdlabs introduces Aave Delivery Infrastructure, “an evolution of the current Aave’s cross-chain system, generalizing communication across networks, abstracting bridge providers, introducing consensus rules (controlled by Aave), and adding an emergency recovery mechanism”. Check out the complete thread to learn more.
Linea mainnet alpha begins rollout by allowing partnered projects to start building on the network. As a reminder, Linea is a zk-rollup poweerd by Consensys.
Sound.xyz announces a $20M series A, led by A16Z. Sound.xyz is a platform that aims to reward artists more through royalties, while providing users with the best listening and engaging experience.
Fuji Finance launches their v2, Himalaya, “the first cross-chain money market aggregator”, enabling users to lend end and borrow from anywhere. Fuji is built on topm of Connext (interop protocol) and first rolled out its guarded launch (partners & Discord members only) about three months ago.
Introducing Ketl, “a zk-enabled social app for the workplace” (founders, investors, employees, etc.). So far, there are about 150 users testing the platform before it opens up to the public.
Base mainnet (Coinbases’s own L2) is now open for builders. There’s two NFTs users can get to commemorate their early involvement with the network - cehck the thread to learn more.
Unstoppable Domains launches its own marketplace using the Polygon’s Dapp Store Kit, allowing users to explore the 800+ dapps integrated with Unstoppable integrations froma single place.
Giza, which is building an open AI economy, raises $3M in a pre-seed round.
Arbitrum announces Phase 1 of its ambassador program, tailored for university blockchain clubs and students who want to represent the community.
New Arbitrum deployments from this past week include Oku Trade (DEX powered by Uniswap v3), and Cega (structured investments protocol).
AIP-2 passes. This new Arbitrum proposal aims to make Account Abstraction (think smart wallets) easier to implement on the network.
Scroll announces “Contributing to Scroll”, allowing devs to start contributing to Scroll’s open source code.
Check out Scroll hackathon winners from the ETHBarcelona hackathon. The team hosted a Twitter Space on Friday to discuss the event more detail.
Introducing Weave, a new social app on Fuel. There’s no website yet, as the project is still very young, but you can follow them on Twitter to keep up with their development.
It looks like Mantle’s first native NFT collection, “Citizens of Mantle”, is set to launch soon. If you’ve used the testnet network in the past or attended a community event, you may be eligible to join the whitelist.
Zkme, which is building a zk-enabled user “credential layer” joins the Mantle ecosystem, bringing private identities to the network.
The Aztec Network team (privacy-enabled L2) held a Twitter Space with Nym (privacy infra) to “discuss their partnership to build a complete crypto privacy stack”.
For anyone wanting to play around with the Taiko network (zkEVM), you can now take part in this Galxe campaign.
Dymension (Cosmos L2s) officially launches its first incentivized testnet, “Froopyland”. Check out our previous newsletter, linked here, to learn all about the testnet launch.
@vijay_chetty joins Eclipse (Solana VM rollups) as new Chief Business Officer. Vijay previously held this same position at Uniswap, and DYDX.
A Hyperlane module is set to go live on the Cosmos SDK during Q3 this year. This will enable communication between IBC and non-IBC chains (so think Cosmos <> Ethereum interop). The team held a space about this for thos interested.
OmniKingdom, a cross-rollup RPG, will leverage Omni Network for cross-chain communication. So far, the team has announced that it will deploy on Mante, Taiko, and Scroll.
Learn all about how Composable Finance achieved the first IBC connection between Cosmos & Polkadot. “Specifically, we have recently launched Centauri’s connection between the Cosmos and Polkadot, facilitated by both the IBC and our Kusama parachain, Picasso”.
For anyone wanting to learn about liquid staking in the interchain, Stride just held two noteworthy spaces: (1) “Stride & Cosmos defi”: learn what you can do with your liquid staked tokens, and (2) “Future of Cosmos LSTs”.
“A draft proposal to form a Grants Committee to fund the development of Neutron’s ecosystem is now live on the Neutron Forum”.
📚 Discourse & Education
Optimistic rollups for high throughput apps
ZK is all the rage these days, but Noah Citron from a16z crypto believes optimistic rollups might be better suited for high throughput and low composability applications. He uses onchain gaming as an example.
Side note - when Noah mentions “monolithic use cases” better served by ZK rollups, he is referring to applications that need atomic composability such as DeFi. He uses monolithic to mean one big shared state and distinguish between general-purpose vs. app-specific rollups. If an app doesn’t really need to compose with other apps, it’s reasonable to separate the app into it’s own execution environment.
Ok, so what’s behind this take? Let’s focus on the onchain gaming example.
Games are more likely to need high performance / low cost execution and less likely to need DeFi-level composability. As an illustration, assume you are playing a free-to-play game that is 99% non-financial. You are using ingame NFTs but they are generally low-value (mostly for game utility). Occasionally assets become valuable enough to sell or take elsewhere (e.g. other games).
Noah would argue that the above example is better off as an optimistic rollup. It’s possible that the costs to generate ZK proofs for this game would be high and passed on to users, which might make the game less attractive. The game is supposed to be free - is the game developer now forced to charge users? That would hinder adoption.
Great, so the game is cheaper. But what about the drawbacks of optimistic rollups?
Worse bridging / interop
Harder light client model
Noah would argue that worse bridging (most due to fraud challenge periods) wouldn’t be that problematic for this use case - mainly since there would be little need to bridge! He’d also argue that the extra burden of optimistic rollup clients having to rerun computations (to catch any fraud!) are mitigated by the app-specific design. There will be less computational overhead than if it were a general-purpose rollup.
This all sounds reasonable! What’s the counter take?
Brendan from Polygon offers a different perspective. His stance is basically:
If it’s an EVM environment, proving cost would be a problem but there’s a bigger problem - congestion and transaction fee spikes. This plagues all current EVM environments.
If it’s a non-EVM environment, the cost problem statement might be moot. Different VMs are often much cheaper to prove and can be designed to better alleviate congestion.
Low-value gaming rollups will need to bridge (to access liquidity) more than you think!
Uncommon Core 2.0
Fine I'll do it - we're so back. Introducing Uncommon Core 2.0!
This one hits close to home since Uncommon Core (1.0) was a huge part of my (Dino’s) journey down the rabbit a few years back. Beyond excited to see that Hasu is bringing it back with none other than Jon Charb as his new co-host to unpack MEV, rollups and other frontier infrastructure topics.
Spoiler alert - this pod will be all signal, no noise. Highest of recommendations 🧠
More Discourse & Education
Ethereum Foundation hosted a Reddit AMA covering the Ethereum roadmap, restaking, DVT and more 💬
@SuccinctJT walks through 17 misconceptions about SNARKs and why they hold us back ✍️🔥
@stacy_muur breaks down different approaches to modular shared security, including restaking, replicated security, mesh security and more 💬
Obol Labs discusses how Liquid Staking protocols help decentralize Ethereum node operations with builders from Ether.fi, StakeWise, Stader and ClayStack 🎙️
OpenBuild discusses the current and future state of ZK rollups with builders from Scroll, Linea, zkSync and StarkWare 🎙️💎
Bell Curve discusses whether liquid staking is a winner take all market with Hasu from Flashbots 🎙️
Four Pillars (@xparadigms) explores the history, current state and architecture of zkSync along a comparison between ZK Stack and OP Stack ✍️💎
Manta Network discusses how they combine ZK with modularity using Matt from Caldera and Nick from Celestia 🎙️🔥
AltLayer explains how Decentralized Verification works via their Beacon Layer ✍️
@NashQueue explains rollup architectures that break the sequencer into two logical entities: The Aggregator and Header Producer ✍️
WAGMI Ventures discusses early startup focus, advice to founders and decentralized trust markets with Sreeram from EigenLayer 🎙️
The Rollup discusses Starknet’s new TPS upgrade with builders from StarkWare 🎙️
@henrlihenrli breaks down Madara, Kakarot and their statuses 💬
@expctchaos dives into plonky2, the proof system behind Polygon zkEVM 💬
@expctchaos explains zkSync’s zkPorter architecture and how volitions impact users 💬
@apolynya explores an interesting design for Ethereum-Tezos validiums ✍️
@stacy_muur breaks down all things EigenLayer 💬
Taiko explores a cross-chain vision for rollups ✍️
Polygon Labs discusses XChain, a Layer 2 leveraging Polygon’s zkEVM with Sandeep from Polygon and Alex from IDEX 🎙️
@OlimpioCrypto explores 5 projects building on the OP Stack, covering Base, BNB Chain, Zora, Public Goods Network and Worldcoin 💬
@derek_hsue discusses crypto gaming, rollups and more with Scott from Argus Labs 🎙️
Avail explains their Data Attestation bridge and how it enables secure validiums / optimistic chains ✍️
Delphi Digital highlights Optimism’s and Arbitrum’s impressive sequencer revenue 📊
@AlanaDLevin explores L2 network effects and what makes them sticky 💬
@expctchaos explains Manta’s new ZK execution layer (Manta Pacific) built using Ethereum, Celestia and Caldera 💬
Conduit explains how Zora used their rollup platform to reach mainnet in 4 weeks ✍️🤯
Polygon Labs discusses decentralized identity, and verifiable credentials with builders from Polygon ID and Docket Network 🎙️
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬
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