Weekly Rollup #25
Optimism's Law of Chains | The first Starknet Appchain | Espresso Partnerships | How available should data be? | Week ending July 28th
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This week’s issue covers:
Optimism Introduces the “Law of Chains”
Paradex Becomes the First Starknet Appchain
Espresso Partners with Caldera, AltLayer, & Catalyst
More News & Announcements
How available should data be?
How available should data be?
More Discourse & Education
📣 News & Announcements
Optimism Introduces the “Law of Chains”
Last week, Optimism announced the “Law of Chains”, a social contract that teams must follow in order to be part of the superchain.
Why the Law of Chains
Ever since Optimism’s Bedrock upgrade, we have been seeing several projects announce their own OP Stack chain, including Base, PGN, and Worldcoin. And with recent popularity among RaaS providers like Conduit, which allows developers to deploy their own OP Stack rollup in minutes, I do not see this trend slowing down - in other words, the superchain will continue to grow. As a reminder, the superchain is intended to be a mesh network of different L2 rollups.
That said, although each rollup along this supechain will be its own individual network, the intention is for the end-users, like yourself and I, to view it as a single chain - a “unified collective”.. Ultimately the goal is to remove as much friction as possible, and to help this become reality, Optimism wants to have a shared standard across the superchain, which leads us to the “Law of Chains”.
What is the law of chains
According to the team, the Law of Chains is “an open neutrality framework for participants in the Superchain ecosystem”. In short, it’s the set of conducts, or rules, that a chain must abide by in order to be included in the superchain. “Fundamentally, the Law of Chains is a social contract”.
So for example, you may have to use the shared sequencer that is approved by the Law of Chains. The reason the superchain will benefit from using the same shared sequencer would be more seamless interoperability between rollups, however, at the expense of not being able to use your own independent sequencer to manage your own MEV. Of course, this is just one example, but you could imagine other standards being added over time to help increase user safety and the user experience.
Again, not every single OP Stack rollup has to follow this shared standard, only those that want to join the superchain.
What’s next
You can check out the original announcement to learn more. Also, anyone is encouraged to provide feedback and opinions in the forum.
“After iterating on this draft with the community, we hope to formally introduce it, alongside the first version of a governance process for new chains to join the Superchain, in the next Season of governance”.
Paradex Becomes the First Starknet Appchain
On July 21st, Paradex officially became the first Starknet appchain.
As a reminder, just recently Starknet announced that teams will now be able to leverage the “Starknet Stack” to build their own custom appchain. We talked about this in last week’s newsletter for those interested in learning more about this.
So what is Paradex?
Paradex is a self-custodial crypto derivatives exchange.
Starknet users are accustomed to using the Argent or Braavos wallet, however, Paradex’s initial launch will only have Metamask support. They’re aiming to make it as easy as possible for new entrants who may not have a Argent or Braavos account.
In terms of its architecture:
off-chain matching engine: meaning the actual trading (the order-book matching) is done off-chain, on the cloud, to reduce gas fees for users while also offering high throughput
trade settlement: a proof of the transactions that were done off-chain settle on the Starknet L2, before that L2 proof ultimately lands on Ethereum.
trying to fill the gap caused by FTX collapse
According to the project docs, Paradex is trying to fill the gap that was left after the collapse of FTX, however, it seems more to me that they’re trying to fill the gap that will be left by DYDX, once they transition to their own Cosmos appchain.
What’s next
On the day of the announcement, Paradex also opened up a waitlist for their platform, although it looks as though the sign-up page has been removed. But don’t worry, while Paradex is only live on testnet today, they’re expected to launch on mainnet sometime this month.
You can join their Discord, where you’ll be placed in one of two tiers (four altogether, but the first two have been closed off now), depending on when you join - join before the public launch and you’re in tier three, join after and you’ll be in tier four.
Espresso Partners with Caldera, AltLayer, & Catalyst
Espresso has been announcing several key partnerships ever since their second testnet launch, Doppio, which we talked about in last week’s newsletter.
Let’s take a quick look at some of these partnerships and see what they mean for each respective community.
Espresso now available on Caldera & AltLayer RaaS solutions
Following Espresso’s launch of Doppio, the team mentioned that they will begin their process of integrating its shared sequencer across different RaaS and Rollup Framework solutions.
One of the first RaaS solutions to do so was Caldera.
As a reminder, Caldera allows developers to deploy their own custom OP Stack rollup in just a couple of minutes. One of the rollup components developers are able to customize is their sequencer - so, as a rollup deployer, you’ll now be able to choose Espresso to fulfill this service for your own Caldera Chain. Of course, you’ll still be able to use any other shared sequencer solution Caldera integrates in the future, or even build your own sequencer to adopt.
Another RaaS solution to announce its partnership with Espresso last week was AltLayer.
AltLayer is another solution that allows developers to launch their own custom rollup in just a couple of minutes. One aspect that makes AltLayer different than others is its “Flash Layers”, or in other words, rollups with an expiration date. “The two companies will explore integrations between rollups built with the AltLayer platform and the Espresso Sequencer”. This will allow developers to deploy their own rollup on AltLayer, with Espresso as an option for them to use as a sequencer for their rollup.
Basically, the Espresso sequencer becomes a “plug-in component” for both of these solutions.
Some advantages for a team adopting a shared sequencer like Espresso, on either RaaS solution, are:
decentralization: Espresso will leverage Eigen Layer’s restaking protocol, meaning the same validators from Ethereum L1 will be performing the sequencing on Espresso. A decentralized set of sequencers means censorship resistance and the de-monopolization of MEV.
interoperability: shared sequencers offer the hope of atomic cross-chain transactions, due to the fact that they will offer a global state for all the rollups that plug into the network.
Espresso x Catalyst
Catalyst, a cross-chain liquidity layer for the modular ecosystem (a cross-chain AMM), also announced its recent partnership with Espresso.
As a reminder, Catalyst will enable cross-chain swaps using its “unit of liquidity model” - try it yourself here. We talked more about this in a previous newsletter issue if you’re interested in learning more about how this works. With this partnership, Catalyst will be prioritizing “deploying on rollups that utilize the Espresso sequencer”. To learn more about this partnership, check out the original announcement, here.
More News & Announcements
Avail launches a new prototype of the opEVM SDK, which will allow teams to build their own sovereign optimistic rollups “that can support a decentralized sequencer set, exists without an enshrined bridge on a layer-1 (L1), and genuinely verifies state transitions optimistically”. This is a joint collaboration between Avail, Eiger, and Equilibrium.
Alchemix Finance becomes the first to adopt the xERC20 token standard, which was just proposed by Connext (interop protocol) just a couple of weeks ago.
Introducing Zeko, an L2 built to offer teams the option to deploy privacy-enabled dapps on the Mina L1 network.
@manujmishra_ along with his team, built an “anti-deepfake microphone” and won ETHGlobal Paris. Essentially, it allows you to tell if the voice, or content that was generated, was done by either a real human or AI.
Worldcoin, one of the most anticipated projects in web3, just officially went live. If you’ve been in CT, you have probably seen the hour-long lines of people waiting to get their eyeballs scanned. For anyone wanting to learn all about Worldcoin, check out this Bankless interview with the team from last week. & you can check out this thread to learn how the proofs used in Worldcoin help keep your identity private from other users.
Flashbots has open-sourced all the references and tools related to MEV-share, giving users/teams a close look at “how their transactions are being processed in the MEV supply chain.”
The Public Goods Network (PGN) launched on mainnet last week. PGN is an OP Stack chain meant to provide a sustainable source of funding for, well, public goods. In six months, funds will be distributed to teams appropriately, based on activity and popularity of their project, among other factors i’m sure.
Introducing Syndr Chain, a crypto options & futures protocol launched as its own L3 chain powered by Arbitrum Orbit.
Learn about EIP-6968, which enables “ecosystem chains” - the idea is you share a single L2 across a whole, general community. For example, a chain about donuts that any donut-related project can deploy on. These contract deployers would then earn sequencer fees when their contracts consume gas.
A bit late to this one, but Tiny World, a web3 adventure game, is now live on zkSync.
@jarrodWattsDev built a dapp on every zkEVM and wrote about his experience, and everything he learned about these different networks, here. & just to be transparent, he is a current member of the Polygon team.
The Intmax team announced Intmax2, a new algorithm for their stateless zk-rollup. “The unique aspect of this system is that the validator (block producer) can create blocks without knowing the contents of the transactions (tx) or even whether they are correct”.
TaskOn integrates with the Manta network, allowing its community to start completing tasks for the network.
Check out some of the hooks that have been developed ever since Uniswap v4 launched.
@lightclients proposes EIP-7377: Token Migration. This is meant to provide a transition from EOA accounts to smart accounts, permanently. This was propsoed following Vitalik’s talk at ETHCC, where he stated that we still need to find a way to transition all current users to smart wallets (account abstraction).
Electron Labs integrates its ZK Light Client Tech into Router Protocol as an Additional Security Module.
Covalent is live on Linea, bringing its Unified API to the network.
Vistara (RaaS solution) announces Dymension RollApps V1, allowing anyone to deploy their own EVM RollApp, powered by Dymension, in just a few clicks.
Hyperlane announces “NFT Warp Route Support”, essentially providing a UI for devs to start taking their NFT collections across across different chains.
Palm will leverage the Polygon zkEVM stack to launch its own L2 appchain for its NFT Creator’s platform.
Argent launches a new NFT marketplace on Starknet.
Check out PixeLaw, the project that took first place at Starknet hackathon in Paris this past week. “We envision starting with a small pixel land and minimal rules and then adding new rules, games, etc. on top of that”.
PancakeSwap launches on zkSync Era. Snapshot, the web3 governance platform, also launches on Era.
Here are all the Arbitrum deployments over the past week, featuring Pyth Network (oracle), Aurory (free-to-play platform), and others.
New Optimism mission: a site to help users vote on projects for Retro PGF.
Account Abstraction arrives at Optimism thanks to Biconomy’s SDK integration. Optimism apps will now be able to leverage any of the 3 account abstraction services offered by the SDK.
New Scroll testnet faucet is live for developers, thanks to Covalent.
Here’s a summary of Scroll’s July Community Call, including community updates, technical updates, new partnerships, recent events and media appearances, & more.
Looks like there are two new dapps coming to the Fuel network soon: (1) Smart Money, a lending & borrowing app, and (2) Sail, a perps exchange.
The Fuel team just published its Q2 report, going over all the recent network news & updates.
Voting begins for Mantle Improvement Proposal (MIP) 25 to establish a sub-governance committee “to handle minor details and time-sensitive decisions”, and “Authorize the Mantle LSD and Lido ETH staking strategies”. There’s more to this proposal, which you can learn all about here. Voting ends August 5th.
Osmosis just unveiled Osmo 2.0, which will see reduced inflation of OSMO, as well as an extended vesting period, in an effort to control token inflation which has resulted in a not so great token performance. In short, this will reduce the amount of OSMO distributed each epoch (1 epoch = 1 year in Osmosis) by 50%, which will in turn also extend the time period in which all OSMO otkens will be distributed. You can learn more here.
Check out the 8 projects selected for the Q3 cohort for The Builders Program, which is meant to help grow the interchain ecosystem. The list includes projects like Leap, Artela, Seda, Amulet, & more.
Users can now farm stATOM on Polkadot, following a recent pool deployment by Picasso. Wouldn’t be surprised to see other Polkadot projects start integrating stATOM into their own dapps in the near future as well.
Mars (a credit protocol) is set to deploy an outpost on Neutron (Cosmos ICS chain).
Etihad Airlines leverages Polygon to build its own NFT-based loyalty program.
Another World announces that it will be building its own rollup for its on-chain 3D game using AltLayer (RaaS solution).
📚 Discourse & Education
How available should data be?
What if I told you that most data availability (DA) layers discard data after 2 weeks? If that doesn’t sound very “available” to you, you’re not alone.
There are two key things to understand:
Data availability vs. data storage
Who needs data availability?
First, there’s a difference between data availability and data storage. Data storage is pretty straightforward. If you’ve used AWS S3 or even Dropbox, you know data storage. In a decentralized data storage context, you might have heard of Arweave or Filecoin. These solutions serve as places to put your data over potentially long periods of time. I’m guessing you’d be mad if Dropbox deleted your family photos or NFT images after a couple of years.
DA layers are different - their purpose is to prevent data withholding attacks. Unlike data storage, this is a very blockchain specific thing. Data withholding attacks are when consensus nodes do not publish transaction data.
Here are a few good resources for understanding data availability and why it’s important:
So it’s clear that L1 nodes need data availability, but what about rollups?
TLDR ZK rollups need them and optimistic rollups really need them.
Optimistic rollups need DA for safety. If the challenge period (time given to catch any fraud) of a rollup was one day and the data was withheld for two days, the fraudster wins. He wins because network watchers, whose duty is to monitor the chain for fraud) would not be able to execute transactions and generate a fraud proof.
ZK rollups need DA for liveness. The ZK proof ensures safety even if there’s one rollup block producer, but what if that one block producer goes offline? DA empowers any sequencer to continue execution.
Put simply, for optimistic rollups DA ensures anyone can verify blocks and for ZK rollups DA ensures anyone can produce blocks.
Can you blame anyone for confusing data availability with data storage? Nope, data availability is a very misleading name. Here’s one vote for proof of publication ✋
More Discourse & Education
@VitalikButerin shares thoughts on biometric proof of personhood, Worldcoin’s core innovation ✍️
@bkiepuszewski walks through how Worldcoin tech works using an example 💬💎
@sreeramkannan explains the 5 properties that make a confirmation rule secure 💬🧠
@0xQuintus curates useful PBS resources into one place ✍️🔥
@ralexstokes explores “reslashing” to mitigate externalities of restaking ✍️💎
Bell Curve discusses price discovery for decentralized trust with Sreeram from EigenLayer 🎙️🔥
@suppvalen summarizes the Worldcoin whitepaper and mission ✍️
Manta Network discusses web3 use cases with ZK identity oracles 🎙️
The Rollup discusses Account Abstraction and easy DeFi UX 🎙️
@expctchaos deep dives into the major L2 ecosystems and which are most promising 💬
@nickwh8te frames the resource requirements for Ethereum, Celestia and Solana light nodes 🖼️🔥
@soispoke models Modeling MEV-boost Auctions (MMA) ✍️
@Hyunxukee explains the rollup tradeoffs between protecting users from MEV vs. profit 💬
Saga discusses how to level up the crypto user experience 🎙️
@0xResearch discusses centralized builders, scaling solutions, and more 🎙️
@0x0BRIEN explores how intents shift token distribution from airdrops to micro token drops ✍️
Delphi Podcast discusses Coinbase’s Base rollup with Jesse Pollak from Coinbase 🎙️
@dberenzon frames the interoperability advantages ZK rollups have over optimistic rollups 💬
Polymer Labs discusses bringing Cosmos IBC packets to and from Ethereum 🎙️
Unchained Podcast discusses the “new alt L1 thesis” with Chris and Joel from Placeholder VC 🎙️
Today in Polygon explains what Polygon Labs means by a “hyperproductive” token 💬
@0xTindorr deep dives into all things EigenLayer, including a nice ELI5 💬
@0xhasher_ explains how messages get sent between Ethereum L1 and Starknet L2 💬
@expctchaos dives into Radius shared sequencing and why it matters 💬
@colludingnode explains how to compress merkle proofs to make light nodes lighter 💬
Polygon Labs walks through 10 real world blockchain use cases in the public sector ✍️
@expctchaos explains based rollups and tokenless decentralization 💬
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬
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