Weekly Rollup #61
Risc Zero zkVM 1.0 | Lagrange Announces Euclid, onchain SQL | Introducing Forma | Cosmos IBC 🤝 Polygon Agg Layer | Lava Whitepaper | Week ending April 19th
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This week’s issue covers:
Risc Zero Announces zkVM 1.0
Lagrange Announces Euclid - onchain SQL
Introducing Forma
Cosmos IBC 🤝 Polygon Aggregation Layer
Lava Whitepaper
Raises
More News & Announcements
Discourse & Education
📣 News & Announcements
Risc Zero Announces zkVM 1.0
Risc Zero announced the first version of their general-purpose zkVM, becoming the first team to do so.
As a reminder, a general purpose chain/system that is designed or suitable for a wide range of users and applications, rather than being specialized for a specific purpose or task. In the context of Risc Zero, this means general purpose zk-proofs - “prove anything”.
“Verify everywhere” because the zk-proofs generated by Risc Zero could be proven on Ethereum, L2s, Solana, etc.
With Risc Zero, builders across these chains will be able to leverage the power of zk-technology without knowing how to build these zk-systems themselves. So in the future, we can imagine a world where you build an app, take it to one of these RaaS no-code solutions, and in 1-click, add zk functionality to the app.
zkVM 1.0 will launch in four phases:
As of today, the team is still in the trusted ceremony phase, which has just been open to the public, for those who would like to participate - you can learn how here.
Check out the complete post to learn all about zkVM 1.0. & for those interested in learning more about Risc Zero in general, we wrote a short deep dive about the protocol, here.
Lagrange Announces Euclid - onchain SQL
Lagrange just announced Euclid, the first public testnet of its ZK coprocessor.
Here’s the general idea of what a zk coprocessor, and more specifically Lagrange, enables (you can check out the full post to learn more about Lagrange):
Wei Dai puts it well - onchain SQL:
In fact:
Lagrange’s ZK coprocessor will mark the team’s second EigenLayer AVS deployment, following in the footsteps of their recently launched State Committee network, which has now accrued +$1.9B in total restaked ETH, in a little over a week 👀
Introducing Forma
Last week was the unveiling of Forma, a sovereign rollup for “onchain creations” (aka NFTs), that will launch using Astria.
While most attention came from the fact that this will be the first Celestia rollup to denominate in TIA, one of the more interesting aspects is that they enable expressive NFTs - or in other words, other smart contracts will be able to interact with these NFTs - a “composable layer of NFTs”.
Check out the full post to learn all about Forma.
Cosmos IBC 🤝 Polygon Aggregation Layer
It looks like Polygon’s aggregation layer is expanding, as Union’s recent launch will now enable IBC chains to tap into Polygon’s agglayer.
This will ultimately enable chains like Celestia, Osmosis, the Cosmos Hub, etc. to interoperate with Polygon zkEVM and all the other Polygon CDK chains that launch.
Nick White had a very good take that same day:
I think this partnership between Polygon & Union exemplifies this well:
Polygon agglayer: “state, liquidity and users extremely fluid between chains”
Union: Union will serve as one of these “trust zones” that sits between the Polygon ecosystem and the IBC ecosystem.
You can check out the full post to learn more.
Lava Whitepaper
Lava Network just dropped the whitepaper for their “universal access layer", which will allow any rollup to plug into the network of incentivized public RPC providers.
You can think of Lava as another modular component that a world filled with thousands of rollups will need.
So why is that?
When you, me, or any other end-user performs an onchain action (a swap, mint, etc.), you’re sending a request to an RPC node, which then delivers the message to the chain.
This means that for a chain/rollup to have users, they’ll need RPC providers who can sit as the middlemen between end-users and the chain. However, just as it is hard to spin up a new validator set, or to get integrated across popular bridges, it’s also hard to get RPC provider support - this is where Lava comes in.
Lava aims to become another important component to the modular stack, enabling any new rollup to have RPC support out of the box, rathe rthan waiting for an established provider to adopt your new chain, or rather than relying on continuous community node runner support.
With Lava, a new chain can create an “incentivized pool” - they deposit funds into a pool, which are then used to incentivize/reward Lava RPC providers. Check out the full post to learn more!
Raises
Nebra
Nebra raises $4.5M from Nascent, BanklessVC, & others, as the team looks to build a universal proof aggregation protocol.
Geodnet
DePIN fans, Geodnet, a Real-Time Kinematics network, announced a 2M raise, with involvement from Pantera Capital, CoinFund, & more.
More News & Announcements
Giza announced Giza Agents, which put simply, is a modular framework that enables developers to build custom AI agents that are also interoperable with one another - intents on steroids.
EigenLayer unpausing: LST caps have been removed, meaning you’re free to deposit as much as you’d like into the restaking protocol now. — Read.
DeFund goes modular: The Cosmos SDK chain announces their upcoming transition to start using Celestia for DA Users can interact with their tweet to be eligible for testnet-2 access of their option vaults. -- Read
Ancient 8 integrates Hyperlane: the OP Stack gaming rollup will be leveraging Hyperlane to enable Ancient8 gamers to access assets on other Hyperlane integrated chains. – Read
Parallel Network successfully upgraded its rollup to start posting blobs to Ethereum, bringing a reduction in operating costs, and thus to end-users. This also shows why RaaS solutions are so powerful, as Conduit was able to complete this upgrade for the team without any setbacks. – Read
AltLayer partners with Brevis, to bring the coprocessor as an offering on AltLayer’s RaaS platform. – Read
The Bitcoin Layers team just published their assessment of coreDAO, which means you can check out some of the risks and trust assumptions associated with this Bitcoin sidechain “with an enshrined BTC bridge”. – Read
New Catalyst features: here are the latest features that have been added by the interop protocol, Permit2. “a token approval contract developed by Uniswap”— Read.
Celestia crosses 7GB of data published – Read.
Starting on April 23rd, the SAFE token (by gnosis) will be transferrable. — Read.
New L2Beat feature: L2Beat added a “costs” tab, allowing users to look at how much L2s are paying Ethereum for security (data blob costs & more). — Read.
Grow The Pie released their new “Fees” page, allowing you to track L2 fees organized by median fees, transfer fees, and swap fees. You can also filter by DA, and more features. Check it out!
Introducing Mint, an L2 for NFTs built with Conduit (RaaS), and one of the latest additions to Optimism’s Superchain. – Read
Arbitrum’s AIP for BOLD is now up: as a reminder, BOLD enables permissionless validation (anyone can submit fraud proofs!) - we spoke in more detail about BOLD, here. If you’d like to learn more about BOLD, they’re hosting an AMA on the 18th, and a governance call on the 25th of this month. Learn more by checking out the full post. — Read.
The Data Lake team announces that they will be transitioning from an app on Polygon PoS chain, to their own L2, which looks to become “the go-to blockchain solution for all DeSci, pharmaceutical, healthcare, and AI institutions worldwide”. — Read.
Omni Network just shared some more details about OMNI tokenomics & claim date. — Read.
Lava Network (RPC) posts its proposal for Axelar to adopt its RPC tech — Read
Evmos announces SingleToken Representation: before, a token on Evmoss had two token representations - a native Cosmos token representation, and an ERC-20 representation, where users had to wrap/unwrap between the two. Now, it’s just one token. — Read
The Dymension RollApp Draft Hackathon, hosted by Encode Club, kicks-off: participants have four weeks to build and complete bounties for their chance at some of the 29K DYM prize pool. There are also a couple of workshops lined up across different topics, such as incentives, governance, & more. — Read
Check out Infinity Chain (YieldFi): a restaked EVM secured by EigenLayer & Ethos — Read
Stackr Micro rollup SDK is now open for selected beta testers: Must hold a “beta pass” NFT to access (can still register for future slot openings) — Read
Cosmos Hub proposal #897 passes: Partial Set Security Update — Read
Zeeve (RaaS) adds support for the OP Stack — Read
stTIA deposits on Mars protocol are now eligible for the ongoing Stride airdrop — Read
📚 Discourse & Education
Nick White (Celestia) joins David from Bankless to discuss everything Celestia and the “Modular Money” meme. — Watch
Federico from Reverie writes about why apps like Uniswap, Lido, & DYDX have won. — Read
Fhenix and EigenLayer cohosted a space discussion about “FHE coprocessors on Eth”. — Listen.
@eawosikaa provides a great general overview about “escape hatches”, a critical feature for any L2. — Read.
@ecdsafu from @squidrouter joins @0xResearch podcast to discuss how they plan to connect defi across multiple chains. — Watch.
Shivanshu provides a great summary about Zaki’s recent conversation with Ethos Stake. — Read.
New paper presented on the Ethresearch forum about a new ZKP bridge for Ethereum full node. — Read.
Espresso cofounder joins Gelato for discussion for a technical overview of the Espresso Shared (& Based) Sequencing roadmap. — Watch.
New OP Labs guest blog post about “how to tap into Ethereum liquidity by making NFT minting available both on L1 and L2s”. — Read.
For those who missed ZK Summit 2024, @josephbonneau from a16z just shared this great summary of what you may have missed during the event. — Read.
Another Nairolf banger: “bro, wat is eigenlayer AVS” — Read.
@VelvetMilkman writes "questions meant to help AVS developers think about several aspects of their AVS protocol including incentives, governance, decentralization, and overall economic security." — Read.
@0xyanshu from Luganodes breaks down the concept of restaking vs the concept of rehypothecation, in the context of potential EigenLayer systemic risks. — Read.
Stacy Muur breaks down the DA race, featuring Celestia, Near, EigenLayer, & Avail. — Read.
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬