Weekly Rollup #66
Forma Hits Mainnet: Celestia's 1st NFT Rollup | ENS Proposes New Chain | Zaar Chain: The Fun Network | Galxe Announces Chain | Fuel’s Final Testnet Launch | Babylon Raises $70M | Week ending May 31st
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This week’s issue covers:
Forma Chain Hits Mainnet: Celestia’s 1st Sovereign NFT Rollup 🎭
ENS Proposes New Chain 📝
Galxe to Launch Gravity Chain 👾
Zaar Chain: The Fun Network 💊
Fuel’s Final Testnet Launch ⛽️
Babylon Raises $70M 💰
Upcoming Modular Events: Avail’s Unification Cup, Gelato’s Enterprise Chain Summit, & more 🎭
More News & Announcements 📣
Discourse & Education 📚
📣 News & Announcements
Forma Chain Hits Mainnet: Celestia’s 1st Sovereign NFT Rollup 🎭
Forma, a sovereign chain for onchain creations, officially hit mainnet last week, becoming Celestia’s first sovereign rollup to do so.
If you’ve been in Modular Twitter this past month, chances are you’ve heard about the community’s excitement for Forma. Part of the reason (aside from this being Celestia’s first sovereign rollup of course) is because similar to Eclipse, Forma showcases the power of modularity:
& thanks to Stride & Hyperlane, bridging TIA over to Forma is pretty seamless.
If we look at the Forma site today, we can see two mintable collections - who knows, you may be rewarded sometime in the future for these initial interactions.
& for those who’d like to keep up with Forma’s blobs, fees paid, etc - Celenium has just added the sovereign network to their dashboard.
Congrats to the entire Forma & Astria teams! & don’t worry, plenty of Forma chain content will come 🫡
ENS Proposes New Chain 📝
Last week, the Ethereum Name Service (ENS) team published a proposal on the community forum to migrate from a dapp launched directly on top of Ethereum, to an L2 network - this effort is known as “ENSv2”.
If you’ve been in web3 for a while, you’re most likely aware of the tremendous success ENS has had - I mean, remember the whole 3-digit club craze a couple of years ago, which ended up sparking a huge wave of demand for a while? Since launching in 2017, they’ve registered millions of .eth domains, while also seeing “thousands” of integrations across wallets, dapps, browsers, & more.
According to the official post:
“We’re formally proposing the extension of the ENS protocol to an L2, and a new hierarchical registry design for ENS, where each name has its own personal registry responsible for managing subdomains and resolvers”.
Hierarchical Registry
The hierarchical registry design in ENSv2 introduces a multi-layered approach, separating domain management between Layer 1 and Layer 2 to enhance scalability, reduce costs, and provide users with greater flexibility and control over their domain names.
This provides enhanced customization for end users:
Custom Subregistries: Users can set up and manage subregistries for their .eth domains, allowing for more tailored and specific domain hierarchies.
ENS L2
& in regards to the L2, a lot is still undecided, including which rollup framework they’d choose to adopt (OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK, zkSync’s ZK Stack, a Starknet appchain, etc.). That said, they do have their prerequisites, or more specifically, they have a Selection Framework consisting of 3 requirements and 9 ranking criteria.
I should also note that current .eth domain holders will not need to migrate their domain to the L2 (if it were to launch).
Selection Framework:
3 requirements:
EVM compatibility
censorship resistance and decentralization
open source
9 criteria:
fast finality: how long does it take for a transaction to reach the L1
security and resilience: does the L2 have working fraud proofs - no mention of zk-proofs specifically, but I’d imagine this would be okay as well?
performance: “transaction throughput, confirmation times, gas costs, and scalability roadmap.”
decentralization & governance: ENS basically wants governance independence
interoperability & composability: is it compatible with the broader Ethereum ecosystem?
strong developer experience & tooling: does your ecosystem have a strong developer community, along with sufficient developer resources
L2 adoption: does your ecosystem have a strong network of projects, users, and partners?
customization & ENS-specific features: I’d imagine part of this customization is being able to use their own native gas token, for example
ENSDAO Extra Funding & Next Steps
For the ENS team to fulfill this L2 migration, they are requesting an extra 4M USDC added to their yearly budget, to cover engineering hiring as well as operational costs for building and deploying the ENS L2 network.
ENSv2 is expected to significantly enhance functionality and usability for developers and end-users. Developers will benefit from increased flexibility, while users will enjoy reduced transaction fees and higher throughput from hosting names on L2, while still leveraging Ethereum’s security.
As mentioned, this is still in the research and discussion phase, which anyone can participate in. If the community decides to go forward with ENSv2, then the migration will be rolled out in phases, which is outlined in the technical document, here.
Galxe to Launch Gravity Chain 👾
Galxe announces the launch of Gravity, their own L1 Omnichain. According to the official post, “this protocol allows applications to use Gravity as the settlement layer for user intents across any chain”.
Gravity will be EVM compatible and will utilize zk-proofs.
Some of the use cases mentioned by the team include Balance Abstraction with yield, intent-based transactions, gas abstraction, and omnichain loyalty points
Gravity Chain will be built using Conduit (RaaS)
Zaar Chain: The Fun Network 💊
Zaar announced that they will be launching Zaar Chain, their own rollup built on top of Initia, with Celestia underneath. Dubbed "The Fun Network," Zaar Chain is designed to be a vibrant playground for NFTs and a hub of creativity and excitement.
According to the team, launching as their own L2 will allow them to fulfill their goals of creating “visceral” onchain experiences.
Zaar has listed two parts:
Part 1: The Non-Fungible Network
NFT Primitives for a Modular Ecosystem: Zaar says they will introduce essential building blocks specifically designed for NFTs within the modular ecosystem (could be to enhance creation, trading, or management of NFTs perhaps)
Global NFT Hub: We may end up in a world with NFTs existing across numerous chains, and so Zaar Chain aspires to be the central hub for all NFT activities, facilitating a dynamic and interconnected environment for digital assets.
Part 2: Embracing Degeneracy
Zaar Chain promises to incorporate unique, playful elements into its ecosystem, adding a layer of excitement and unpredictability. More details on these features will be revealed soon.
While Zaar chain isn’t expected to hit mainnet until later this year, users can start interacting with their public beta, on Ethereum.
Fuel’s Final Testnet Launch ⛽️
Fuel Labs announced the launch of their last public testnet.
As a reminder, Fuel originally launched the first optimistic rollup on Ethereum, back in 2020. Fuel is a modular execution layer that focuses on extending the capabilities of the EVM - it’s an Ethereum L2 with its own virtual machine (FuelVM), and programming language (Sway).
This public testnet represents the final iteration before it is ultimately upgraded to mainnet “in the coming months”. It' also represents the first network deployment that leverages Fuel’s recently unveiled operating system, “Rollup OS”.
Some of the latest features they introduced with this latest testnet include:
Native account abstraction
the enabling of State-minimized apps, thanks to Fuel’s UTXO design, ephemeral scripting capabilities, and integrated native assets
light client support
To be more specific, this is according to their FAQ page:
How to get started on Fuel testnet:
As mentioned, this is a public testnet, meaning not only can developers permisisonlessly deploy their own contracts on the network, but users like you & I could also interact with the apps that deploy on the testnet. You may have to wait for some apps to migrate over from the previous testnet first though.
Download & install a Fuel wallet
Access Fuel faucet, here
Bridge from Ethereum to Fuel Sepolia
Head to the ecosystem explorer page to view apps deployed on Fuel.
Start farming, playing, etc: Again, may need to wait for some apps to transfer over first.
& remember, it’s a testnet, so don’t be using your real ETH!
Babylon Raises $70M 💰
The big raise from the modular ecosystem last week was Babylon, which announced a $70M raise led by Paradigm.
As a reminder, Babylon enables BTC to be used to secure Proof of Stake networks. We wrote a more complete deep dive about Babylon, here.
Modular Events 🎭
Avail’s Unification Cup
Alright footy fans, time to represent your community:
Gelato’s Enterprise Chain Summit
Gelato and Google Cloud will be co-hosting a 1-day event, where speakers from Celestia, Polygon, Circle, Optimsim, Rarible, and Gelato are set to present and showcase their capabilities to several brands and enterprises. Check out the full post to RSVP.
Modular Meetup Istanbul
Registrations are now open for Istanbul’s next Modular Meetup event hosted on Friday, June 7th.
More:
EigenLayer announced AVS microhacks, a virtual mini hackathon that will extend 21 days, with $50K in prizes. The first mini hack will focus on “Making AVS development easier and more approachable for developers from all backgrounds”. There will be two tracks for this mini hack: (1) AVS Reference Architectures and Tooling, and (2) AVS Education Hackathon: tutorials, videos, & guides on EigenLayer AVSs. Submission deadline is on June 17th, with winners announced shortly after, on the 21st. - Read
Coinbase will be hosting a virtual event all about “decentralizing sequencers”, on June 6th, featuring Espresso, Radius, and Astria. - RSVP
Espresso will be hosting happy hour events over the course of June (SF, NYC, & London) - RSVP
It looks like Stackr’s recent Modular Bangalore event was quite a success. Check out a summary of the talks, including Viet’s discussion about Celestia’s modular design and light nodes, presentations from Stackr team members about micro-rollups andKeyStore rollups, & much more. - Read
More News & Announcements
Fluentbase integrates AvailDA, adding another layer of customizability to its blended rollup framework stack - Read
Introducing Neova, the latest DePIN L1 on Avail, which is focused on data management. Specifically, Neova offers data encryption, which “guarantees continuous data accessibility without compromising privacy.” The team also announced Neova Drive, enabling private, secure, and efficient file storage. There’s more to this project, so we recommend checking out the full post to learn more - Read
Morpho Labs introduced the “Morpho Stack”, an aggregated lending stack that “combines the benefits of modularity with unified liquidity seen in monolithic instances while mitigating their downsides”.: - Read
Introducing Parma Engine, a modular framework for building web3 games - Read
EigenDA is now supported on Caldera - Read
New Caldera Chain alert: Genso Meta, a “metaverse with a 15-year history”, announced that they will be launching MV Chain sometime in Q3 this year, which will be built with the Arbitrum Orbit framework - Read
Quest #3 of the “Caldera Crusade”, for those participating in their Galxe campaign. This week it involves interacting with Hychain, a web3 gaming chain - Read
The Beta version of the custom gas token feature is now live on the OP Stack, which will allow L2s & L3s using the OP Stack rollup framework to leverage their own token for network payments - Read - & through RaaS, teams will be able to do this seamlessly, as shown here by Conduit - Read
AltLayer adds support for Alchemy to its RaaS stack, allowing any team to leverage the on & offramp payments service as a pluggable component for their rollup - Read
Check out what AllIn Bets is about, which as a reminder, is building a gaming-based Dymension RollApp - Read
Speaking of Dymension, Mande Network has just submitted its proposal for mainnet deployment, which is ultimately up to the Dymension community (DYM holders) to decide. Mande is building an “onchain credibility hub” - Read
Check out what Axelar’s integration with the Rollkit sovereign rollup framework, means - Read
PepperDEX, a sovereign rollup, built on the Sovereign SDK stack, claims to be “50x faster than Solana” - Read
Learn more about Zeta X, the first rollup on Solana - Read
If you’ve made swaps on Catalyst in the past, you may be eligible for some “eggs”, part of their “egg drop” campaign. LPs are next! - Read
XLayer, OKX exchange’s own L2 network, annonuced its integration of Wormhole, meaning “users can now transfer tokens from over 30+ blockchains, and developers can easily build natively multichain apps with Wormhole” - Read
“Lagrange’s ZK Coprocessor has integrated with Mantle, allowing developers to perform efficient, inexpensive, and extremely fast queries directly from their Mantle Network smart contracts” - Read
Civitia’s incentivized testnet is now live - Read
Applications are now open for Optimsim’s Retro Public Goods Funding R4. Teams have until June 6th to apply for their chance to earn from the 10M OP reward pool - Read
Synapse bridge is live on Scroll - Read
Omni’s Octane Framework now supported on the MoveVM, via Movement Labs - Read
Ethena is now live on Blast - Read
Here’s everything you missed across the Arbitrum ecosystem last week - Read
📚 Discourse & Education
“L2s as cultural extensions of Ethereum”, by Vitalik - Read
“Blockchains as sovereign communities” by Mustafa - Read
Sreeram shares why he thinks Etheruem can acquire winning settlement network effects - Read
EigenLayer announces “AVS Deepdives”, where viewers can learn all about AVS use cases, how they work, and everything else you need to know. The first episode featured Lagrange & Polymer - Watch
@masonnystrom shares some insight into the verticalization of the social stack - Read
Our very own Dino joins The Rollup crew to discuss Fluent’s new “Blended Execution” - Watch
@MohamedFFouda explains why Polygon’s use of Succinct’s SP1 “will have long-lasting effects on the development of zk-based applications” - Read
Learn how Socket Protocol enables chain abstraction for users, allowing you to swap any token across any chain (“100+ L2s”) without switching between multiple wallets - Read
Sreeram joins The Bell Curve podcast to discuss: Restaking economies of scale, Topology of economic security designs, & more - Watch
Polygon announced “Pessimistic Proofs” to the agglayer last week. Check out this thread to learn all about what this means - Read
@nickwh8te hosted a Celestia technical AMA last week - Listen
Connext hosted a Space featuring Near, Particle Network, Renzo, and Socket protocol, to discuss “what’s next for chain abstraction” - Listen
An article about the positive trends of EigenLayer, specifically how it’s led to an increased number of solo stakers - Read
New Arbitrum Research post: “Do shared MEV auctions actually increase revenue?” - Read
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬