OP Retro Funding Round 5 Results

• OP Retro Funding Round 5 results.

• Celestia launches the Mammoth Mini testnet.

• DELV introduces Fixed Borrow.

• Ethereum upgrades and catalysts.

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Optimism announced the results of its fifth retroactive funding round, distributing 8 million OP tokens, currently worth approximately $13.6 million, to 79 projects. The round prioritized contributions to the OP Stack, including core Ethereum infrastructure, research and development, and tooling that improves accessibility and usability. Ethereum core contributors received 3.2 million OP tokens, while 2.8 million OP tokens were awarded to OP Stack research and tooling development contributors. The overall distribution was mostly flat across projects, with the lowest-ranked project receiving 37,000 OP tokens. The allocations were determined by votes from approximately 110 badge holders from the Optimism Citizens' House.

Celestia, a modular data availability blockchain, launched Mammoth Mini, the latest testnet in its roadmap to scale to 1GB blocks. Mammoth Mini achieved 88 MB blocks with 27 MB/s throughput and introduced key innovations like Compact Blocks, which reduce bandwidth by transmitting only transaction identifiers, and the Vacuum! Protocol, which synchronizes validator mempools pre-consensus using Validator Availability Certificates (VACs). The launch also introduced Simulated Fast Blocks Slow Squares (FBSS), decoupling block, and square construction to enable sub-second block times with single-slot finality. Celestia plans to roll out the features on public testnets before deploying them on Mainnet Beta in 2025. The next focus is achieving 1GB blocks with 83 MB/s throughput on testnet. The 1GB blocks aim to boost data throughput and lower transaction fees for rollups.

DELV, in partnership with the Morpho lending protocol, introduced DELV Fixed Borrow, a DeFi product that lets users lock in fixed interest rates on their loans, protecting them from unpredictable rate hikes. Borrowers can close their fixed-rate position anytime, but they still remain exposed to liquidation risks from collateral fluctuations. The product uses DELV’s Hyperdrive Protocol, which opens a short position on Hyperdrive linked to the borrower’s Morpho loan. The strategy helps offset variable borrowing costs with potential lending profits, simulating a fixed-rate effect. DELV Fixed Borrow is currently available on sUSDe/DAI and USDe/DAI Morpho markets on Ethereum mainnet.

Christine Kim, a researcher at Galaxy, published a post detailing upcoming Ethereum upgrades and catalysts. She highlighted Ethereum's continued commitment to a rollup-centric roadmap, noting that the Pectra upgrade may be among the last significant Layer 1 (L1) updates to directly impact end-users. Initially planned to include 20 EIPs, Pectra was split and will feature only about 9 EIPs, with the upgrade expected to launch in H1 2025. Pectra will introduce improvements in user experience, data availability, and network efficiency. The remaining EIPs have been pushed to future forks, such as Fusaka, which will focus on implementing EOF and PeerDAS.

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