Optimism Launches Airdrop 5
The airdrop distributes 10 million OP tokens to more than 54,000 Superchain power users.
Optimism launches its fifth airdrop.
AltLayer supports OP Succinct.
Puffer Finance unveils $PUFFER.
Solidity releases v0.8.28.
Optimism launched its fifth airdrop, distributing 10 million OP tokens to 54,000 unique addresses. The airdrop targeted Superchain power users, rewarding those who interacted with at least 20 different contracts across the Superchain between March 15 and September 15, 2024. Bonus multipliers were also applied for criteria such as holding a minimum amount of delegated OP, interacting with 7 different chains in the Superchain, and participating in SuperFest. To date, Optimism has distributed over 265 million OP tokens through airdrops, with approximately 550 million OP tokens still reserved for future distributions.
AltLayer now supports OP Succinct, enabling seamless upgrades of OP Stack chains from optimistic to zk-rollups with minimal effort. Leveraging Succinct's SP1 prover, OP Succinct offers fast finality, sub-cent transaction fees, and reduces withdrawal delays from seven days to minutes. The implementation retains full EVM compatibility while utilizing ZKPs. The migration is simple, requiring only a single smart contract deployment and a lightweight setup, with no changes needed to existing OP Stack components. According to Succinct, its proving costs are expected to go down a further 5–10x later this year.
Puffer Finance, a liquid restaking infrastructure protocol, unveiled the upcoming launch of its governance token, $PUFFER, along with an airdrop. $PUFFER holders will govern key protocol parameters, including fees, limits, and security. Puffer will also feature a vote escrow mechanism, vePUFFER, which enables users to stake their $PUFFER tokens to gain voting rights. Initially, Puffer began as a liquid staking protocol with the introduction of Puffer LST and later expanded to liquid restaking and UniFi AVS. All three products will contribute fees to the Puffer treasury. Since launching in February 2024, Puffer has secured over 530,000 ETH in TVL and more than 5,000 active node operators.
Solidity released v0.8.28 of its compiler, featuring full support for transient storage state variables of value types. The update significantly optimizes memory usage by up to 80% and speeds up compilation in the IR pipeline by up to 25% for larger projects. It also introduces per-contract pipeline configuration, enabling more efficient selective bytecode generation for individual contracts. Solidity is the most widely used programming language for developing EVM smart contracts.
Gauntlet launches a web app
Base gas target is now 13 Mgas/s
SEC charges three market makers
Devcon.org is now on Swarm
Rocket Pool ETH-only validators
Delta raises $11m
Scroll Announces SCR Token
The initial SCR token airdrop for Scroll users and contributors will go live on October 22, 2024.
Scroll announces its SCR token airdrop.
Aave launches its v3.2 protocol upgrade.
Google Search supports ENS domains.
EF is looking to hire protocol testers.
Scroll, an EVM-equivalent ZK Rollup, announced its native protocol and governance token, SCR. With a total supply of 1 billion tokens, SCR will play a role in incentivizing the development of a decentralized prover network. The token distribution includes 15% for airdrops, with 7% allocated to an initial airdrop set to go live on October 22, 2024, marking one year since Scroll went live on mainnet.The airdrop snapshot will be taken on October 19, 2024. Details on airdrop eligibility are expected to be released in the coming week. The remaining 35% of the supply is dedicated to ecosystem growth, 10% to the Scroll Foundation Treasury, 23% to core contributors, and 17% to investors. Scroll is currently the largest ZK rollup by TVL with $1.2 billion in assets.
Aave launched its v3.2 upgrade, introducing Liquid eMode, an enhancement to its existing high-efficiency mode. eMode enables users to achieve higher Loan-to-Value (LTV) ratios when supplying and borrowing correlated assets. The new Liquid eMode feature allows assets to be eligible for multiple eModes, giving users the flexibility to choose their preferred eMode. The enhancement enables more advanced strategies and configurations, such as allowing assets to be designated as only borrowable, only collateral, or both. Additionally, the upgrade removes deprecated stable rate logic from the codebase, leading to improved gas efficiency for users.
Google Search now supports ENS domain searches, enabling users to instantly view the ETH balance of any .eth domain directly in search results. Currently, the feature only supports top-level domains and balances on Ethereum Mainnet. Subdomain resolution is not yet available. Google Search initially introduced support for Ethereum address balances in search results in May 2023. ENS is the leading naming protocol that turns hexadecimal wallet addresses into human-readable names, with nearly 2 million active .eth names registered to date.
The Ethereum Foundation is looking to hire two Protocol Testers: one focused on the Consensus Layer, needed immediately, and another focused on the Execution Layer, starting in 2025. The roles involve collaborating with testers, developers, and researchers to test protocol upgrades, enhance testing methods, and improve test infrastructure. EF positions are fully remote, welcoming candidates from any location worldwide.
Ethereum Slot Time Reduction Proposal
EIP-7782 is a proposal to reduce Ethereum's slot time from 12 seconds to 8 seconds.
Proposal to reduce Ethereum’s slot time.
Aztec releases its roadmap to mainnet.
Aave proposes to launch native GHO on Base.
UniswapX goes live on mobile.
Ben Adams, a contributor to Nethermind, proposed EIP-7782, a proposal to reduce Ethereum's slot time from 12 seconds to 8 seconds. The change aims to lower latency for rollups and boost transaction throughput by about 33% without straining network resources. The gas limit and blob count per block would remain unchanged. By distributing bandwidth usage more evenly over time, the approach enables increased throughput without significantly increasing demands for nodes. The proposal received support from the broader Ethereum community, including Justin Drake, who noted that the change would enhance DEX efficiency and improve the UX of L1 contracts.
Aztec Network, a privacy-focused Layer 2 network, unveiled its interactive roadmap to mainnet. The network supports private, client-side smart contract execution with public verifiability. Key milestones already achieved include the launch of a devnet, the implementation of the Honk proving system, the Noir zk programming language, and the Provernet network of proves. The roadmap is organized into five tracks: programmable privacy, decentralization, proving system, Noir, and community participation. Upcoming steps involve audits, testnet hackathons, private RPCs, a fee market, block rewards, PBS, and bytecode optimizations. The roadmap does not specify a mainnet launch date.
The Aave Chan Initiative (ACI) proposed to deploy Aave's GHO stablecoin natively on Base, aiming to serve as the Emissions Manager to oversee rewards and incentives for the stablecoin. The proposal is part of Aave’s cross-chain strategy, which leverages Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP) to enable a lock/burn and release/mint bridge mechanism. By integrating GHO with existing DeFi protocols on Base, the initiative seeks to enhance GHO’s accessibility. Native GHO is already live on Ethereum Mainnet and Arbitrum One.
UniswapX, a Dutch auction-based DEX aggregator, is now live on the Uniswap mobile app. UniswapX enables trading across multiple liquidity sources. It also provides a gas-free swap experience and MEV protection. UniswapX leverages intents, which are signed constraints that enable users to delegate their orders to a network of third-party fillers who compete to fill orders.