• Sony introduces the Soneium L2.

• Quadratic Accelerator releases its whitepaper.

• Applications open for Optimism Retro Funding 5.

• The next upgrade after Pectra is named Fusaka.

Sony Block Solutions Labs introduced Soneium, a new Layer 2 chain built on the OP Stack. Soneium is designed as a general-purpose chain for applications across entertainment, gaming, and finance. The project aims to bring mainstream users into Web3 by integrating with Sony’s existing products and services. Soneium is preparing to launch its initial testnet, providing developers with the opportunity to build on the network. The project is also onboarding infrastructure providers like Chainlink, Alchemy, Circle, and The Graph. The Astar Network, developed by Startale Labs, will also integrate its assets with Soneium. As part of the Superchain, Soneium will contribute to the Superchain Collective, implement shared upgrades, and allocate a portion of its sequencer revenue to retroactive funding.

Tokenization platform Quadratic Accelerator released its whitepaper for the Quadratic Acceleration (q/acc) Protocol, a tokenization mechanism that merges Augmented Bonding Curves (ABC) with Quadratic Funding (QF) to create a fair token distribution for new projects. The protocol uses quadratic funding to enable communities to become stakeholders by supporting projects and receiving protocol tokens in return. The Augmented Bonding Curve (ABC) directs revenue from token issuance to a reserve pool and collects a small fee from every transaction to provide a continuous revenue stream for projects. The Quadratic Accelerator is now accepting applications for its first cohort of projects, offering $50,000 in grants on Polygon.

Applications are now open for Optimism’s fifth retroactive funding round. The round features 8 million OP tokens in retroactive grants for contributors of the OP Stack. Eligible projects include Ethereum core contributions, such as clients, OP Stack research and development, and OP Stack tooling. Applications will close on September 5th.

• Fusaka upgrade after Pecta

• Court rules in favor of Kraken

• EAS introduces Transitive Trust

• Basenames surpass 100k registrations

• DAO.eth subnames

• Ddocs v0.1 updates

• L2Beat outlines the Fraud Proof Trilemma.

• Polynomial introduces Trade 2.0.

• Upgrading an OP Stack chain into ZK.

• 34 million ETH is now staked on Ethereum.

L2Beat, an L2 analytics platform, published an article detailing the current state of fraud proof systems in optimistic rollups. The article introduces the "fraud proof trilemma," which highlights the trade-offs between safety, decentralization, and promptness in fraud proof systems. L2Beat points out that optimistic rollups are vulnerable to resource exhaustion attacks, where attackers might economically outlast honest challengers. The article also discusses the importance of the challenge period length, emphasizing the need to provide sufficient time for challengers to contest invalid state roots. Despite the economic incentive challenges faced by fraud-proof systems, they remain relevant because they currently offer greater scalability and lower costs compared to existing ZK rollups.

Polynomial Protocol launched Trade 2.0, its advanced leverage trading platform built on Polynomial Chain. Initial markets for ETH, BTC, and SOL are now live. Trade 2.0 features support for limit orders, cross-margin trading, and gasless transactions. The platform's liquidity is backed by early stakers on Polynomial Chain. The first version of Polynomial’s perpetual swaps exchange, Trade 1.0 has processed over $4.7 billion in trading volume on OP Mainnet since its launch in March 2023. To incentivize activity, Polynomial is distributing one million protocol points per day to Trade 2.0 users. Polynomial Chain is an OP Stack L2 that features a native liquidity layer designed for derivatives applications.

Security auditor Zach Obront introduced OP Succinct, a new design for upgrading an OP Stack chain to a full ZK rollup with minimal changes. OP Stack chains currently post compressed transaction data to Layer 1 as blobs, and the system uses a dispute game to verify the state. The upgrade to a ZK rollup replaces the dispute game with a Zero-Knowledge (ZK) proof system, allowing anyone to post the rollup state by providing a validity proof. The transition process involves modifying contracts to verify ZK proofs, upgrading the op-proposer to manage and submit proofs, and implementing a zk-proposer that generates and verifies witness data using the Kona prover. The implementation is a collaborative effort between Succinct Labs and the OP Labs team.

• 34m ETH is now staked on Ethereum

• Privy supports webhooks

• Etherscan token standard checker

• Vitalik: Ethereum has gotten stronger

• Xatu CL P2P tables 

• Impact of EIP-4844

• OP Retro Funding rounds

• Aave deploys V3 on ZKsync Era.

• Optimism announces the SUNNYs Awards.

• Remix Project releases v0.53.0.

• Basenames surpass 10k registrations.

Aave deployed Aave V3 on the zkSync Era mainnet, extending its liquidity and lending services to the Layer 2 network. The deployment follows a governance vote with unanimous approval from AAVE token holders. The initial markets will offer lending and borrowing for USDC, USDT, WETH, wstETH, and ZK. The integration utilizes Chainlink for the price feeds. It also includes the expansion of Aave's native stablecoin, GHO, to the zkSync Era. The Aave DAO plans to redistribute airdrops received from the ZKsync ecosystem to Aave users through liquidity mining incentives. Although the execution payload has been deployed, the markets are not live on Aave's front end at the time of writing.

Optimism announced The SUNNYs, an awards ceremony celebrating creators and applications across the Superchain, offering 540,000 OP in prizes to the winners. Builders who have deployed mainnet contracts on any of the 15 OP Stack chains within the Superchain are eligible to nominate their projects for an award. Instead of a voting system, the winners will be selected using a framework developed by Opensource Observer, which evaluates onchain data. The SUNNYs will provide over 20 awards across Creator, Social, DeFi, Utility, and Farcaster tracks. The winners will be announced during a live event on September 18th.

Remix Project, a web-based IDE for Ethereum development, released version 0.53.0, introducing new keyboard shortcuts for file management, updates to the Circom Plugin, and the ability to publish multiple files to Gist. The Circom Plugin now offers a step-by-step interface for proof generation, updated templates, Plonk as a proving scheme, and options for selecting constraints, exporting verifier contracts, and advanced configurations. Remix is a toolset for developing, testing, deploying, and debugging Ethereum smart contracts.

• Basenames hits 10k registrations

• The Graph supports Arbitrum Nova

• Vitalik: Plurality philosophy

• Ethresear.ch: Mechan-stein