• OP Stack dispute game design.

• SEC Commissioners statement on ShapeShift.

• Wormhole $W token eligibility checker.

• Hop Protocol plans to integrate CCTP.

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OP Labs released a bond-based dispute game mechanism design for the OP Stack. Dispute games are used to facilitate fault detection in a fault-proof system. The proposed mechanism design encourages honest participation by imposing a bond requirement on claims, penalizing dishonest claims with a cost barrier. "Big Bonds" are the initial strategy, setting high ETH-denominated bonds adjusted for gas costs and claim depth to cover costs for honest participants and deterring spam. The fault dispute game marks a step towards further decentralizing the OP Stack through implementation in a future protocol update.

SEC Commissioners Hester M. Peirce and  Mark T. Uyeda issued a statement in regard to enforcement action against crypto exchange ShapeShift. The SEC filed a cease and desist against ShapeShift for not registering as a securities dealer between 2014 and 2021. ShapeShift settled the charges and paid a $275,000 fine. Commissioner Peirce criticized the order for not specifying which assets were deemed securities and the reasoning behind it. She highlighted the ongoing ambiguity surrounding the definition of a security, noting that this uncertainty undermines innovation and places entrepreneurs in a difficult position due to the absence of clear regulatory guidelines.

The Wormhole multichain bridge introduced an eligibility checker tool for its $W token airdrop. The W token has a total supply of 10 billion, and 6.17% of this supply is dedicated to the community airdrop. Users can check their eligibility and W token allocation by checking their wallets across EVM, Sei, NEAR, Kujira, and Evmos chains. The airdrop is based on a snapshot captured on February 6. The distribution of the W token will be in both ERC20 and SPL formats, covering several chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. The criteria for eligibility include interactions with applications within the Wormhole ecosystem, stakers, and certain NFT communities. The W token has not yet been launched.

Rollup-to-rollup bridge Hop Protocol will now support Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). Users will be able to bridge native USDC across supported networks on Hop. The Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol allows USDC to be natively burned on a source chain and natively minted on a destination chain, removing the need for USDC liquidity providers on the bridge.

• Lighthouse survey results

• MetaMask integrates Revolut onramp

• L2Beat Blast analysis

• Interface expands L2 support

• Across introduces Across+

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• SEC delays Ethereum ETF.

• Optimism 4844 savings estimator.

• Paradigm writes on raising the gas limit.

• EtherFi partners with Omni Network

ETH is up 4.5% over the last 24 hours, currently trading at $3,624 at the time of writing.

The SEC postponed its decision on BlackRock's application for a Spot Ethereum ETF. BlackRock filed a Form S-1 with the SEC last November for its proposed iShares Ethereum Trust. The Ethereum ETF would be traded on the Nasdaq once approved. The ETF provides investors Ethereum exposure without owning ETH directly. BlackRock intends to hold actual ETH, which will be held by the Coinbase Custody Trust Company. The SEC has up to 240 days to make a decision on the application. VanEck is one of the first asset managers to apply for an Ethereum ETF. May 23rd marks the final deadline for the SEC to make a decision on VanEck’s Ethereum ETF.

OP Labs introduced the Superchain Savings Estimator, a tool designed to compare transaction fees on OP Stack chains before and after the activation of the Dencun upgrade. Engineers at OP Labs anticipate a significant reduction in transaction fees to cents across all OP Stack chains once blob transactions are integrated. The tool allows users to input any transaction hash to simulate cost savings. Executing a swap on Uniswap on Base currently incurs a cost of about 60 cents, a figure expected to plummet to less than a cent. EIP-4844 blob transactions are slated to go live on Ethereum mainnet on March 13th, with support on the OP Stack coming the following day on March 14th. Users can access the tool at welovetheblobs.xyz.

Paradigm released a research article about increasing Ethereum's block gas limit. The article explores the concept of state growth within Ethereum and its correlation with the gas limit. It distinguishes between state growth, history growth, state access, and the gas limit, each presenting distinctive scalability challenges. The document highlights Ethereum's scaling bottlenecks, hardware constraints, and gas limits, impacting various aspects such as network bandwidth, storage capacity, memory, and IO operations. Proposed solutions to address state growth include rollups, Verkle tries, and state expiry. The article advocates for an empirical approach for increasing Ethereum's gas limit.

EtherFi, the largest LRT protocol with close to $2 billion in TVL, partnered with rollup interoperability protocol Omni Network. EtherFi committed to delegating $600 million worth of ETH to economically secure Omni Network by running as an Actively Validated Service (AVS) on EigenLayer and selecting EtherFi node operators. EtherFi’s eETH is also now supported on the Zircuit LRT restaking protocol.

• UF issues first grant of the year

• Onboard sUSDe to Aave

• TLX council voting

• Alien CryptoPunk sells for 4,500 ETH

• World App crosses 50m txs

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• Goerli deprecation by April 17th.

• Gitcoin 2.0 whitepaper.

• Gnosis Chain reaches 200k validators.

• Lens Protocol reaches 200k profiles.

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In accordance with the Ethereum testnet lifecycle, the Goerli testnet will be deprecated by April 17th. Ethereum core developers had previously agreed to deactivate Goerli testnet validators either three months after the Dencun activation on Goerli or one month after Dencun activates on mainnet. Given that Dencun was activated on Goerli on January 17th, the three-month mark is on April 17th. Developers currently using the Goerli testnet are advised to transition their applications to Sepolia or Holesky testnets before Goerli's deprecation on April 17th. A new Ethereum testnet is rolled out every two years, with a maximum lifespan of five years for each testnet. Optimism will decommission the OP Goerli testnet on March 7th.  The Goerli testnet was initially deployed in 2019.

Gitcoin unveiled its whitepaper for Gitcoin 2.0, the next iteration of its protocol that introduces new capital allocation mechanisms and extends support to more EVM-based chains. Gitcoin 2.0 shifts operations onchain, including governance, grant creation, management, and fund disbursement. It also introduces Direct Grants and Retro PGF as funding mechanisms Gitcoin 2.0 takes a modular approach to capital allocation, powered by the Grants Stack. The framework empowers communities to design custom mechanisms for fund distribution within their ecosystems. The whitepaper for Gitcoin 2.0 is now open for community feedback, prior to being ratified by Gitcoin Governance.

Gnosis Chain reached 200,000 validators on its PoS network, making the second-largest chain in terms of validator count, second only to Ethereum. Gnosis Chain, previously known as xDAI, is an EVM-compatible sidechain that uses DAI as its native gas token. xDAI was acquired by the Gnosis ecosystem in 2021. The sidechain shares the same architecture as Ethereum and is committed to Ethereum's values of decentralization, neutrality, and diversity. Gnosis Chain makes home-based validation more accessible by only requiring a single GNO token to become a network validator.

Lens Protocol achieved 200k minted profiles on its open social-graph network. The accomplishment follows a surge of over 60,000 new profiles since the protocol went permissionless earlier this week. The permissionless launch enables anyone to mint a Lens Profile for 8 MATIC. Profile NFTs are built on the ERC-6551 standard, enabling content to be owned by the Profile NFT. Lens Protocol has been live on Polygon since February 2022.

• Nethermind v1.26.0-exp.3 release

• Coinbase smart wallet demo

• RetroPGF3 learnings

• ePBS and ETs discussions

• Caldera Contributor Program

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