• Mekong Pectra testnet goes live.

• OP Labs proposes ERC-7802.

• Velodrome Superchain 1.0 goes live.

• Degen Chain is considering a chain relaunch.

The Ethereum devops team, Ethpandaops, launched Mekong, the first short-lived testnet for the upcoming Pectra upgrade. Mekong includes all eight scoped EIPs for Pectra, including EIP-7702 for enhanced UX, EIP-7251 for increasing the maximum effective staking balance, and EIP-6110 for new deposit and exit mechanisms. Application developers, tooling providers, and stakers, can now test Pectra’s changes ahead mainnet deployment. Mekong is named after Southeast Asia's Mekong River, aligning with the location of Devcon VII. Ethpandaops also launched a landing page where users can access a JSON RPC endpoint, a block explorer, and request funds from a faucet. The Pectra upgrade is anticipated to launch on Ethereum mainnet in the first half of 2025.

OP Labs introduced ERC-7802, a new minimal interface standard for cross-chain token transfers that allows tokens to be minted and burned across multiple blockchain ecosystems. ERC-7802 aims to create a unified standard for cross-chain transfers across Ethereum rollups, sidechains, and third-party bridges. ERC-7802 includes two main attributes: Bridge Agnosticism, which separates cross-chain logic from token contracts, allowing bridges to manage minting and burning without embedding bridge-specific details within tokens. And Extensibility, which provides a foundation for future enhancements, such as rate limits or transaction fees. ERC-7802 was developed with contributions from Uniswap and DeFi Wonderland.

Velodrome Superchain 1.0, the first version of Velodrome’s MetaDEX on the Superchain, is now live with its initial deployment on Mode Network. The launch allows users to cast votes with veVELO on OP Mainnet for pools on Mode, bridge rewards to LPs on Mode, and place voting incentives on either OP Mainnet or Mode. The deployment uses Superlane, a Hyperlane module that enables cross-chain communication and interoperability across OP Stack chains. Velodrome Superchain aims to be the primary liquidity hub on the Superchain, with planned support to expand to additional chains. Mode is the third-largest Superchain, after Base and OP Mainnet.

Degen Chain, an L3 on built on Arbitrum Orbit, is considering launching a new chain after facing ongoing challenges with its rollup provider, Conduit. In a community update, Degen claimed that Conduit withheld sequencer fees, demanded a new contract, and engaged in months of stalled negotiations. Degen stated they have been attempting to migrate the Degen L3 chain from Conduit since August. In response, Conduit indicated that they are prepared to facilitate an offboarding without catered support and only need an address to transfer rollup upgrade permissions.

• Ink, Kraken L2, goes live on testnet

• Core devs host 200th ACDE Call

• SWELL token claims go live

• Wevm releases npm i ox@0.1.0

• Azura's Strategic Fartcoin Reserve

• L2Beat introduces DABEAT.

• Nethermind introduces Surge Rollup.

• Crypto rallies following U.S. election results.

Layer 2 analytics platform L2Beat launched DABEAT, a portal for tracking transaction data across various Data Availability (DA) layers, including Celestia, EigenDA, NearDA, and Avail. DABEAT offers in-depth risk assessments across the DA ecosystem, categorizing between public DA layers and custom Alt-DA layers. Each DA layer is evaluated on key metrics such as total value locked, slashable stake, fallback mechanisms, economic security, as well as committee security, upgradeability, and relayer reliability. Additionally, L2Beat introduced the Risk Grissini, a new model for evaluating risks specific to DA and bridge systems.

Nethermind introduced Surge Rollup, a new rollup implementation based on the Taiko stack. Designed to extend Ethereum’s capabilities, Surge Rollup aims to empower developers, builders, and autonomous agents. Coined as an "ultra-based" rollup, Surge Rollup is launching at Stage 2 and uses ETH as its gas token. Based rollups leverage Ethereum’s block builders to sequence transactions. Surge Rollup features Gigagas Capacity and introduces open-source Power-Ups, which are plugins that extend the rollup’s functionality. The Power-Ups include transaction preconfirmations and proving infrastructure like Trusted Execution Environments (TEE) developed in collaboration with Flashbots Rollup Boost.

The U.S. election resulted in the election of over 275 pro-crypto candidates, with 258 in the U.S. House of Representatives and 17 in the U.S. Senate, as reported by Stand With Crypto. Following Donald Trump’s victory as a pro-crypto president-elect, the crypto market saw a surge, adding over $200 billion to the total market cap. Bitcoin’s price reached a new all-time high, while Ethereum rallied more than 10% in the past 24 hours. With a pro-crypto majority now in Congress, the environment for crypto regulation is expected to become more favorable. SEC Chair Gary Gensler is anticipated to cease his role following the new administration.

• Gaia partners with ENS

• Starknet roadmap update

• Unichain begins posting blobs

• Voting opens for the ZKsync Ignite proposal.

• Arbitrum concludes its Security Council elections.

• Lido introduces the stETH in DeFi hub.

Onchain voting is now open for the first ZKsync governance proposal, titled "ZKsync Ignite." The proposal aims to allocate 300 million ZK tokens as incentives over nine months on ZKsync Era. Submitted by rewards platform Merkl, the initiative seeks to enhance DeFi liquidity and increase TVL on ZKsync Era and across Elastic Chains. The total allocation for the program includes 325 million ZK tokens, with 25 million designated for administrative expenses. Merkl is set to manage the program, handling website operations, reward distribution, and technical support. A DeFi Steering Committee (DSC) would oversee token allocations and assess the program's performance. Voting on the proposal ends on November 12, 2024.

Arbitrum concluded elections for the rotation of six members of the 12-member Arbitrum Security Council. The new members are Dennison Bertram of Tally, Griff Green of Giveth, Emiliano Bonassi of Conduit, Gzeon of Offchain Labs, and Immunefi. John Morrow of Gauntlet was also re-elected for another term. The Security Council is tasked with making expedited protocol upgrades during emergency situations. Upgrades executed by the security council do not need approval from the Arbitrum DAO but are subject to a short delay period. The council can also make non-emergency upgrades. Six members are rotated every six months.

Lido launched the stETH in DeFi hub, a new dashboard that consolidates yield opportunities for using stETH across the DeFi ecosystem. The hub brings together protocols that support stETH into a single, user-friendly interface, allowing users to easily view protocol TVLs, supported assets, APRs, and available rewards. The dashboard highlights a range of DeFi options, including lending and borrowing protocols like Aave, diversified rewards protocols like Stakehouse, restaking protocols like Renzo, and leveraged staking protocols. As the DeFi space expands, Lido plans to maintain the dashboard to include new stETH use cases.

• Gnosis considers Becoming L2

• Devcon is one week away

• Eigen Economy Dashboard

• ETHGlobal Bangkok $750k prize pool

• Parallel Block Building

• Reth v1.1.1 release

• Implications of a Competitive Blob Market

• Rocket Pool regains X account