OP Retro Funding Round 5 Results
The round distributed 8 million OP tokens to 79 projects that have contributed to Ethereum infra and the OP Stack.
OP Retro Funding Round 5 results.
Celestia launches the Mammoth Mini testnet.
DELV introduces Fixed Borrow.
Ethereum upgrades and catalysts.
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.
Ethereum Cheat Sheet
Personal Privacy Stack for Ethereum
Agora OP Treasury Execution Proposal
Vitalik compliments Fileverse progress
Karpatkey raises $7 million
SCR claim goes live
Scroll claim triggers blob spike
Arbitrum Orbit Supports OFT Standard
The integration allows Arbitrum Orbit chains to use LayerZero OFTs as native gas tokens.
Arbitrum Orbit supports LayerZero OFTs.
Scroll releases details for its initial airdrop.
Stripe acquires Bridge for $1.1 billion.
Chainlink CCIP supports GHO as a fee token.
Arbitrum Orbit, a rollup stack for deploying custom L2 and L3 chains, now supports the LayerZero Omnichain Fungible Token (OFT) standard. The integration allows Orbit chains to use OFTs as native gas tokens and enables users to seamlessly transfer of OFT assets between all LayerZero-connected networks. The implementation embeds the OFT standard into Arbitrum Orbit bridge contracts, using a shared “lockbox” contract on both the L2 and Orbit chains. The design unifies liquidity by consolidating liquidity for both bridges into a single pool, ensuring a more efficient and seamless cross-chain transfer experience for Orbit chains.
Scroll, an EVM-equivalent ZK rollup, announced the details of its first airdrop for its native SCR governance token, which goes live on Tuesday, October 22, 2024, at 07:00 UTC. Over 570,000 wallets who have accumulated at least 200 Scroll Marks can claim their share of 55 million SCR tokens, which is 5.5% of the total supply. An additional 1.5% of the total SCR supply is being distributed among key contributors, including 7 million SCR for Ecosystem Projects, 4.8 million SCR for Industry Contributors, and 3.2 million SCR for Global Community Contributors. Users can now register as delegates via the Delegate Portal to participate in protocol governance. 8% of the total SCR token supply remains for future airdrops, including for Scroll Sessions 2 participants.
Stripe acquired stablecoin payments platform Bridge for $1.1 billion. Bridge offers APIs that simplify the integration of stablecoins into business payment systems by handling regulatory, compliance, and technical challenges. Bridge facilitates onramp and offramp services for businesses. The acquisition aims to further scale the platform, enhance APIs, and expand into new markets. The deal reflects a strategic focus on the growing adoption of stablecoins.
Chainlink’s Cross-Chain Interoperability Protocol (CCIP), a standard for building cross-chain functionality with arbitrary messaging, now supports GHO as a fee token payment option for bridging. GHO, an over-collateralized, USD-pegged stablecoin native to Aave, has surpassed over $31 million in bridged volume through CCIP. Chainlink CCIP powers GHO’s cross-chain native deployments on Ethereum mainnet and Arbitrum One, with plans to launch native GHO on Base.
Vitalik: Ethereum Future Part 3
EIP-7503 for L1 privacy
EIP-2537 feedback request
Upcoming Sky community call
Velodrome Superchain 1.0
Radiant suffers $50m exploit
Safe comments on Radiant exploit
Chainlink corporate actions initiative
World Chain Goes Live On Mainnet
Infrastructure providers Alchemy, Uniswap, Dune, and Safe rolled out support for the identity-focused L2 network.
World Chain goes live on mainnet.
Merkl proposes the ZKsync Ignite Program.
ethOS introduces the dGEN1 hardware device.
EIP-7742 is added to Pectra Devnet 5.
World Chain, an identity-focused L2 network built on the OP Stack, is now live on mainnet. World Chain gives priority block space to wallet addresses verified through World ID Proof of Personhood credentials. The network powers World Network, formerly known as Worldcoin, the digital identity protocol founded by OpenAI's Sam Altman. Infrastructure providers Alchemy, Uniswap, Dune, and Safe have rolled out support for the network. World Chain users can now swap and provide liquidity on Uniswap V2 and V3. World has a global user base of 10 million, with over 5 million users having verified their identities through the project’s iris-scanning Orb device.
Rewards platform Merkl published the first ZKsync governance proposal, seeking to allocate 300 million ZK tokens over nine months to incentivize DeFi liquidity on ZKsync Era. Called the ZKsync Ignite Program, the initiative aims to position ZKsync Era as a leading DeFi hub, boost total value locked (TVL), and enhance liquidity across Elastic Chains powered by ZKsync. The proposal requests a total of 325 million ZK tokens, with 25 million set aside for administrative expenses. Merkl plans to oversee the program’s operations, including website management, rewards distribution, and technical support. A DeFi Steering Committee (DSC) would oversee token allocations and evaluate the program’s performance. The proposal is open for community discussion ahead of an onchain vote in November 2024.
ethOS, an Ethereum-native mobile operating system provider, unveiled dGEN1, a new hardware device that runs on ethOS. The device includes a dedicated screen for displaying transaction notifications and metadata. dGEN1 features a web3 browser and a system-level wallet with Layer 2 support. ethOS is based on LineageOS, a popular Android fork, and features a native trustless light client, enabling users to run a local Ethereum node. The operating system also supports IPFS and .eth domain resolution. The dGEN1 device is currently available for pre-order at 0.2 ETH, with shipping expected in Q2 2025.
During this week’s All Core Devs (ACD) consensus layer call, Ethereum developers and client teams agreed to include EIP-7742 in Pectra Devnet 5. EIP-7742 introduces a mechanism for the execution layer to dynamically receive the blob target value directly from the consensus layer. With EIP-7742, the execution layer no longer needs to verify blob maximum limits, enabling more seamless adjustments to blob parameters. The change eliminates redundancies, simplifies block construction, and incorporates the target value into the block header.