• Ithaca raises $20 million for its L2 project.

• Proposal to optimize for blob target increase.

• Dune will support data for World Chain.

• Base refreshes its website.

Ethereum community member Francis Li has shared a proposal to increase the blob target to 5 and the maximum blob count to 8 on Ethereum, with a focus on ensuring that local block builders have adequate upload bandwidth to support the increase. The proposal suggests three key optimizations to achieve this goal.

The first is the implementation of engine_getBlobsV1, an extension to the execution APIs that enables nodes to directly retrieve blobs from the execution layer, minimizing reliance on the Consensus Layer for data distribution and reducing upload bandwidth requirements. The second recommendation is to disable flood publishing, which would reduce the need to broadcast data to every peer.

Lastly, the proposal suggests adopting the IDONTWANT protocol, a feature of the libp2p networking stack that allows nodes to signal to their peers not to resend specific messages, thus cutting down on redundant network traffic. According to the proposal, the optimizations make the increase to a 5 target / 8 max blob configuration feasible.

Ithaca, a new spin-off project from Paradigm, raised $20 million to build a crypto technology stack that includes its own Layer 2 network built on the OP Stack, developed with Reth and Conduit. Coined as Odyssey, the L2 network is now live on the Sepolia testnet and supports features like EOF, EIP-7702, EIP-2537, and RIP-7212. Georgios Konstantopoulos, Paradigm's CTO, will lead Ithaca as CEO. Contributors and maintainers of open-source projects like Reth and Foundry are also part of the Ithaca team. Ithaca aims to accelerate crypto adoption by focusing on smart wallet development, including chain and bridging abstraction features.

Dune Analytics, a platform for querying blockchain data using SQL, announced plans to support World Chain, an identity-focused L2 network built on the OP Stack. Support will go live once World Chain goes live mainnet. Dune will provide tools for creating visualizations and analyzing onchain identity data specific to World Chain. World Chain will power the Worldcoin protocol, which currently operates on OP mainnet. The network will give priority block space to wallet addresses that are verified through World ID's Proof of Personhood credentials, aiming to reduce spam and bot activity. Nearly 7 million users have verified their World ID with a Worldcoin Orb.

• ACDC #198 summary

• ePBS Breakout #11 notes 

• Base.org website refresh

• TEE is a trustmebro model

• Blobs market will eventually saturate

• Base maintains 70 TPS

• Webhash launches a Genesis Pass

• Optimism vs Arbitrum comparison

• Uniswap introduces the Unichain.

• Flashbots introduces Rollup-Boost.

• Swell releases a SWELL airdrop checker.

• Puffer Finance pledges 1% to Protocol Guild.

Uniswap introduced Unichain, a DeFi-focused L2 built on the OP Stack. Unichain is now live on testnet with a mainnet launch planned later this year. Unichain will be part of the Superchain and Uniswap Labs will become a core contributor to the OP Stack. Unichain will also support native Superchain Interoperability. Native interoperability enables seamless cross-chain message-passing between OP Stack chains. The SuperchainERC20 standard will eliminate the need for multiple bridged asset versions. Unichain will also support cross-chain intents standard ERC-7683, extending interoperability to the broader Ethereum ecosystem. Unichain features an initial 1-second confirmation time, which helps mitigate MEV. By having faster block times, the chain creates more stable market conditions, thereby reducing opportunities for MEV exploitation. According to Uniswap, Unichain will be approximately 95% cheaper than Ethereum L1.

In collaboration with Uniswap Labs, Flashbots developed Rollup-Boost, a verifiable block-building platform for rollups composed of modular elements called rollup extensions. A key component is the Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)-based builder, which will be used to securely build blocks on Unichain. Unichain will also deploy a new validation network that allows multiple nodes to verify the accuracy and security of blocks produced by the TEE-based builder. The network adds finality, ensuring robustness against invalid blocks. Other components of Rollup-Boost include Flashblocks, which deliver 250ms block times for fast confirmations, and Verifiable Priority Ordering, a mechanism that guarantees transparent transaction ordering.

Swell Network, a restaked rollup built on Polygon CDK, announced the details of its native SWELL token, which will have a total supply of 10 billion. 8.5% of the supply, or 850 million tokens, will be distributed to Swell stakers based on a July 30th snapshot. Users can currently check their airdrop allocation on app.swellnetwork.io/dao/voyage. SWELL will serve as a governance, gas, and restaking token for Swell Network. Users will be able to restake SWELL for rSWELL, which can be used for governance. The Swell L2 network is still in a testnet phase.

Ethereum developer trent.eth publish an article exploring how the Protocol Guild supports the long-term sustainability and integrity of Ethereum development. Trent highlights three key resources that are developed within the Ethereum Commons: the network, the asset, and media. Trent notes that the Protocol Guild funds individuals rather than teams, helping maintain neutrality without teams exerting influence over development. Puffer Finance is the latest project to take the Protocol Guild pledge, allocating 1% of its token supply to the guild.

• ACDE #198 recap

• Nethermind Pectra tests update

• Puffer releases tokenomics

• SEC sues Cumberland

• FBI infringes copyrights

• TD Bank pleads guilty

• 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

• DBA: L1 & L2 token capture

• Rocket Pool ETH-only validators

• Delta raises $11m