EIGEN Stakedrop 2 Claims Go Live
Eligible users can now claim their share of 86 million EIGEN tokens. While currently non-transferable, users can restake and delegate their EIGEN tokens.
Claims go live for EIGEN Stakedrop 2.
Optimism announces Retro Funding Round 6.
RISC Zero introduces Boundless.
DeltaPrime suffers a $6m exploit.
Claims for the EIGEN Season 2 Stakedrop are now open. Stakers, operators, ecosystem partners, and community members can claim their share of 86 million EIGEN tokens. The claim window is open for six months, closing on March 16th, 2025. Although EIGEN is non-transferable, users can still restake and delegate their tokens. EIGEN, a Universal Intersubjective Work Token, provides social consensus as a service and will serve a role in future protocol governance. The token is expected to become transferable in the coming month and is currently trading at about $2.90 in Aevo’s pre-market. The Eigen Foundation also pledged an allocation to Protocol Guild.
Optimism announced the details for its sixth round of retroactive funding, which will allocate up to 3.5 million OP tokens to projects that have contributed to Superchain Governance. Eligible contributions include governance infrastructure and tooling, governance analytics and performance reports, as well as leadership roles within councils, commissions, and boards. Applications open on September 26th, with contributions needing to demonstrate impact between October 2023 and September 2024. Projects unrelated to Optimism governance and individual delegate participation are not eligible for this round. Badgeholders will vote in October, with grants set to be distributed in November.
RISC Zero, a blockchain infrastructure provider, introduced Boundless, a new scalability design leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to enable verifiable computing. With Boundless, computations performed by a single node can be verified by all nodes efficiently, without the need for re-execution. Boundless simplifies ZK integration for developers by offering familiar programming languages and streamlined proof aggregation. Boundless also supports cross-chain interactions, elastic scalability, and inherits security from the underlying target chains. The solution is currently in an early testing phase.
DeltaPrime Blue, a lending protocol on Arbitrum One, suffered a private key compromise, leading to the loss of approximately $6 million in user funds. An attacker was able to artificially inflate their deposit balances to withdraw funds from multiple pools, including USDC, BTCb, and ARB. DeltaPrime has since contained the risk and is now working on asset recovery.
Danny Ryan Steps Away From L1 R&D
Over the past seven years, he has played a critical role in Ethereum’s development, notably the network's transition to proof-of-stake.
Danny Ryan steps away from his role at the EF.
ZKsync onchain governance goes live.
EF announces 4844 Data Challenge winners.
Long-time Ethereum researcher Danny Ryan announced that he is stepping down from his role at the Ethereum Foundation related to Ethereum L1 research and development. Ryan emphasized that his departure was personal as he plans to take a break to focus on his family and personal projects throughout the end of the year. Ryan urged the Ethereum community to build lasting, long-term value rather than chasing short-term gains. Over the past seven years, he has played a pivotal role in Ethereum’s development, notably leading its transition to proof-of-stake and most recently the introduction of PeerDAS. Ryan says he remains open to exploring part-time engagements next year.
Onchain governance for ZKsync is now live on Tally, enabling delegates to initiate proposals and execute upgrades. The governance system is categorized into three proposal types, including ZKsync Improvement Proposals (ZIPs), Token Program Proposals (TPPs), and Governance Advisory Proposals (GAPs). The minimum proposal threshold needed is 21 million ZK tokens. ZKsync governance consists of three key parts, including ZK token holders coined as the Token Assembly, a twelve-member ZKsync Security Council responsible for reviewing protocol upgrades, and the ZKsync Guardians, a group of five appointed individuals who can veto, initiate, and approve emergency measures.
The Ethereum Foundation revealed the winners of its 4844 Data Challenge, a competition where data experts evaluated the impact of EIP-4844 on Ethereum. Ten finalists were selected to receive a portion of the $30,000 prize pool for their submissions. The top prize was awarded to Seongwan Park for his empirical analysis, which highlighted both the improvements and challenges brought by the upgrade.
Splitting Pectra Into Two Forks
A split would enable developers to ship the EIPs currently in Devnet3 as part of the first Pectra upgrade in early Q1 2025, with the remaining EIPs will postponed to the Fusaka hard fork.
Core developers consider splitting Pectra into two forks.
Coinbase launches cbBTC.
Proposal to deploy Treasure Chain on ZK Stack.
Aragon introduces gasless onchain voting.
Ethereum core developers are considering whether to split the upcoming Pectra upgrade into two separate hard forks, aiming to accelerate deployment compared to a prolonged timeline for a single large fork. Pectra, as currently planned, is the largest fork in Ethereum's history, with 20 EIPs scheduled for inclusion. A split would enable developers to ship the EIPs currently in Devnet3 as part of the first Pectra upgrade in early Q1 2025, with the remaining EIPs will postponed to the Fusaka hard fork. Core developer Alex Stokes advocated for the split, arguing that smaller forks reduce development time and security risks. ACD lead Tim Beiko asked client teams to form a position on whether to split Pectra ahead of the next ACDC call, where a decision will be made.
Coinbase launched cbBTC, a wrapped version of Bitcoin backed 1:1 by Bitcoin held by Coinbase. As an ERC-20 token on Base and Ethereum, cbBTC enables Bitcoin holders to access the broader DeFi ecosystem, including Aerdrome, Aave, Compund, and Spark. Users can easily convert BTC to cbBTC through Coinbase. To convert, users can send Bitcoin on Base or Ethereum from their Coinbase account, and Coinbase automatically converts it into the cbBTC token. If users want to unwrap cbBTC, sending it back to Coinbase will convert it back to Bitcoin. cbBTC does not have a separate order book on Coinbase.
ZKsync proposed for TreasureDAO, the leading gaming platform on Arbitrum, to deploy its gaming-focused rollup as an Elastic Chain on the ZK Stack. ZKsync says it will provide technical support, strategic assistance, and access to a dedicated team for Treasure. ZKSync aims to offer unified liquidity and seamless UX for users. The Treasure L2 aims to serve as a decentralized gaming console. MAGIC, Treasure's native token, will be used for fee payments and underpinning economic security. ZKsync will host an AMA with TreasureDAO to discuss the potential of Treasure L2 as an Elastic Chain.
DAO infrastructure provider Aragon introduced support for gasless onchain voting as part of its multichain governance plugin, enabling DAO members to vote onchain without incurring gas fees The implementation is powered by LayerZero V2, ZKsync’s account abstraction, and txSync’s Tsuko paymaster. The plugin allows DAOs to designate any EVM chain for voting, while LayerZero seamlessly aggregates votes back to the source chain.