• Arbitrum Stylus goes live on mainnet.

• Aave introduces the Sky Aave Force.

• Matter Labs lays off 16% of its staff.

• Devcon opens general ticket sales

Arbitrum Stylus, a versatile programming environment for writing smart contracts using WebAssembly (WASM), is now live on Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova mainnet. The launch introduces MultiVM support, allowing a fully interoperable WASM VM to work alongside the EVM. Developers can write smart contracts in high-level programming languages like Rust, C, and C++. Stylus significantly reduces gas costs by offloading resource-intensive operations to the more efficient WASM environment. To further accelerate the development of Stylus-based smart contracts and tools, Arbitrum is launching the Stylus Sprint program, offering 5 million ARB tokens in grants for teams building on Stylus.

Aave introduced the Sky Aave Force, a collaboration with Sky, formerly known as MakerDAO, to onboard USDs and sUSDS, the rebranded versions of DAI and sDAI, to Aave V3. As part of the collaboration, Aave will add sUSDS as a collateral and borrow asset on Aave V3. The Sky Aave Force will also include a Direct Deposit Module (D3M) for USDS in Aave's Lido-specific V3 market, with an initial debt ceiling of $100 million. In return, Sky will offer token incentives to liquidity providers, including 3.33 million SPK tokens per month as part of a pre-farming airdrop incentive program. The migration from DAI to USDS is scheduled to go live on September 18th.

Matter Labs, the company behind the ZKsync EVM-compatible ZK Rollup, announced a layoff of roughly 16% of its workforce as part of a broader restructuring. In a letter to employees, co-founder Alex G. attributed the layoffs to changing market conditions and business needs, noting that current talent does not match the project’s needs. Affected employees will receive an exit package that includes three months of base pay, four months of healthcare coverage, full vesting of equity, career support, and immigration assistance. Matter Labs has raised a total of $458 million in funding to date.

General ticket sales for Devcon VII are now live, marking the final ticket wave until tickets are sold out. General Admission tickets are priced at $599 with discounts available for past attendees, public goods projects, open-source contributors, and local SEA builders. Devcon VII is the largest Ethereum developer conference, set to take place in Bangkok, Thailand, from November 12-15.

• DAI vanity address compromise

• EF AMA on 5th September

• Etherscan adds Builder score

• SEC fines Galois Capital

• Samsung Next joins Soneium

• POL upgrade details

• EIGEN token upgrade is queued

• Aerdrome turns one

• Vitalik discusses computational task architectures.

• Arbitrum begins its security council election process.

• Coinbase Smart Wallet reaches 21,000 MAUs.

• Optimism re-opens Season 6 mission requests.

Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin published a blog discussing the separation of computational tasks into two key categories: business logic and expensive work. He highlights that modern computation relies on a "glue and coprocessor" architecture, where the "glue" component handles general tasks with lower efficiency, while the "coprocessor" is responsible for managing resource-intensive operations with higher efficiency. In the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), business logic is executed by high-level languages like Solidity, whereas specialized opcodes manage costly operations such as storage reads and cryptographic tasks. Buterin observes a growing trend towards modular, specialized computation, which he views as beneficial for cryptography, blockchain, and AI, where both efficiency and security are critical.

The election process for the Arbitrum Security Council is now open. Candidates interested in a Security Council position can currently signal their intent by posting in the Arbitrum governance forum. In late September, candidates can register as a member to run for a position. Candidates must then receive support from at least 0.2% of all votable ARB tokens to secure a nomination. The 12-member council is responsible for executing urgent and emergency response protocol upgrades. Elections for the Arbitrum Security Council are held twice a year, rotating out six members each time. The election period will run from October 13th to November 3rd.

Coinbase Smart Wallet, the browser-based smart contract wallet from Coinbase, has reached over 37,000 smart wallets created on Base. August marked its most successful month yet, with more than 21,000 monthly active users and over 66,000 user operations. Base also reached 14 million MAUs in August. Launched for all users in June this year, Coinbase Smart Wallet allows users to set up a self-custodial wallet using just a passkey, removing the need for recovery phrases. The wallet supports various passkey login methods, including Google Chrome profiles, iCloud, Face ID, fingerprint, and Yubikey.

• OP re-opens Season 6 mission requests

• Devcon ticket wave on 3rd Sept.

• Van Loon v. U.S. Treasury case

• Vega Chain shutting down

• Ondo launches USDY on Arbitrum.

• EF ESP Q2 grant allocations.

• AltLayer deploys Kyoto 2.0.

• Linea surpasses 350k subnames.

Ondo Finance, a protocol focused on onchain securities, launched its USDY yield-bearing stablecoin on Arbitrum One. USDY is backed by U.S. Treasuries and offers a yield of around 5.3% APY. The integration with Arbitrum enables users to access USDY across the Arbitrum ecosystem, including applications like Camelot and Dolomite. In June, the Arbitrum Stable Treasury Endowment Program (STEP) committee allocated 6 million ARB to Ondo’s USDY stablecoin as part of a strategic investment to diversify the Arbitrum DAO treasury into real-world asset (RWA) products. USDY was developed in partnership with Flux Finance

The EF Ecosystem Support Program released an allocation update of projects that received funding in Q2 2024. A total of $8.4 million was allocated to 94 different projects. The grant categories include community education, cryptography, developer tooling, consensus layer, execution layer, and protocol support. Grant recipients include Summer of Protocols, account abstraction core teams, and L2 Beat.  The EF Ecosystem Support Program (ESP) runs several initiatives focused on providing both financial and non-financial support to teams. Users building projects that enhance Ethereum can visit esp.ethereum.foundation to view funding options.

AltLayer, a rollup-as-a-service provider, launched Kyoto 2.0, an Arbitrum Orbit chain deployed on Espresso's Cappuccino testnet. Kyoto 2.0 enables users and developers to test fast, economically secured preconfirmations provided by Espresso Network. The release also supports the Espresso Sequencing Marketplace. Users can access the network by adding Kyoto 2.0 to their wallets, bridging testnet funds, and deploying contracts. The testnet comes in preparation for Espresso’s upcoming mainnet launch. AltLayer will support Espresso Sequencing for native and restaked rollups on Arbitrum Orbit.

• Robot Ventures raises $75 million

• Linea hits 350k subnames

• SafeDAO proposes revenue stream

• Proposed EOF EIP opcodes

• Ddocs markdown support