• Vitalik Buterin presents the Ethereum roadmap.

• Core devs discuss EIP-4444 and EIP-4844.

• Flashbots releases the MEV Boost landing page

• Epic Games CEO says they will not ban NFTs.

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While at ethCC 5 in Paris, Ethereum Co-founder Vitalik Buterin presented the Ethereum roadmap and plans beyond The Merge. Buterin categorized future upgrades to the network into five phases, coined as The Merge, The Surge, The Verge, The Purge, and The Splurge. The Merge is the upcoming transition to proof-of-stake planned for late September. The Surge is the implementation of sharding, which splits the blockchain into smaller shards that handle execution independently. The Verge implements verkle trees, an upgrade to Merkle proofs that allow for smaller proof sizes. The Purge aims to reduce the hard disk space needed for validators by eliminating historical blockchain data. And lastly, The Splurge will be a series of smaller upgrades to ensure the network continues to run smoothly. Buterin stated that after The Merge, Ethereum will be 55% complete and by the end of Ethereum’s roadmap, the L1 network will be able to process around 100k TPS.

Ethereum core developers held their 143rd all core devs call this week, discussing EIP-4444, EIP-4844, and updates for the upcoming merge on Goerli. EIP-4844 will be part of The Surge upgrade on Ethereum and could be implemented as soon as the Shanghai hard fork, the first post-merge upgrade. EIP-4844, aka protodanksharding, proposes an intermediate sharding specification for Ethereum which accepts “blobs” of data to be persisted in the beacon node. The goal is to immediately enable lower transaction fees on L2 rollups. The core devs discussed the ongoing coordination of the KZG ceremony, a process for providing random input for the proving scheme used to verify shard data. EIP-4444 seeks to limit how execution layer nodes store and access historical data. Currently, uncompressed historical chain data on Ethereum is costing validators upwards of 300GB of storage. EIP-4444 relies on multiple parties hosting and distributing historical chain data.

Flashbots released a landing page for MEV Boost, a free open-source software for Beacon Chain validators. MEV-Boost allows validators to maximize staking rewards by selling blockspace to an open market. According to Flashbots, validators can increase rewards by up to 75%, increasing their APR upwards of 12% rather than the base ETH staking APR of ~7.35%. MEV Boost is currently in a testing phase, focusing on preventing liveness failures once Ethereum transitions to proof-of-stake. Flashbots is a research and development organization that provides tools for fair MEV extracion. Flashbots Auction is an MEV product available to miners and searchers. Ethereum users can use the Flashbots RPC for MEV-protected transactions.

Epic Games CEO Tim Sweeney posted a tweet in response to Minecraft’s NFT ban, stating that the Epic Games Store will not ban NFTs in games. He added on to say that stores and operating system makers shouldn’t interfere by forcing their views onto others. Epic Games is the game publisher behind Fortnite, Fall Guys, and Cyberpunk 2077 among others. The Epic Games marketplace reported over 194 million users at the end of 2021. The game publisher previously raised $2 billion from Sony and LEGO in April. Sweeney had stated the funds would be used to accelerate the company’s work to build a metaverse.

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• Zapper releases V2 NFT and DAO dashboards.

• Aave V3 deploys on the Goerli testnet.

• Hashflow raises $25 million in Series A funding.

• Premint acquires Vulcan Authentication.

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Streaming payments platform Superfluid also released a V2 of its dashboard. The new dashboard is up to 50x faster and now supports dark mode, ENS, and a RainbowKit Integration. Users can manage streams and Super Tokens via a single interface independent of other applications. Superfluid supports Gnosis Chain, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, Avalanche, and BNB Chain. The application allows users to automatically stream tokens to other wallets without having to execute repeating transactions. It works by wrapping assets into Super Tokens that can be sent without fees. Users can then unwrap their assets to release the tokens on the underlying chain.

Aave has deployed its V3 protocol on the Goerli testnet and on Optimism’s Goerli testnet. This comes as the Ethereum Foundation announced that it will be deprecating support for the Ropsten, Rinkeby, and Kovan testnets after the merge. Goerli and Sepolia will be the only testnets maintained post-merge. Aave will be removing the Optimistic Kovan V3 testnet deployments from its UI.

Bridgeless cross-chain DEX Hashflow announced a $25 million Series A, valuing the project at $400 million. The round included participation from Coinbase Ventures, Kraken Ventures, Wintermute, and Dragonfly Capital among others. Hashflow will use the funds to continue the development of its request-for-quote (RFQ) trading model as well as expand towards operating in more jurisdictions. Unlike AMMs, request-for-quote (RFQ) trading provides guaranteed price execution and MEV protection by having market makers agree on a quoted price before a trade is executed by the taker. Hashflow also uses debt-based LPs called Public Pools. LPs can deposit funds into a pool in exchange for yield in the form of loan shares.

Zapper Finance released its V2 dashboard with a focus on NFTs. Users can now explore NFT collections and are shown relative floor prices on a specific trait directly within the dashboard. The release also includes a DAO page, providing a categorical overview of DAOs and assets held in their treasuries. Users can also follow other wallets to track positions. Zapper added NFT browsing support to its recently launched iOS application and plans to add DAO analytics in a later release. Zapper Finance is a DeFi dashboard and analytics tool for tracking activity across EVM chains.

NFT access list tool Premint has acquired the wallet authentication tool Vulcan Authentication. Similar to Collab Land, Vulcan is a tool for proving wallet and NFT ownership to access token-gated Discord channels. Premint had just suffered a phishing attack on their website earlier this week, resulting in over 300 NFTs being stolen. The company has since stated it will refund victims of the attack in the form of ETH relative to the floor price of the NFTs stolen. In total, Premint is refunding close to 340 ETH, currently worth about $500k. It will be sending the refund payments directly to the wallets affected by the attack.

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• Polygon announces its EVM-Equivalent zkEVM.

• Scroll reveals its zkEVM testnet release.

• zkSync plans to launch to mainnet in 100 days.

• Minecraft bans NFTs from its platform.

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Matter Labs announced plans to release zkSync 2.0 to mainnet within the next 100 days. zkSync 2.0 is an upgrade to the network that includes a zkEVM compatible zk-Rollup. The upgrade also includes support for Vyper and Solidity. EVM compatibility allows Ethereum developers to port their existing dapps to zkSync with minimal code changes. Matter Labs also revealed it will now adopt a public roadmap, laying out sequential milestones for the following months. In Fall, Matter Labs will release ZK proofs for EVM smart contracts in a live production environment. Projects will be able to deploy on zkSync 2.0 mainnet as part of a fair launch in Q4 with a public alpha release planned for EOY 2022.

Polygon unveiled the open-source release of Polygon zkEVM, an EVM-equivalent zk-Rollup. Polygon zkEVM is a separate L2 chain focused on processing low-cost and high throughput transactions while inheriting the security guarantees of Ethereum. EVM-equivalence allows developers to deploy existing smart contracts on Polygon zkEVM without code adjustments. Polygon zkEVM leverages the use of plonky2 recursive SNARKs. The announcement comes amid zkEVM announcements from zkSync and Scroll in a race for the first mainnet release of an EVM compatible zk-Rollup. Polygon will release a testnet this summer with a mainnet launch expected in early 2023.

Scroll, a zk-Rollup L2 scaling solution, announced the pre-alpha release of its testnet. Scroll will also be zkevm-equivalent and will have solidity byte-code level compatibility. This means developers can port their Ethereum applications to Scroll without needing to use a transpiler. This initial release will be run on a private PoA fork of Ethereum and a Scroll L2 testnet running on it. The testnet is open for community feedback on a capacity-limited basis. Users will be able to test applications including a fork of Uniswap. There will also be a smart contract bridge for bridging assets. After this testing phase, Scroll will allow developers to deploy smart contracts in a public alpha testnet release.

Minecraft announced a ban on NFTs and NFT integration within their game. Minecraft updated its usage guidelines citing that “NFTs can create models of scarcity and exclusion that conflict with Guidelines and the spirit of Minecraft.” NFTs will not be permitted in Minecraft in-game content such as worlds, skins, persona items, or other mods. The public statement from Minecraft showed a lack of understanding in the space, describing NFTs as a “non-editable digital token” that is “often purchased with cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.” The announcement sent Web3 gaming project NFT Worlds into a downward spiral, with its native $WRLD token plummeting more than 70%.

The 10th Ethereum Mainnet Shadow Fork is scheduled for July 27th at around 2:00 PM UTC. Ethereum underwent its 9th shadow fork on July 14th. There will be a few more shadow forks happening in the coming months as the merge approaches. Shadow forks are used for testing different merge scenarios, such as a block reorg.

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