• OP Stack dispute game design.

• SEC Commissioners statement on ShapeShift.

• Wormhole $W token eligibility checker.

• Hop Protocol plans to integrate CCTP.

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OP Labs released a bond-based dispute game mechanism design for the OP Stack. Dispute games are used to facilitate fault detection in a fault-proof system. The proposed mechanism design encourages honest participation by imposing a bond requirement on claims, penalizing dishonest claims with a cost barrier. "Big Bonds" are the initial strategy, setting high ETH-denominated bonds adjusted for gas costs and claim depth to cover costs for honest participants and deterring spam. The fault dispute game marks a step towards further decentralizing the OP Stack through implementation in a future protocol update.

SEC Commissioners Hester M. Peirce and  Mark T. Uyeda issued a statement in regard to enforcement action against crypto exchange ShapeShift. The SEC filed a cease and desist against ShapeShift for not registering as a securities dealer between 2014 and 2021. ShapeShift settled the charges and paid a $275,000 fine. Commissioner Peirce criticized the order for not specifying which assets were deemed securities and the reasoning behind it. She highlighted the ongoing ambiguity surrounding the definition of a security, noting that this uncertainty undermines innovation and places entrepreneurs in a difficult position due to the absence of clear regulatory guidelines.

The Wormhole multichain bridge introduced an eligibility checker tool for its $W token airdrop. The W token has a total supply of 10 billion, and 6.17% of this supply is dedicated to the community airdrop. Users can check their eligibility and W token allocation by checking their wallets across EVM, Sei, NEAR, Kujira, and Evmos chains. The airdrop is based on a snapshot captured on February 6. The distribution of the W token will be in both ERC20 and SPL formats, covering several chains such as Ethereum, Solana, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base. The criteria for eligibility include interactions with applications within the Wormhole ecosystem, stakers, and certain NFT communities. The W token has not yet been launched.

Rollup-to-rollup bridge Hop Protocol will now support Circle’s Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol (CCTP). Users will be able to bridge native USDC across supported networks on Hop. The Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol allows USDC to be natively burned on a source chain and natively minted on a destination chain, removing the need for USDC liquidity providers on the bridge.

• Lighthouse survey results

• MetaMask integrates Revolut onramp

• L2Beat Blast analysis

• Interface expands L2 support

• Across introduces Across+

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• Snapshot introduces Boost rewards.

• Fraxtal’s native bridge goes live.

• Fluidkey introduces the Stealth Account Kit.

• Astar Network launches the Astar zkEVM.

Snapshot, an offchain governance voting platform, introduced Boost, a new feature that allows DAOs to incentivize voting participation by rewarding voters with ERC-20 tokens. The feature allows DAOs to select a token and amount for the voter rewards, choose between lottery or proportional distribution mechanisms, and define eligibility parameters. DAOs can also customize winning prababliities and set caps for an upper limit for large token holders. Boost is currently available in a private beta release for select DAOs. Snapshot hopes that the new feature will help address voter apathy in cases where only a small subset of token holders vote on DAO proposals.

The Fraxtal native bridge is now live on mainnet, enabling deposits of ETH, CRV, sfxETH, and various tokens from the Frax ecosystem directly to Fraxtal. As a Layer 2 network built on the OP Stack, Fraxtal introduces a novel incentive mechanism called Flox, rewarding users and developers with FXTL points based on their gas spend. Frax Finance is also offering FXTL point rewards for FXS stakers. Fraxtal is also part of Optimism’s Superchain collective, supporting shared upgrades and a commitment to public goods funding. Frax Ether (frxETH) serves as the rollup’s native gas token. Fraxtal currently holds just over $1 million in frxETH deposits.

Transaction privacy tooling provider Fluidkey introduced the Stealth Account Kit, an open-source TypeScript library that offers the essential cryptographic functions for generating and recovering Fluidkey stealth accounts. The release aims to promote the development of privacy-focused applications. The library is influenced by Umbra.js, viem, and Safe. The library's functionalities cover generating private keypairs from signatures, extracting and generating private viewing keys, creating stealth addresses, and predicting stealth Safe addresses. Fluidkey automatically directs payments sent to a private ENS to a new address that only the user can control. Users can currently sign up for a waitlist to use the privacy tool.

Astar Network launched its Astar zkEVM on mainnet, built on the Polygon CDK and integrated with the AggLayer. The implementation enables Astar to access unified liquidity across ZK-powered chains on Polygon through a single bridge. The rollup was built in collaboration with automation infrastructure provider Gelato Network.

• Zerion supports Zora Network

• Fluent integrates with Celestia

• EtherFi final countdown

• Reminder to update node software

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• SEC delays Ethereum ETF.

• Optimism 4844 savings estimator.

• Paradigm writes on raising the gas limit.

• EtherFi partners with Omni Network

ETH is up 4.5% over the last 24 hours, currently trading at $3,624 at the time of writing.

The SEC postponed its decision on BlackRock's application for a Spot Ethereum ETF. BlackRock filed a Form S-1 with the SEC last November for its proposed iShares Ethereum Trust. The Ethereum ETF would be traded on the Nasdaq once approved. The ETF provides investors Ethereum exposure without owning ETH directly. BlackRock intends to hold actual ETH, which will be held by the Coinbase Custody Trust Company. The SEC has up to 240 days to make a decision on the application. VanEck is one of the first asset managers to apply for an Ethereum ETF. May 23rd marks the final deadline for the SEC to make a decision on VanEck’s Ethereum ETF.

OP Labs introduced the Superchain Savings Estimator, a tool designed to compare transaction fees on OP Stack chains before and after the activation of the Dencun upgrade. Engineers at OP Labs anticipate a significant reduction in transaction fees to cents across all OP Stack chains once blob transactions are integrated. The tool allows users to input any transaction hash to simulate cost savings. Executing a swap on Uniswap on Base currently incurs a cost of about 60 cents, a figure expected to plummet to less than a cent. EIP-4844 blob transactions are slated to go live on Ethereum mainnet on March 13th, with support on the OP Stack coming the following day on March 14th. Users can access the tool at welovetheblobs.xyz.

Paradigm released a research article about increasing Ethereum's block gas limit. The article explores the concept of state growth within Ethereum and its correlation with the gas limit. It distinguishes between state growth, history growth, state access, and the gas limit, each presenting distinctive scalability challenges. The document highlights Ethereum's scaling bottlenecks, hardware constraints, and gas limits, impacting various aspects such as network bandwidth, storage capacity, memory, and IO operations. Proposed solutions to address state growth include rollups, Verkle tries, and state expiry. The article advocates for an empirical approach for increasing Ethereum's gas limit.

EtherFi, the largest LRT protocol with close to $2 billion in TVL, partnered with rollup interoperability protocol Omni Network. EtherFi committed to delegating $600 million worth of ETH to economically secure Omni Network by running as an Actively Validated Service (AVS) on EigenLayer and selecting EtherFi node operators. EtherFi’s eETH is also now supported on the Zircuit LRT restaking protocol.

• UF issues first grant of the year

• Onboard sUSDe to Aave

• TLX council voting

• Alien CryptoPunk sells for 4,500 ETH

• World App crosses 50m txs

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