Dear Bankless Readers 🏴

It’s been a busy few weeks at Bankless Publishing. In the last Recap, we let you know about the merge which has happened behind the scenes, and you may notice that the Substack logo has now officially been changed to BP. This bumper issue of the Recap is packed with great reading; three of the articles were written by authors from the most recent BanklessDAO Writers Cohort and are great introductory pieces about ZK-rollups, smart contract vulnerabilities, and Ethereum transactions.

The other four articles featured in this issue are wild rides through the Bitcoin ordinals development space, the Bitcoin halving event happening next year, Optimism’s Law of Chains, and the friends.tech phenomenon currently sweeping through the Crypto X community. What is evident from these pieces is that regardless of the technology, people are what makes the difference in terms of direction and adoption.

That’s why it’s so important to the team at Bankless Publishing that you, our audience, enjoy the content we produce and want to travel with us on this journey. We will be experimenting with platform changes in coming months, but top of mind will be delivering articles, threads, and newsletters our readers feel good about. As a decentralized publishing house, we aim to bring you a range of authors’ voices covering trends, basics, and everything in between.

This recap is a convenient way to access all our recent articles, but if you prefer to read Bankless Publishing content while it’s sizzling hot off the press, follow us on X or come and join us in Discord.

Contributors: Frank America, beemeeupnow, Kornekt, Trewkat, Puretayo, HiroKennelly

Bankless Publishing is driven by a mission to ennoble its writers and showcase their content to a broad audience of crypto-interested readers. We also work with crypto’s leading protocols to help them get their message out to our audience. Whether you’re a writer or protocol team, we’re interested in talking with you.

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🏫 Crypto Basics Series

Each week we’re shipping a selection of our previous introductory web3 content on Mirror, enabling users to curate a web3 reference library by minting the articles as NFTs on Optimism.

✍️ Article Summaries

Counting on a New Era For Bitcoin: An Interview With Leonidas

Author: Tigi76 | Editors: Melior and trewkat | Designers: ab_colours and trewkat

The emergence of ordinals and inscriptions has ushered in a new era for the Bitcoin network. In this interview, Leonidas, the co-founder of Ord.io and the cohost of The Ordinal Show, shared insights into the origin and advancement of this relatively new kid on the Bitcoin block.

“I believe that the legacy of the ordinals protocol will be that it broke down those ideological walls and caused thousands of developers to come try many new experiments on Bitcoin, a few of which will end up being very important innovations.”

Dive in now to catch up with the developments on the ordinals and inscriptions scene.

Introduction to Zero-Knowledge Rollups

Author: klouie | Editor: Kornekt | Designer: Tonytad

ZK-rollups leverage zero-knowledge proofs, a cryptographic technique that allows one party to prove knowledge of certain information without revealing the information itself. By leveraging zero-knowledge proofs to process transactions off-chain while maintaining the security and trustlessness of the main chain, ZK-rollups hold the potential to transform how blockchains operate. This article focuses on two popular ZK-rollups: zkSync Era and Starknet.

“By moving most of the computation off-chain and only submitting proofs to Mainnet, both zkSync and Starknet can process complex smart contracts more efficiently. This alleviates congestion and reduces gas fees.”

Get launched into the ZK realm with this introductory piece.

What Is the Law of Chains?

Author: lawpanda | Editors: trewkat and Hiro Kennelly | Designer: Chameleon

The Law of Chains is the Optimism Collective’s guiding principle for blockchains built on the OP Stack. In theory, it is meant to govern the OP Superchain ecosystem, however in practice, it is more of a social contract than a legal one.

“While the current iteration of the Law of Chains may be perceived as somewhat ‘toothless’ in its ability to enforce its own standards, that does not mean that enforceable legal mechanisms utilizing OP Stack technology and embodying its ideals will not eventually evolve. For now, however, it seems as if the “Law” part of the Law of Chains may be a misnomer, albeit a well-meaning aspiration.”

Want to dig deeper into the Law of Chains? Start on the right footing with this article.

What Is Next Year’s Bitcoin Halving Event?

Author: Frank America | Editor: trewkat and Hiro Kennelly | Designer: Chameleon

The Bitcoin halving is a pre-programmed event that occurs approximately every four years, or after every 210,000 blocks mined. During the halving, the block reward that miners receive for validating transactions and adding blocks to the blockchain is cut in half. Previous halving events have been associated with increased market speculation and heightened volatility in the months leading up to and following the halving. 

“If bitcoin remains on par with the previous cycle’s differential between the second to third halving and hits a 500% increase, that would put BTC at $186,900 in Q2 of 2025.”

Will history repeat itself in the next halving? Check out the article for more insights into next year’s big Bitcoin event.

Getting Smart About Smart Contract Vulnerabilities

Author: Kornekt | Editor: Hiro Kennelly | Designer: Tonytad

Smart contract vulnerabilities present significant risks in the blockchain space. Developers, auditors, and users must be vigilant in understanding these and implementing best practices to build and interact with secure smart contracts. Regular security audits, code reviews, and community collaboration are essential to fostering a safer blockchain ecosystem.

“The immutability of smart contracts can become a double-edged sword when it comes to fixing vulnerabilities. If a vulnerability is discovered, rectifying it becomes challenging since the code cannot be directly altered. Balancing the need for immutability with the necessity of security upgrades is still a significant challenge.”

Take the step to get smart about smart contract exploits and mitigating measures.

Friend.tech Is Saving Twitter

Author: 0xCaptainLevi | Editor: Hiro Kennelly and trewkat | Designer: trewkat

If you’re active on Crypto X then you’re most likely aware of the recent buzz that has taken over the community: friend.tech. What’s it all about and how can you be a part of this frenzy? In this article, 0xCaptainLevi shared his friend.tech journey, a great start for anyone looking to test the waters and valuable insights for current users.

“On August 13, I became the first full-time content creator on friend.tech, streaming from 8 a.m. to midnight. In total I have owned and chatted with well over 200 accounts. Soon after, my hard work started to pay off. My holders loved my content. The next day, we hit #36 on the top leaderboard. On August 15 we hit #15. Now we are #11 with 53 holders and well over 100 holdings, with current coverage in more than 50% of Top 50 and about 80 more in smaller but highly respected accounts.”

Get started with Friend.tech and learn how it is saving Twitter in this insightful piece.

Inside an Ethereum Transaction

Author: 0xKimberly | Editor: trewkat | Designer: Chameleon

This article walks readers through the process of an Ethereum transaction, shedding light on the steps involved in the journey of transferring value on the Ethereum blockchain.

“A transaction is a cryptographically signed set of instructions that tells Ethereum what to do. … When you send funds from your MetaMask to another wallet, you’re essentially constructing this set of instructions. MetaMask is simply providing an interface to make the process user friendly.”

Learn more about how ETH moves from one user to another in this basic walkthrough.

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