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Always More To Explore | Layer 2 Review

Quick Reads and Hot Links Covering the People and Projects Who Are Scaling Ethereum

Nov 9

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Dear Frens,

Have you minted your .zks domain name on zkSync? ZNS is a decentralized name service on zkSync Era. Similar to ENS, it allows users to register .zks domain names for wallet addresses. Users are then able to share their .zks names in lieu of wallet addresses for receiving payment and in other interactions throughout the zkSync ecosystem.

As the Layer 2 ecosystem continues to grow, there will increasingly be ‘Layer 2 versions’ of the functionality we’ve become used to on Ethereum’s Layer 1. Bear-market builders sure have been busy, and the resulting plethora of new L2 players are testing the limits of the dictionary (just kidding) and providing opportunities to engage with DeFi, NFTs, public goods funding, web3 social, and blockchain-based gaming like never before.

In this edition of the Layer 2 Review, we introduce a handful of these new players — some you may have already heard of or even dabbled with, and others that are still at the starting gates. As usual, there are updates on governance and activity for the major L2s, a look at the potential zkSync airdrop (ahem, see first paragraph), and ecosystem updates to keep you razor sharp on the cutting edge of Ethereum.

Contributors: Warrior, jengajojo, thinkDecade, PaulitoBankless, Boluwatife, WinVerse, Tonytad, trewkat, HiroKennelly

This is an official newsletter of Bankless Publishing, a BanklessDAO-affiliated project. Please subscribe and share to help us grow our audience as we fulfill our mission to build user-friendly crypto onramps.

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🗞️ Ecosystem Updates

🛰️ Arbitrum Orbit Goes Live on Mainnet

💫 Starknet Introduces Its Open-source Sequencer, Madara

❤️ Optimism Announces On-chain Creator Contest With a One Million OP Prize Pool

⏩ DYDX Moves From Ethereum Layer 2 to Its Standalone App-chain

🚀 NEAR Foundation Launches NEAR DA: Data Availability for ETH Rollups

🤔 Kraken May Be Considering Its Own L2 Network

⛽️ Caldera Now Supports Custom Gas Tokens

💰 Stackr Raises $5.5 Million in Seed Round

🚨 Celestia Mainnet Goes Live

⛏️ MetisDAO Introduces the Metis Builder Mining Rewards (BMR) Program

🔥 Hot News

Arbitrum and Gitcoin Announce Winter Programs — Retrofunding, Matching, and Hackathon

Arbitrum and Gitcoin are rolling out three programs to support the Arbitrum community: a retroactive funding round, a matching campaign, and a developer-focused hackathon.

Arbitrum will distribute 100k ARB through a retroactive funding round to outstanding contributors who have already made an impact on Arbitrum's governance and processes. Launching on November 15, this "Arbitrum Citizens" round will use quadratic funding. Participants can apply for retroactive rewards at grants.gitcoin.co.

To incentivize more projects to build on Arbitrum One, 300k ARB in 2x matching funds will be offered to any individual or group running a round on Gitcoin. Details can be found on the Arbitrum forum.

Finally, an Arbitrum hackathon on Gitcoin's Allo modular funding platform will distribute 100k ARB in prizes for talented builders who create novel data structures and tools to advance grant funding initiatives across web3.

🏛 Governance

⭐ Featured Proposals

Non-Constitutional AIP: Ecosystem Security Fund

Sherlock, a security auditing firm active in the Arbitrum ecosystem, sought $4M for the establishment of an Ecosystem Security Fund from which Arbitrum-based protocols could receive discounted auditing services. In the end, it withdrew the proposal.

💬 Proposals in Discussion

Arbitrum

Optimism

Polygon

Upcoming zkEVM Mainnet UPGRADE: Incaberry Hardfork

Starknet

Announcing the Early Community Member Program

🗳️ Polling Station

POLL

Which L2 Airdrop Are You Most Excited About?

🪂 Airdrop Station

The zkSync airdrop is hinted at for early 2024 and will likely be available to users who have used the zkSync testnet or mainnet.

To be eligible for the zkSync airdrop, you will probably need to have:

created a zkSync wallet.
made at least one transaction on zkSync.
deposited at least 0.1 ETH into zkSync.

✍🏼 Always More To Explore

Author: trewkat

Browsing through the sponsors and speakers for the upcoming L2DAYS conference at Devconnect Istanbul and it’s clear there are many more Layer 2 players out there than the big names covered regularly in this newsletter. The list below is by no means exhaustive but will give you a sense of what else is out there, ripe for exploring! Of course, none of this is financial advice!

DeGate

DeGate is a decentralized exchange protocol built on zero knowledge technology. According to L2BEAT, DeGate V1 has a TVL of 3.54M and is a Stage 2 rollup. The protocol uses zkSNARKs technology to generate zero-knowledge proofs after processing requests off-chain, and submits the proofs on-chain for verification and data availability.

To quote from the DeGate docs:

DeGate is a new type of protocol based on a ZK rollup that allows for spot trading through limit orders, similar in experience to a centralized exchange. The ZK technology powers a “match node” matching orders between traders, periodically recording the transactions on a mainnet. This ensures a faster, cheaper trading experience that is still secured by Ethereum. Crucially, the protocol is designed such that fees are low for taker orders, and free for maker orders.
Essentially, DeGate is limit orders, decentralized.

Morphism

Morphism employs modular solutions and optimistic ZK-rollup to scale Ethereum. It is a decentralized Layer 2 network that maintains EVM equivalence in terms of security, availability, and compatibility. This makes it seem as though it’s launched, right? Nope, this project is currently in Testnet Beta phase.

That’s not to say there isn’t plenty happening though, and plenty on the roadmap. According to this informative Morphism blog post, “Morphism’s ambitions reach far beyond the typical Layer 2 scope; it is a comprehensive technology stack designed to energize and support every sector of DeSoc”. The post explains the five sectors of DeSoc — Decentralized Society — and how Morphism will address these: Identity, Governance, Economy, Intelligence, and Blockchain.

Source: Decentralized Society (DeSoc): The Future of Governance and the Role of Morphism

Fluent

Fluent is even newer than Morphism — currently in pre Alpha Testnet stage! The goal of Fluent is to provide a Layer 2 environment in which experienced developers can step into web3 and build applications using the programming languages they are already familiar with:

There’s a large pool of potential talent that remains untapped as evidenced by the 25,000 developers in web3 today and the staggering 25 million developers in the world.

Fluent promises to weave together ZK rollup technology, WebAssembly (known as Wasm — which allows developers to build applications in general-purpose programming languages), and EVM tooling compatibility, to make blockspace abundant and accessible to all.

Check out Fluent’s excellent X thread explaining the different types of rollups.

Linea

Linea, formerly known as ConsenSys zkEVM, combines the power of zero-knowledge proofs with EVM equivalence. Its ace card is that it comes with native integrations with MetaMask and Consensys developer tools such as Infura, Diligence, and Hyperledger Besu. After a few months on Goerli Testnet, Linea Mainnet Alpha launched in July this year.

According to this Mirror post, “In the first month of Linea’s mainnet going live, the L2 blockchain saw a record level of on-chain activity with over 2.7 million transactions and $26M of tokens bridged, making it the fastest-growing zkEVM.”

Last week saw the launch of Linea Safe — a fork of the Safe project, formerly known as Gnosis Safe, which has been deployed and supported on both Linea Goerli and Linea Mainnet in partnership with Protofire.

You can join the the Linea DeFi Voyage now — six weeks of tasks to familiarize users with wallets, bridging, swaps, lending, borrowing, liquidity provision, yield farming, and more. Learn more in this X Space hosted by Bankless:

Public Goods Network

This Gitcoin X post provides the detail on Public Goods Network — a Layer 2 solution built on the OP Stack and currently home to two current Gitcoin Grants Program Rounds.

There’s So Much More To Explore

The L2 players featured in this issue of Layer 2 Review were chosen at random and coverage does not equate to endorsement. However, it’s truly exciting to see the activity and attention focused on bringing the Ethereum ecosystem to its full potential.