1. Ethereum Foundation: First Round of ZK Grants Now Open link

The Ethereum Foundation has announced the opening of the first round of ZK Grants. Collaborating with Aztec, Polygon, Scroll, Taiko, and zkSync, the Ethereum Foundation has contributed $150,000 each to a shared bounty pool, totaling $900,000. The application deadline is March 18, 2024.

2. Uniswap’s New Proposal Aims to Distribute Protocol Fees Proportionally to Staked UNI Holders link

The Uniswap Foundation has announced the release of a Snapshot vote for the “Activating Uniswap Protocol Governance” proposal on March 1, 2024. On-chain voting will commence on March 8, 2024. The proposal suggests upgrading the protocol to enable permissionless and programmatic protocol fee collection. It also proposes distributing any protocol fees proportionally among UNI token holders who are staking and delegating their voting rights, and allowing governance to continue controlling core parameters, such as which pools require fees and the fee size.

dYdX founder Antonio Juliano tweeted that according to Tokenterminal data, Uniswap generated $306 million in LP fees over the past 180 days. If UNI holders were allowed to collect between 1/10 to 1/4 of the fee proportion, it’s estimated that at 1/10, this would mean an annual income of $61 million, and at 1/4, it would be $153 million per year.

3. Optimism’s Weekly Summary

a. Optimism’s Fourth Airdrop Allocates 10,343,757.81 OP link

Optimism has announced its fourth round of airdrops, distributing 10,343,757.81 OP (approximately $41 million) to 22,998 addresses, primarily targeting NFT artists and creators. This airdrop includes creators of Supenchain NFT contracts and Ethereum mainnet NFT contracts, with the snapshot taken on January 10th.

b. OP Labs: Upgrades for 4844 and Ecotone to Go Live on March 14 link

OP Labs announced via Twitter that 4844 will be launched on the OP chain at 8:00 AM Beijing time on March 14th. The Ecotone upgrade will also go live simultaneously upon receiving approval from Optimism governance. Node operators are advised to take necessary measures to prepare for the upgrade. Once the basic Ecotone configuration is complete, nodes will need to configure a new Beacon endpoint. This is because shortly after the activation of Ecotone, batch transactions will be sent as 4844 blobs, and blobs can only be retrieved from Beacon nodes.

4. StarkWare’s Weekly Summary

a. StarkWare Adjusts Early Contributor and Investor Token Unlock Schedule link

StarkWare tweeted that it’s adjusting the lockup schedule for its early contributors and investors. The revised schedule is as follows: 0.64% of the initial issuance of 10 billion tokens (64 million tokens) will unlock on April 15th, instead of the originally planned 13.4% (1.34 billion tokens). The gradual unlocking will continue at a pace of 0.64% per month (64 million tokens) until March 15, 2025, after which it will increase to 1.27% per month (127 million tokens) for 24 months until March 15, 2027. According to the new unlocking plan, early contributors and investors will unlock 580 million tokens by the end of 2024, compared to the previous plan of 2 billion tokens. An additional 1.4 billion tokens will gradually unlock by the end of 2025, followed by another 1.5 billion by the end of 2026, and 380 million by March 15, 2027.

b. Polygon Collaborates with StarkWare to Introduce ZK Technology Upgrade “Circle STARK” link

Polygon has collaborated with StarkWare to introduce “Circle STARKs.” According to the whitepaper, the new Circle STARKs will accelerate the proof process for rollups, thereby enhancing the scalability and efficiency of the blockchain. Additionally, Circle STARKs will significantly improve the finality speed of proofs compared to current STARK proofs. The release date for Circle STARKs is yet to be determined, but Polygon co-founder Brendan Farmer stated in an interview, “This will be implemented in our new proof system, Plonky3. We anticipate a 7 to 10 times improvement.”

5. Merlin Chain Announces Mainnet Staking Event Within 14 Days, Total TVL Surpasses $1.97 Billion link

Merlin Chain, a Bitcoin Layer 2 network, announced that within the first 14 days of its mainnet staking event, the total value locked (TVL) has surpassed $1.97 billion. This includes approximately $1.18 billion worth of BTC, $270 million worth of BRC-20 tokens, and $170 million worth of Ethereum, stablecoins, and other assets. The Ordinals ecosystem has shown significant engagement with Merlin Chain, with SATS staked on Merlin Chain accounting for 12.5% of its total supply, ranking second only to Binance (30%) and surpassing OKX (7.3%). ORDI accounts for 5.1% of the total supply, ranking third, while Bitmap accounts for 26% of the total supply.

6. EOS Foundation CEO Suggests New Token Economic Model link

Yves La Rose, CEO of the EOS Foundation, suggested implementing a new economic model that involves restricting supply and gradually reducing issuance instead of relying on inflation. He proposed halting inflation and minting approximately 818 million EOS, limiting the EOS supply to 2 billion tokens. New minted tokens would be released over time, initially with a large release and gradually decreasing over time (based on a logarithmic curve), diluting inactive holders while rewarding active ones.

7. Avalanche Network Faces Block Production Interruption link

On February 23rd, Ava Labs co-founder @kevinsekniqi stated that they are immediately investigating block production issues on the Avalanche mainnet, which appear to be related to a new inscription launched about an hour earlier. He mentioned that the error should be addressed promptly and is likely related to some memory pool processing issues involving untested edge cases. According to the Avascan browser, the last transaction on the Avalanche C-Chain remains in block 42046853 (19:13 UTC+8). The stop times for other subnets are slightly delayed, with Numbers being the latest, with the last transaction remaining at 20:02 UTC+8.

8. Yuga Labs Co-founder Greg Solano to Resume CEO Role link

Yuga Labs co-founder Greg Solano has announced in a post that he will resume his role as CEO of Yuga Labs. He expressed gratitude for Daniel’s contributions and operational rigor over the past year. Looking ahead to Yuga’s future, Greg emphasized the need for the entire company to focus more on executing crypto-native initiatives. He hopes to empower the BAYC team within Yuga to execute its vision with greater focus and flexibility. A new company called BAYC LLC has been established as a subsidiary of Yuga and will oversee all BAYC-related affairs. There is still much work to be done on Otherside, and the only correct way to build it is to enhance the user experience. Previously, in December 2022, Yuga Labs hired former Activision Blizzard President and Chief Operating Officer Daniel Alegre as the new CEO.

9. PancakeSwap Plans to Open-Source PancakeSwap DEX to Expand Its Ecosystem link

PancakeSwap plans to open-source the PancakeSwap DEX to expand its ecosystem. This model will allow developers to fork its code and clone the PancakeSwap platform on other blockchains. CAKE token holders will benefit from successful derivative forks, as a portion of transaction fees will be used to burn tokens to reduce supply. The plan will be proposed to the community for discussion in the coming weeks.

10. Binance Web3 Wallet Announces Launch of Inscription Market, Supporting ERC-404 Tokens link

Binance Web3 Wallet has announced updates that include the launch of an Inscription Marketplace, support for ERC-404 tokens, and UI/UX improvements to enhance usability. Additionally, it has expanded the Web3 Wallet ecosystem by integrating 24 new dApps and incorporating five new networks: Manta, ZetaChain, ZKFair, Metis, and Scroll.

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