Dear Frens,

Happy New Month and welcome to the second half of the year.

The aftermath of the ZKsync token airdrop saw a significant sell-off, with over 41% of initial recipients liquidating their entire allocations on the first day. This massive sell-off pushed nearly $500 million worth of ZK tokens into the open market, causing a sharp price drop to around 20 cents.

On June 26, Blast, an Ethereum Layer 2 network created by the founder of NFT marketplace Blur, officially launched its token airdrop. The project allocated 50% of the airdrop to developers through Blast Gold and the other half to early users through Blast Points, based on their wallet and dApp balances.

Additionally, the Arbitrum Foundation announced its support for the EDU Chain blockchain for education. This network will allow EDU Chain Layer 3 transactions to settle on Arbitrum's Layer 2.

This issue’s editorial turns the spotlight on Base and its rapid advancement in just a year after its public debut. As the year progresses, we anticipate more exciting developments in the Layer 2 space. Stay tuned here to keep apprised of events as they happen.

Contributors: Lucent, Melasin, anointingthompson1, jengajojo, Tonytad, Boluwatife, Kornekt, WinVerse

This is an official newsletter of BanklessDAO. 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

⛓️ Deadline Extended for Arbitrum Foundation Grants

🆕 The ArbitrumDAO NEEDS YOU

🔀 Retro Funding 4, Onchain Builders Applications Voting.

➿ Season 6 of Optimism Gov Officially Started on June 28th

⚡Mint Blockchain Public Mainnet is Live

⭕ A Deep Dive Into Optimism Superchain

🔒 Introducing SuperFest - the Superchain DeFi Festival

📈 Introducing Laïka - Doge Layer2 SPUTNIk ll incentive program

🔥 Hot News

Optimism Governance Season 6 is Live

Optimism Governance kicked off Season 6 on July 1, 2024, with the theme: "Optimizing to Support the Superchain." The season is set to run until December 11, 2024.

The key intents for the season include progressing towards decentralization, bringing chains to the Superchain, and growing application developers.

Several representative structures have been renewed, including the Developer Advisory Board, Grants Council, and Anticapture Commission. However, if you are interested in participating in the Code of Conduct Council, keep an eye out elections for this will begin on August 1.

Notably, Season 6 Mission Grant applications will open on July 18 and occur every 3 weeks until the season's end. This presents an opportunity for developers and projects to secure funding and contribute to the Optimism ecosystem.

For full details, interested parties can refer to the comprehensive guide on the Optimism Governance website.

🏛 Governance

💬 Proposals in Discussion

Arbitrum

• Entropy Advisors: Exclusively Working With Arbitrum DAO

• What is (Re)delegation Week?

Optimism

• Retro Funding 5: Announcing Guest Voter Participation

• Grants Council Internal Operating Procedure - Season 6

Polygon

• PIP-42: Polygon 2.0 - Upgrade PoS Staking to Use POL

Basis for Base's L2 Glory

Author: Kornekt

Base, a relatively new kid on Ethereum’s layer 2 block, is effortlessly taking over the stage, edging other networks to secure the top spots. It was barely a year ago when Base became officially available to the public. Today, it is the second-largest rollup with a TVL of $6.89B (at the time of writing), displacing Optimism which had long held that first runner-up position.

For context, it roughly took over two years for Arbitrum and Optimism to attain a similar TVL, according to data from L2BEAT. In more successes for Base, the network displaced Arbitrum in the last 30 days to stand top with the highest transaction count in Ethereum's L2 transactions.

Base is firing on top gear and is showing no sign of slowing down. What’s responsible for this explosive surge? Let’s find out!

What’s Behind Base’s Growth?

Base’s momentum so far is not without certain key drivers. Several factors are responsible for this sporadic advancement. Here are some of them.

The Coinbase Influence

Base is built by Coinbase, and it’s not far-fetched that the popularity of the exchange is a major factor that contributed to its rapid growth. Coinbase, the largest crypto exchange in the US and a publicly traded company is an established player and boasts to be the first publicly traded entity in the US to own a blockchain. Even before Base became officially available to the public, excitement for the chain had been simmering right from the announcement, leading to millions in TVL while the project was still in developer testing mode.

Outrageously Cheap Fees

Base is one of the cheapest L2 on Ethereum, with transaction costs way less than a cent. According to data from growthepie, the average transaction cost on Base in the past month was ~$0.004, that’s about 99.95% less than gas fees on mainnet. This insane transaction fee on Base followed the Dencun upgrade that drastically slashed fees on L2 networks. Base seemed to be the biggest winner from Dencun though as the upgrade led to an immediate 350% jump in average daily transactions on the network. This number has continued to climb ever since with Base leading the pack in the past month in terms of transaction count.

Developer-Friendly Approach

Base has several features that make it the go-to network for developers looking to build. This includes EVM compatibility, interoperability features, Account Abstraction (ERC 4337), APIs for gasless transactions, smart contract wallets, and several other exciting features. All these make it easy for builders to migrate from mainnet to Base or build something afresh on the network.

Getting Started on Base

At its core, Base is an optimistic Ethereum layer 2 rollup, designed to offer a secure, cost-effective, and developer-friendly environment for building decentralized applications. The rollup is built on Optimism's OP Stack, inheriting its security and functionality and being a major partaker in the Superchain ecosystem. According to Coinbase, the development of Base is a major part of phase 4 of their Secret Master Plan which is targeted at creating an open financial system that increases economic freedom globally.

It’s important to note though that Base is still a work in progress. According to L2BEAT, the network is in Stage 0 of the decentralization process, lacking a proof system and some other features that make it remain on full training wheels. The network is currently incubated by the parent company Coinbase but has plans to ‘’progressively decentralize in the years ahead’’.

Check out their website to learn more about Base or get started with building on the network.

📈 Data

Total Value Locked on L2s drops back to $40 billion!

Top Ten Projects by Total Value Locked:

🔭 Project Watch

Arbitrum

Top Projects by TVL

Optimism

Top Projects by TVL

zkSync

Top Projects by TVL

zkEVM

Top Projects by TVL