DeFi Developer News 2/5-9: Tea Protocol OSS Grants, ETHTaipei tickets live, Geth supports Cancun
Grants 💰
- Tea Protocol announces $250K in grants ahead of the launch of the protocol.
- Uniswap Foundation introduced a Reimagined Grants Strategy, with three major changes: Bigger, Longer-Term Initiatives, Stakeholder-Focused, and A Metrics-Driven Future.
- Ethereum Academic Grants are live. Ethereum Foundation is supporting Ethereum-related academic work across a variety of domains, from p2p networking to humanities. Submissions due by March 5, 2024.
Hackathons & Events 🧑💻
- ETHTaipei conference ticket sales are live on Moongate. ETHTaipei is an Ethereum-focused, 2-day event from March 21-22 and hackathon 22-24 covering topics from protocol, MEV, AA to DeFi, security, and L2s.
- The Ethereum Protocol Fellowship Study Group is a 10 week study group meant to be a precursor to the Ethereum Protocol Fellowship. The study group covers all parts of the Ethereum stack & roadmap.
- Circle announces it has partnered with Codebase, an accelerator program for Avalanche. Submissions are due by Feb 12th.
- Avalanche Summit is going to Buenos Aires in October 2024. Speaker and sponsorship applications are now open.
- Solana is announcing a Request for Proposals for, Pre-deployment program analysis, Post Deployment Monitoring tooling, and Program Verification. Deadline Feb 29, 2024
Research 🧑🔬
- Ingonyama released a paper exploring sum-check protocols from the point of view of parallelizable computation in devices such as GPUs
- Brendan Farmer, the co-founder of Polygon, wrote a post to go deeper into what the Aggregated Blockchains Thesis means.
- Tim Robinson, the head of research at BlueYard Capital, suggested various ways chains and wallets can solve liquidity fragmentation issues in Ethereum.
- Toni Wahrstätter, a researcher at the Ethereum Foundation, shared the latest research on adjusting the block gas limit, exploring paths to reduce the maximum block size, balance calldata pricing, and ultimately raising the block gas limit.
- Mike Neuder presents a minimal view of what a potential spec for EIP-7547 could look like
- Donoh from L2Beat shares thoughts on Universal Plasma.
Infrastructure 🏗
Ethereum
- Dencun is live on Holesky
- Geth v1.13.12 is out, supporting Cancun(the execution layer of Dencun), which is estimated to go live March 13, 2024
- Ethereum Attestation Service is now available on Arbitrum Nova.
- A new Verkle testnet - kaustinen was rebooted with many fixes and a few new features.
- Reth alpha.17 is out. This release includes critical fixes ahead of Dencun, sidechain root validation, networking improvements, and more. Upgrade is mandatory for Holesky node operators.
L2s
- Arbitrum AIP: ArbOS Version 20 “Atlas” is now in voting stage. This AIP proposes several improvements to Arbitrum, including the capability to support Dencun (EIP-4844).
- Scroll initiated a protocol upgrade on Feb 7 which will be subject to a two time time lock and executed on February 21st. Bridging costs will be reduced 50%.
- EigenDA now works with Arbitrum Orbit. Rollup teams can now use EigenDA to scale Orbit chains beyond the Ethereum block size limit without sacrificing decentralization.
- Fluent, a zkWasm L2, upgraded its private testnet to include 100% EVM compatiblity and an improved Rust SDK
- L2Beat released a new version of its StarkEx explorer
- RIP-7212 is live on Polygon's Mumbai testnet.
- Succinct Network is building a decentralized prover network
- Layer N introduces Layer N StakeNet, a proposed blockchain aiming to provide the performance of modular rollups while retaining the benefits of the monolithic blockchains.
- Mev.io introduces mevAuction, a new system to auction blockspace that allows, for multiple-winners in the same block.
Bitcoin
- Citrea introduces "Bitcoin’s First ZK Rollup". Citrea aims to scaling Bitcoin with zero-knowledge proofs, ensuring on-chain verifiability and data availability within the Bitcoin network
Solana
- Neon EVM Mainnet v1.4.13 release contains key upgrades and important bug fixes.
- deBridge announces IaaS is live - "a turnkey solution for EVM and SVM cross-chain interoperabiltiy"
Avalanche
- Avalanche VP of Engineering Patrick O'Grady gave a live stream demo on HyperSDK Vryx, a fortified decoupled state machine replication (DSMR) construction that will be employed by HyperSDK.
Data Availability
- Celestia introduces the Celestia Foundation validator delegation program. The program’s main goal is to implement a transparent delegation process to support the resilience and high uptime of Mainnet Beta.
Tooling 🛠
Solana
- Solana Web Faucet is a public web faucet for devnet SOL with higher rate limits than the solana airdrop command.
- Independent developer Ram introduced QuickDapp, a highly opinionated web3 dapp starter template that enables you to build AND deploy web3 dapps quickly into production.
Security 👾
- Block production on Solana Mainnet-Beta was halted at approximately 10:00 UTC on 6 February 2024. Solana mainnet had resumed at 14:57 UTC on Feb 6, following a successful upgrade to v1.17.20 and a restart of the cluster by validator operators.
- Solana's Anza team has written a post-mortem report for its outage on 2-06-2024.
Education 🧑🏫
Ethereum
- remyroy.eth, an EthStaker contributor, wrote a guide on how to migrate to a larger disk for an Ethereum validator.
- cts, co-founder of zellic, published a thread on what Multi Party Computation is and how to build an implementation of it.
- Mike Neuder wrote about ePBS
- Dedaub expains how to extract storage contents for a contract "over 100 times faster"
Bug Bounties 🐞
- Core DAO, powered by Satoshi Plus consensus, is the result of the dialectical synthesis of Bitcoin and Ethereum.
- Blockchain: 10,000-500,000
- Smart Contract: 10,000-500,000
- Websites: 5,000-200,000
- Stacking DAO provides liquid staking on Stacks. stSTX is the most integrated liquid stacking token in the Stacks ecosystem.
- Smart Contract: 1,000-100,000
- Websites: 5,000-25,000
- Darwinia Network operates as a community-managed technology and service provider, concentrating on powering the cross-chain functionalities of decentralized apps.
- Smart Contract: 1,000-10,000
Product Launches 🚀
- Frax Finance launched the Fraxtal testnet and mainnet for select launch partners, and normal users can connect to the chain in the next few days.
- Convergence, a Convex-like rewards-boosting protocol, is live on mainnet. Convergence initially supports StakeDAO, users can deposit Stake DAO’s liquid locker tokens (sdTKNs) and LP tokens (LPs) into Convergence to claim boosted rewards.
- SmolRefuel, launched by Defi Llama developer 0xngm, is a tool that uses permits to do token swaps that require no initial ETH, so users can get their first ETH on a new chain.
- FloorDAO, an NFT sweeping protocol, launched V2. V2 allows users to sweep any collection with 15+ ETH.
- Avantis, a perp DEX for crypto, forex, and metals, launches beta on Base L2. Users can now trade assets or provide liquidity with leverage with soft-locking.
- Dymension, a “RollApps” L1 blockchain launches its mainnet. Dymension allows developers to deploy app chains and uses Cosmos tech and the IBC to connect with other chains.
- Synonym Finance, a cross-chain lending platform powered by Wormhole and Circle CCTP, launched on mainnet with SYNO incentives live.
- Restake Finance, a modular liquid restaking protocol, is live on EigenLayer with 3 days of boosted RSTK rewards.
- Plume Network, a modular RWA L2, is now live on Arbitrum Orbit, leveraging the Arbitrum Nitro tech stack.
- Origin Protocol launched Prime Staked ETH ($primeETH). Users can now restake ETH and earn LST yield, EigenLayer Points, and Experience Points. OETH deposits will receive an additional 2x bonus on their XP.
- StakeEase, a restaking aggregator, launched on mainnet on Feb 5th. StakeEase allows users to stake across platforms and chains with a lower gas cost, and earn SEP tokens.
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