DeFi Developer News 3/11-3/16: Dencun is Live, Summer of Protocols, Reth v0.2.0-beta.1

Grants & Accelerators

• The 2024 Summer of Protocols Call for Applications is now live! The program comprises three tracks: Protocol Improvement Grants, Protocol PILL challenge, and Partner Program
• Starknet announces the Gaming Commitee. Chaired by six gaming experts, the Committee's mandate is to analyze, strategize, and recommend programs to expand Starknet's gaming ecosystem.
• The Ethereum Foundation is sponsoring a 4844 data analysis and visualization blog post challenge.

Research 🧑‍🔬

• David Crapis publishes "The Internet of Agents", on the integration of blockchain with AI.
• ross introduces Lex Curia, a proposed foundation for a blockchain legal layer.

Tooling 🛠

Ethereum

• Matt Solomon of OPLabs announces forge-std v1.8.0 is released, with lots of great new features
• ethernaut-cli alpha is out, a "swiss army knife" for ethereum hackers. check it out.
• micro-eth-signer 0.8 with support for dencun EIP4844 is out. micro-eth-signer is an alternative to ethers and viem when you only need the basics.
• Jesse Raymond releases gast, an Ethereum and L2 transaction toolkig written in Go.
• Cifryn Aderyn is a rust based solidity static analyzer.
• RISC Zero releases v0.21 of the RISC Zero zkVM with Poseidon2 hash functions and other improvements.
• reth beta.2 is out, with a critical fix and ETL configuration improvements.
• Remix releases v0.45.0 with features including pinning contract, saved VM state and fetching verified contracts from Blockscout.
  

L2s

• Ditto is an open source Library to test and benchmark Starknet full nodes.
• Bantg made a looper contract for Yes Money. It can also unwind BaselinMarkets credit accounts.
• OpenZeppelin releases v.10.0 of cairo-contract for secure smart contract development written in Cairo for Starknet.

Solana

• Mike MacCana from Solana Foundation announces new release of the Solana helpers library.

Education/Mechanism 🧑‍🏫

• Worms gives tips to DeFi projects on how to create and maintain good documentation easily.
• bytes032.xyz explains how to "use vm.etch as your debugging tool in three simple steps.
• pashov explains how evm.codes has all opcodes, gas costs, stack i/o's explained in great detail plus a playground to test them.
• Miles Jennings explains Wyoming's DUNA legal structure for DAOs and why US Companies should consider it.
• jtriley explains 3 takeaways from category theory that developers can use in rust.

Infrastructure 🏗

Ethereum

• Growthepie created an EIP 4844 transaction fee tracker
• Blobscan is live. Explore blobs or fetch historical data.
• Ethernow has a realtime view of the blob market
• Sigma Prime releases a new version of Lighthouse. This is a high priority release including fixes for networking issues. This release and v5.0.0 are Deneb compatible.
• Reth v0.2.0-beta.1 is out. This is the first Beta release of Reth .
• Paritosh reminds developers to switch to new testnets instead of Goerli.
• Lodestar releases an optimization update. v.1.17.0 is recommended, but not required for Deneb.
• Sedge v1.3.2 is Dencun ready – a node setup tool from Nethermind.
• Grandine is out, a rust based Ethereum consensus client that focuses on being fast and lightweight.

L2s

• Gnosis Chain (an Ethereum sidechain) frontruns Mainnet by deploying Dencun Early
• Blast stopped producing blocks after Dencun.
• Arbitrum now has lower fees.
• Starknet announces blobs have arrived
• Zksync announces it is fully 4844 compatible and blob ready from day 0.
• Celenium v1.8 is here, with a more "immersive staking experience" and detailed validator status.
• Optimism releases weekly roundup featuring Snap Sync, EIP-4844, etc.
• OP Sepolia will be upgraded to support the feature-complete version of OP Stack fault proofs on March 19.
• Swell (Ethereum staking protocol) introduces zkEVM, powered by Polygon and collaborated with AltLayer and EigenLayer.

Bitcoin

• Rollkit announces sovereign rollups on Bitcoin

Security 👾

• Findaudit v1.0 is out, the first permissionless P2p Security audit marketplace.
• Jeff Security shares Common Fork Vulnerabilities in Compound, Uniswap v2, Balancer, Curve, and Aave
• Ethernaut CTF 2024 took place on Mar 16-17, with 821 teams trying to solve 9 challenges.

Bug Bounties 🐞

• ZestProtocol is a Bitcoin Lending protocol with bounties up to $100,000
• NFTX - an NFT Fungible ERC20 project, offers a bounty up to $150k
• Hourglass, a protocol designed to facilitate large chain-agnostic stable swaps, offers bounties up to $5000

Product Launches

• FRAX stablecoin is live on Near Protocol via Ref Finance and Burrow through FraxFerry and the Rainbow Bridge. More Frax assets including sFRAX, sfrxETH, FXS, etc. will be available on Near.
• Ethet.fi weETH is live on Mode L2. EtherFi users can now bridge weETH to Mode and earn Mode Points on top of their Staking Yield + Eigenlayer Points + EtherFi Points.
• Renzo is live on Linea L2. Renzo users can restake ETH directly on Linea with $ezETH as a native asset.
• Nostra launched Staked STRK. Users can now stake STRK for nstSTRK and use nstSTRK in Nostra for a 10X boost in Nostra Points Program.
• Vega Protocol launched the first futures market for Points, with the first derivatives markets for EigenLayer points available.
• Sturdy launched Sturdy Subnet on Bittensor's testnet. Sturdy Subnet is a Bittensor subnetwork that enables miners to propose where assets should be allocated to maximize yields. The best allocations are then used by third-party applications to move real assets on the Ethereum network.
• Curve launched the front end for Curve Lend (aka Llama Lend), Curve’s isolated lending product. Curve is redeploying to solve a borrow rate update issue, and will update UI soon.
• Blitz, an orderbook DEX for spot and futures trading, is live on Blast L2. Blitz is the first cross-chain Vertex Edge instance (deployment of Vertex DEX) on Blast.
• Suilend, a sister project to the Solana-based lending project Solend, is live on Sui and accessible for Beta Pass holders. Sui incentives are also live.
• CyberConnect launched Cyber L2, a social layer 2 with restaking, powered by EigenLayer and Optimism. Cyber Staking is also live, users can stake CYBER to earn Season 2 Rewards.
• Zunami, an issuer of aggregated stablecoins, launches V2 and introduces zunUSD. zunUSD is an aggregated USD backed by crvUSD, USDT, and USDC.

DeFi Dev News is supported by ACI. If you are interesting in public goods funding or sponsoring a technical newsletter with good developer reach, please reach out to support@todayindefi.com