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Circle Integrates zkSync for USD Coin

Circle, one of the largest stablecoin producers, has expanded its support for Ethereum’s layer-2 solution zkSync to include its own stablecoin, USD Coin (USDC). This integration expands the possibilities for Ethereum developers and users, letting them to benefit from zkSync’s zero-knowledge proofs and rollup technology. Increasing the Reach of USD Coin With the inclusion of zkSync, USDC is now available on 16 blockchains, including Ethereum, Solana, Base, Arbitrum, and more. This extension allows developers to build on a stable foundation provided by Circle, assuring the reliability and sustainability of their apps and services. Leveraging zkSync’s technology zkSync uses zero-knowledge proofs and rollups to execute transactions on layer 2 of the Ethereum network with record speed and low cost. Zero-knowledge proofs enable the evaluation of transaction integrity without disclosing the underlying data, guaranteeing privacy and security. Rollups combine many transactions from the Ethereum core layer into a single transaction, which increases scalability and lowers costs.The integration of zkSync with USDC offers a number of advantages for organisations and developers:1. Quick and low-cost transactions Using zkSync’s unique data compression mechanism, developers may enjoy low-cost transactions on the Ethereum network. This scaling solution greatly decreases petrol expenses and increases transaction throughput, making it more affordable to both individuals and companies.2. Improved security and privacy. zkSync’s zero-knowledge proofs give cryptographic assurances of transaction validity, assuring the transaction’s integrity. This increased security feature is critical for banking apps and DeFi protocols, where trust and privacy are essential.3. Native Account Abstraction Developers may use zkSync’s built-in account abstraction to perform social wallet recovery, subscription payments, and network fee payments in USDC. This functionality improves user experiences and broadens the use cases for USDC in the Ethereum ecosystem.Growing the zkSync ecosystemAs of April 9, 2024, the zkSync ecosystem has over 180 decentralised apps and 5.7 million unique active wallet addresses over the previous 30 days. This rising development and user community illustrates that layer-2 solutions like zkSync are becoming more popular and in demand.Circle’s commitment to Ethereum’s futureCircle’s integration of zkSync with USDC is consistent with its aim of increasing Ethereum’s throughput while maintaining its core ideals of freedom, self-sovereignty, and decentralisation at scale. Circle aspires to foster innovation and development within the Ethereum ecosystem by offering access to a reliable and scalable infrastructure for developers and companies alike.Conclusion Circle’s adoption of zkSync to its native stablecoin, USD Coin, is another key step towards the establishment of the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem. zkSync’s zero-knowledge proofs and rollup technologies provide developers with a strong platform for rapid, low-cost transactions and better security. This integration underlines Circle’s commitment to Ethereum’s future and its objective of boosting scalability while maintaining the network’s essential principles.

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Introducing Scroll Sessions: Native zkEVM Layer 2 for Ethereum

Scroll, a prominent player in the blockchain space, has recently announced the launch of Scroll Sessions, a native zkEVM Layer 2 solution designed specifically for the Ethereum network. This innovative technology aims to address the scalability and high transaction costs associated with the Ethereum blockchain.

With the rapid growth of decentralized applications (dApps) and the increasing popularity of the Ethereum network, scalability has become a pressing issue. The current limitations of Ethereum’s Layer 1 infrastructure have resulted in congestion and skyrocketing gas fees, hindering the seamless user experience and adoption of dApps.

Scroll Sessions introduces a unique approach to scalability by leveraging zero-knowledge proofs (zkSNARKs) technology. By incorporating zkEVM, a native Layer 2 solution, Scroll aims to significantly enhance Ethereum’s throughput, allowing for faster and more cost-effective transactions.

The integration of zkEVM enables the execution of Ethereum smart contracts off-chain, while maintaining the same level of security and trust as the Layer 1 Ethereum network. This off-chain execution reduces the computational burden on Ethereum’s mainnet, resulting in improved scalability and reduced gas fees for users.

One of the key advantages of Scroll Sessions is its compatibility with existing Ethereum smart contracts. Developers can seamlessly migrate their contracts to Scroll Sessions without the need for any modifications, ensuring a smooth transition to the Layer 2 solution.

In addition to enhanced scalability, Scroll Sessions also offers privacy features through zkSNARKs technology. This allows users to maintain the confidentiality of their transactions and data, further enhancing the overall security of the platform.

The introduction of Scroll Sessions has garnered significant attention within the blockchain community, as it has the potential to address the scalability challenges faced by Ethereum. By providing a seamless and cost-effective Layer 2 solution, Scroll aims to unlock the full potential of the Ethereum ecosystem, enabling greater adoption of dApps and facilitating a more efficient blockchain experience.

As the development of Layer 2 solutions continues to gain momentum, Scroll’s native zkEVM Layer 2 technology holds great promise for the future of Ethereum. With its focus on scalability, cost-effectiveness, and privacy, Scroll Sessions could pave the way for a more scalable and inclusive blockchain ecosystem.

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Polygon Surges by 2600% on a Year-to-Date Basis as Adoption of Layer 2 Accelerates

Matic Network provides scalable, secure, and instant Ethereum transactions designed to use Plasma side chains and a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network to solve the pain points of slow block confirmation and high gas fees, thereby simplifying the interaction between users and the decentralized world.

Due to the high transaction fees on the Ethereum network, more and more Ethereum-based projects are seeking network integration with faster transactions and lower fees to ensure to maintain a competitive advantage.

Therefore, the market is now paying increasing attention to layer 2 solutions, which can help Ethereum keep up with the competition as it continues to convert to proof-of-stake.

Polygon, a protocol focused on Ethereum expansion and infrastructure development, strives to expand the adoption of its Layer 2 proof-of-stake sidechain platform that runs alongside Ethereum’s main network. As one of the top choices of preferred L2 aggregator, Polygon (previously known as Matic Network) has been integrated with multiple Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token-related projects.

These include some Decentralized Exchanges (DEXes) such as SushiSwap (SUSHI) and Curve Finance (CRV), as well as non-fungible token (NFT) trading platforms such as OpenSea and Decentraland (MANA).

On March 31, the DeFi lending platform AAVE announced that it was exploring a new DeFi service with Polygon, and subsequently launched AAVE on the L2 solution to escape Ethereum’s high fees.

According to DeFi Pulse data, Polygon itself ranks as the 17th largest DeFi protocol, with a total locked value of $755.9 million. Polygon’s lock-up amount reached close to its highest value of $760.584 million on April 17.

Polygon (MATIC) Price Analysis

Source: MATIC/USDT Daily via TradingView

So far, Polygon’s rate of return is very impressive, rising by more than 2600% from $0.0178 to $0.468 since the beginning of 2021. At the time of writing, Polygon (MATIC) is trading at $0.468.

Polygon has regained its upward momentum. MATIC’s price has been particularly bullish, with the altcoin breaking through the previous consolidation phase.

Both the upward sloping moving average and the formed bullish crossover MACD index indicate that the bulls are currently dominating the market.

Relative Strength Index is stepping upward approaching the 70 mark of the overbought zone. This indicates that the altcoin may experience a wave of bullish momentum and surge.

If the bulls can push the decisive closing price above the resistance level of $0.4674 by the end of the day, then bullish momentum may prompt MATIC to hit its all-time high of $0.54.

Billionaire Entrepreneur Mark Cuban Invests in Polygon,Driving it to Surge by 12645% on a Year-to-Date Basis

Mark Cuban, an American billionaire entrepreneur, expressed his support for the Polygon network.

Polygon’s official Twitter announced Wednesday that polygon had been successfully listed on the Mark Cuban Companies website as one of his holdings.

The announcement seems to endorse Mark Cuban’s investment portfolio based on Polygon, a protocol that focused on Ethereum expansion and infrastructure development, strives to expand the adoption of its Layer 2 proof-of-stake sidechain platform.

Formerly known as MATIC, Polygon provides scalable, secure, and instant Ethereum transactions designed to use Plasma side chains and a Proof-of-Stake (PoS) network to solve the pain points of slow block confirmation and high gas fees, thereby simplifying the interaction between users and the decentralized world.

Polygon has been integrated with multiple Decentralized Finance (DeFi) and non-fungible token (NFT) related projects.

Mark Cuban also revealed that Polygon would also be integrated into Lazy.com, a Cuban portfolio platform focused on non-fungible tokens, to ensure a competitive advantage with faster transactions and lower fees to be maintained.

Polygon’s token MATIC recently surged by 2600% on a year-to-date basis as the adoption of Layer 2 accelerates before April 24.

With the endorsement of billionaire Mark Cuban, Matic has increased by 39.18% in the past 24 hours, according to Coinmarketcap. The MATIC token was trading at $2.27, with a total increase of 12,645% since the beginning of 2021 of around $0.01781.

Source:DEFI PULSE

According to DeFi Pulse data, Polygon itself ranks as the 4th largest DeFi protocol (previously ranked 17th), with a total locked value(TVL) of $7.127 billion, reaching its highest value of TVL.

Ethereum Layer 2 Startup Optimism Raises $150m in Series B Round

Ethereum scaling startup Optimism has secured a $150 million Series B round, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm.

After this financing, the company was valued at $1.65 billion.

Since NFT and Defi products are closely linked to the Ethereum network, the Ethereum network has found transactions becomes slow and expensive for paying gas fees, pushing drive users to Layer 2 look for solutions like Optimism.

Layer 2 (L2) solutions are reported to have saved users of the Ethereum network more than $1 billion in gas fees. This “Total value locked” (TVL) on the L2 platform has exploded over the past year, with about $5.75 billion currently held on these blockchains, according to tracker L2Beat.

Optimism CEO Jinglan Wang said:

“We made a commitment to the public that we would not take profit from operating centralized parts of the system, so we wanted to remove the financial incentive for ourselves to remain centralized. While we are making revenue, we’re giving all of that revenue back toward funding public goods on Ethereum … We don’t just want to say that we want to be decentralized, we also want to show the community that we’re setting up our own incentives to be compatible with that.”

As reported by blockchain.News on September 1, Ethereum Layer-2 Off-chain Labs raised $120 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in its Series B financing, aiming to expand Ethereum contracts to meet the growing demand for Ethereum transactions.

Ethereum Layer 2 Boba Network Raises $45M in Series A Funding

Ethereum Layer 2 project Boba Network has raised $45 million in its Series A funding round.

Hack VC and Shima Capital are the most recent investors. Other investors include Dreamers VC led by American actor Will Smith, LD Capital, investment fund Sanctor Capital and cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com, former football quarterback Joe Montana and Crypto funds Hypersphere and Infinite Capital among others.

The financing brings Boba’s valuation to $1.5 billion.

The company said the funds raised will be used to expand Web3 offerings and invest in projects built on its ecosystem.

Boba Network is an EVM-equivalent hybrid computing platform built on an optimistic rollup architecture, helping developers build more feature-rich apps by enabling smart contracts to leverage complex off-chain computations or bring in off-chain data.

Boba offers one of the easiest to use blockchain platforms for end-users through their multi-token on-ramp, fast exit, and NFT bridge.

Boba Network was created by the Enya team, a core contributor to the OMG Foundation. It adopts the Optimistic Rollup Ethereum layer 2 expansion scheme, while projects using the same technical scheme include Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.

KyberSwap announces first ever $ARB token liquidity pools, liquidity mining and trading campaigns on Arbitrum

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 22nd March, 2023, Chainwire

Since launching in 2021, Arbitrum has emerged as one of the most promising Layer 2 solutions, with its ability to scale Ethereum and enable faster and cheaper transactions.

On March 16, Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution Arbitrum announced plans to distribute a new governance token, $ARB, to its eligible Arbitrum ecosystem users as part of its transition, noting that the project is “leading the way as the first L2 to launch self-executing governance.”

This airdrop, estimated to go live on 23 March, is set to be one of the biggest airdrop in crypto history.

KyberSwap was among the protocols whose users bridged to Arbitrum and conducted swaps on the platform, thereby becoming eligible for the $ARB Airdrop.

KyberSwap, a leading decentralized exchange (DEX) aggregator and liquidity platform, will launch the first-ever $ARB token liquidity pools, liquidity mining, and trading campaigns on the Arbitrum Chain. These moves mark significant steps forward for KyberSwap, as it will assist to catalyse significant liquidity inflows, thus increasing TVL and provide more earning opportunities in the rapidly growing Arbitrum ecosystem.

With the launch of the $ARB liquidity pools, KyberSwap users will now have access to more trading pairs and liquidity options. Liquidity providers will also have more opportunities to earn fees and rewards by adding liquidity to the $ARB pools and participating in liquidity mining programs by KyberSwap.

The following ARB pools will be eligible for liquidity mining rewards:

Token Pairs

ARB-ETH (2%)
Apr ARB-ETH (5%)
ARB-USDT (2%)
ARB-USDT (2%)
ARB-KNC (5%)

An estimated total of 70,000 KNC has been allocated as reward incentives.

*Incentives may continue after the designation duration is over; to be confirmed at a later date.

Greater Flexibility with new Fee Tiers

With these highly anticipated yield farms, KyberSwap is introducing new 2% and 5% fee tiers, which exceeds their current highest offering of 1%. These new fee tiers provide opportunities for $ARB farmers to benefit from the anticipated high volatility and trading volume, during the price discovery phase after the airdrop. These pools offer superior returns in addition to the farming rewards, and as a liquidity protocol that has been seamlessly integrated by multiple DEXs and aggregators, KyberSwap is well poised to serve the trading needs of the entire chain not found with other competitors.

“We are excited to launch the first ever $ARB liquidity mining pools,” said Victor Tran, CEO and Co-founder of KyberSwap. “These farms will mark the beginning of an extensive Arbitrum-centered campaign KyberSwap has planned, and we will announce more rewards and activities soon for both LPs and traders. Additionally, traders can set their prices to purchase or sell $ARB with our limit order function and swap at the optimised rates with our aggregator.”

Other Arbitrum Yield Farms on KyberSwap

Apart from the upcoming ARB farms, there are other ongoing Arbitrum-based yield farms on kyberswap.com:

Depending on the success of $ARB trading volume, the KyberSwap team is planning additional rewards post-launch for traders and liquidity providers which may include $ARB and $KNC airdrops, and commemorative NFT rewards.

According to Nansen, Arbitrum was one of the fastest-growing blockchain in 2022 with more than $1.1 billion locked in its ecosystem and a rapid increase in transactional volume, this layer-two scaling solution gained massive traction during the year.

*Arbitrum Active Addresses/Transactions

The $ARB token liquidity pools, liquidity mining, and trading campaigns are set to go live on KyberSwap soon, with further details and instructions to be provided on KyberSwap’s Twitter and on kyberswap.com.

About KyberSwap

Kyber Network is building a world to make DeFi accessible, safe and rewarding for users. Their flagship product, KyberSwap, is a next-gen DEX aggregator providing optimised rates for traders and returns for liquidity providers in DeFi.

For liquidity providers, KyberSwap has a suite of capital-efficient protocols designed to optimize rewards. KyberSwap Classic’s protocol is DeFi’s first market maker protocol that dynamically adjusts LP fees based on market conditions, while KyberSwap Elastic is a tick-based AMM with concentrated liquidity, customizable fee tiers, reinvestment curve and other advanced features specially designed to give LPs the flexibility and tools to take your earning strategy to the next level without compromising on security.

KyberSwap powers 100+ integrated projects and has facilitated over US$15 billion worth of transactions for thousands of users since its inception.

Currently deployed on 13 chains, including Ethereum, Polygon, BNB, Avalanche, Fantom, Cronos, Arbitrum, BitTorrent, Velas, Aurora, Oasis, Optimism and Solana, KyberSwap aggregates liquidity from over 80 DEXs to give users the best rates possible for their swaps.

Contact

Marketing SpecialistTania HayKyberSwaptania@kyber.network

DeFi Giants Launch on Ethereum Layer 2 zkSync Era

After four years in development, the Ethereum layer 2 scaling network, zkSync Era, has opened to users in alpha, enabling faster and cheaper transactions. Between 32 to 50 projects, including some of the biggest names in decentralized finance such as Uniswap, Sushi, Maker, and Curve, are set to go live on March 24 or over the weekend.

ZkSync Era is the first Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible zk-Rollup to launch on mainnet, allowing most Ethereum DApps to simply port over with very few changes. The network can provide scaling “orders of magnitude” greater than Ethereum’s current 10 to 12 transactions per second (TPS), offering “tens of TPS” initially and scaling up as demand requires.

The project launched its “fair onboarding alpha” on Feb. 17, allowing projects to port over and test out security and optimizations. Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync Era, said it spent $3.8 million on security testing, seven independent security audits, and a bug bounty program to reduce the risk of any incidents.

Zk-Rollups, which include zkSync, Scroll, and solutions from Polygon, StarkWare, and Consensys, compute transactions away from the Ethereum blockchain while providing a tiny cryptographic proof that is written as a single transaction back on Ethereum showing that a bundle of other transactions has been carried out correctly. ZkSync also employs recursion, which generates a proof showing a batch of other proofs (each representing many transactions) have been carried out.

Zk-Rollups can enable virtually instant withdrawals, giving them an advantage over optimistic-rollup layer 2s such as Optimism, where withdrawals take a week. However, zkSync Era will impose a 24-hour waiting period initially as a security precaution.

ZkSync Era has also enabled native account abstraction, meaning every account in the network is a “smart account” that can utilize two-factor authentication (2FA), social recovery, autopay transactions, and more via smart contract wallet providers like Argent.

The network will not be fully decentralized on launch, so the team can implement fast fixes for any security or technical issues. However, a time lock will later be implemented so that the Security Council and community can sign off on decisions. Like competitor StarkWare, zkSync relies on a centralized sequencer and prover, which are faster, but provide a centralized point of failure.

Running a prover requires the purchase of expensive hardware or renting cloud capacity at $10,000 a month, which makes decentralizing that aspect of the network tricker. A new proof system is already being developed that substantially reduces hardware requirements and should be available on mainnet this year.

Overall, zkSync Era represents an important step forward for Ethereum, which has been grappling with scaling issues for years. The network’s launch on mainnet has the potential to significantly reduce gas fees and enable faster and more efficient transactions, benefiting not only DeFi projects but also other Ethereum-based applications.

Ethereum Layer 2s See Surge in Popularity in Q1 2023

Ethereum layer 2 networks, including Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon, saw a surge in popularity in Q1 2023, according to a report from Web3 development platform Alchemy. The report, titled “Web3 Development Report,” cites data from Dune Analytics and shows that Ethereum users bridged over $635,000 worth of crypto assets to these networks from January to March, a significant increase of 44% over the fourth quarter of 2022 and 518% over the first quarter of 2022.

The growth in bridged assets may have been driven by successful airdrops from Optimism and Arbitrum in Q1 2023, as suggested by the Alchemy report. Additionally, layer 2s saw greater activity from developers, with the deployment of smart contracts related to layer 2s increasing by 160% compared to Q1 2022, despite a 30% decrease from Q4 2022.

Layer 2s have been offered as a solution to Ethereum’s scalability problem, which has been causing high gas fees since as early as 2020. By enabling more transactions to be processed off the main Ethereum network, layer 2s can significantly reduce the fees required to interact with the blockchain. As a result, users are increasingly turning to these new scalability solutions.

This trend is reflected in the broader Ethereum ecosystem, with increased developer interest observed in Q1 2023. According to the Alchemy report, Ethereum software development kits (SDKs) such as Ethers.js, Web3.js, Hardhat, and Web3.py were downloaded 1.9 million times in the first quarter of 2023, an 8% increase from Q1 2022. Downloads of the MetaMask SDK, a tool used to develop apps that can interact with Ethereum wallet MetaMask, also increased in each month of the first quarter.

The crypto industry is coming off the back of a steep downturn in trading volume and crypto prices during 2022, with scandals like the UST depegging and FTX collapse causing many investors to shy away. However, despite this negative sentiment, users still flocked to these new scalability solutions.

While layer 2s have proven to be a useful tool for improving Ethereum’s scalability, some experts have argued that sharding the Ethereum network will also help to cut down on gas fees. Sharding involves breaking up the Ethereum network into smaller, more manageable pieces, allowing for more parallel processing of transactions. Ultimately, a combination of solutions will likely be necessary to address Ethereum’s scalability challenges and keep up with growing demand.

Polygon(Matic) to Slash zkEVM Transaction Fees by 20%

Polygon, the scalable Ethereum layer-2 solution, has announced its intent to optimize its zkEVM (Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) in the coming weeks. These enhancements are predicted to decrease transaction fees by around 20%, according to the company’s official Twitter account. Interestingly, these improvements will be achieved without the need for any data compression techniques.

Transaction fees within the Polygon zkEVM serve to cover the costs associated with data availability and posting proof to the Ethereum network. Each transaction that gets processed requires the publication of state data. Additionally, fees cover the operational costs of running the servers that generate the proofs. Currently, around 80% of a transaction fee is dedicated to data availability, a resource that is not currently being compressed.

In a roadmap soon to be released, Polygon will detail upcoming upgrades on data compression, as well as the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844. These developments are expected to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of transactions on the platform.

The company also shared advice on how users can optimize fees in the current ecosystem. One major suggestion is to time on-network transactions to periods when Ethereum is the cheapest, thus minimizing the L1 interaction cost.

Interestingly, Polygon advises users to conduct transactions when network activity on zkEVM is high. This approach may seem counterintuitive, but due to the cost of proof generation being distributed across all transactions, fees on a rollup decrease as activity increases.

For users wishing to bridge assets from Ethereum, the fees can be notably high. However, alternatives do exist. Transak, for example, can transfer tokens directly to the layer-2 solution, bypassing Mainnet fees completely.

Moreover, users with assets on a different blockchain can utilize a third-party bridge instead of first bridging to the Mainnet. For PoS (Proof of Stake) to Polygon zkEVM, LayerSwap offers a solution. For other layer-2 solutions to Polygon zkEVM, users can consider options like Orbiter Finance and Multichain.

The forthcoming updates, along with the existing strategies for optimizing transaction fees, point towards Polygon’s ongoing commitment to enhancing user experience and making blockchain technology more accessible and cost-effective.