L2 Planet Issue #29
In this Issue of L2 Planet, we focused on the developments regarding Arbitrum, Risc Zero, Kroma, Manta, Aztec, Optimism, Scroll, and Chainway Ecosystem.
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Arbitrum Stylus
Imagine you are able to write smart contracts with traditional programming languages like Rust, C, and C++. It is now possible with Arbitrum’s recently introduced feature, Stylus. So, what is the Stylus and why is it important?
Today, smart contracts are written by Solidity and Vyper in EVM-based chains. While there are thousands of Solidity developers worldwide, there are millions of Rust and C++ developers. We need to onboard the next million developers for the next billions of users. That is the problem Stylus will solve. It allows developers to write smart contracts in Solidity, Vyper, Rust, C, and C++ without losing EVM compatibility. Recently, Arbitrum released the code of Stylus and its public testnet. Woohoo!
Wanna learn more about Stylus? Check out the Arbitrum Stylus presentation at Arbitrum Day, Paris! You can find it in the spectating corner.
What else happened in the last two weeks in the Arbitrum ecosystem?
Round 2 of the Arbitrum Security Council elections is now live on Tally!
EZ_swap, the first NFT DEX protocol focusing on gaming NFT trades, is live on Arbitrum.
Superposition, the DeFi-native Layer-3 on Arbitrum, has announced.
The Arbitrum Odyssey: Reignited has resumed on October 16th with week 2.
Arbitrum on Gitcoin Grant Funding Fest statics is published.
Arbitrum hosting Arbitrum Day in Istanbul next month during Devconnect.
Zeth
Risc Zero released Zeth, an open-source ZK block prover for Ethereum built on the Risc Zero zkVM.
Zeth makes it possible to prove that a given Ethereum block is valid without relying on the validator or sync committees. Zeth is open-source and based on revm, developers are free to modify and use it in their own projects. Zeth has been verified to work on several real-world blocks from the Ethereum mainnet and passes all relevant tests from the official Ethereum testsuite.
Risc Zero team wrote Zeth for two reasons:
To make it easier for other teams to build their own ZK-powered infra: ZK rollups, zkEVMs, ZK light clients, ZK bridges, etc.
To investigate the performance of EVM in their zkVM, specifically for Ethereum-related tasks.
We are curious about which team will decide to use Zeth for the first time. For more details about Zeth, check the blog post.
Kroma
on September 6, a new universal general-purpose Layer-2 solution, Kroma, hits the mainnet!
Kroma is not like other Layer-2 solutions. It is the first OP Stack rollup with active ZK fault proofs! Kroma aims to be EVM-equivalent zkRollup when ZK Proof generation becomes more cost-efficient and faster.
Manta Pacific
And another Layer-2 solution, Manta Pacific, was born on September 12.
Manta Pacific is an optimistic rollup that uses OP Stack and empowers EVM-native zero-knowledge (ZK) applications and general dapps with a scalable, cost-effective environment to deploy simply using Solidity. During Mainnet Alpha, Manta Pacific will leverage Ethereum for data availability (DA). After Celestia’s mainnet launch, Manta Pacific plans to shift to take advantage of modular DA through Celestia.
Since the mainnet launch, over 12k wallets created, 140k+ blocks generated, and 165+ total transactions executed. Welcome to the family Manta Pacific!
Aztec Sandbox
Aztec Network has announced Aztec Sandbox, a local developer testnet for smart contract privacy.
Aztec Sandbox provides developers with a fast and lightweight local Aztec node, with features similar to Ethereum’s Ganache or Anvil local node packages.
Besides the local node testing environment, the Sandbox includes powerful tools and frameworks such as Aztec node, execution environment, Aztec.nr, Aztec.js, and Aztec CLI.
The process of downloading the Sandbox, installing client libraries, and using it to deploy a private token contract on a local Aztec node takes less than 10 minutes. For more details please read the blog post.
What else happened in the last two weeks in the Aztec ecosystem?
Optimism
on September 18, Optimism has announced OP airdrop #3. 19M OP tokens were allocated to over 31k unique addresses to reward positive-sum governance participation in the Collective.
Airdrop #3 is not a claim-based airdrop, tokens are distributed directly to eligible wallets. Airdrop #3 is being directly disbursed to addresses that have delegated the voting power of their OP tokens between January 20th - July 20th of 2023. On top of the baseline reward for delegation, addresses receive a 2x bonus if they have delegated to an active voter – someone who has participated in an on-chain vote in Optimism governance.
What about fault proofs? The OP Stack’s first fault-proof system is live as an alpha on OP Goerli Testnet! This system leverages the power of OP Stack’s modular design to lay the foundation to build out a multi-proof dispute system that can include ZK proofs. Many teams work on different implementations in order to enable fault-proof systems. These implementations are:
A RISC-V FPVM “Asterisc” written in Go by protolambda
A rust FP-program by contributors from Base&OP Labs, with support from the reth team at Paradigm
A rust ZK-program is being built by RiscZero
A MIPS zkVM is being built by O1 Labs
A Rust implementation of the MIPS32 FPVM by vex.
That’s not all! Retro Public Goods Funding Round 3 applications are started and open until October 23. What is the RPGF and why is it important?
RPGF is a mechanism that rewards past positive impact on the Optimism and Optimism Collective. Builders, artists, creators, and educators have a chance to earn OP tokens for their contribution and impact to Optimism Collective. In this round 30M OP is allocated for contributors. As one of the RPGF2 fund recipients, L2 Planet will be attending this round too.
What else happened in the last two weeks in the Optimism ecosystem?
Farcaster, a decentralized social network, is now open and available for everyone!
Test in Prod joined the Optimism Collective as a technical contributor. Test in Prod became the third core team contributing to the development of the OP Stack.
Beam is live on OP Mainnet, enabling users to go from crypto wallet to bank account in minutes.
Nethermind’s alt-client is synced with OP Mainnet and Base. This client will be the fourth client in the Optimism ecosystem.
Supra Oracle has launched their Verifiable Random Function (VRF) on OP Mainnet, providing provably fair random number generation for a variety of use cases.
Chainlink’s Automation 2.0 is live on OP Mainnet, enabling Optimism developers to execute verifiable computation off-chain with reduced gas costs, facilitating the creation of more advanced on-chain applications.
Scroll
The long wait is over! Scroll mainnet is live!
Scroll is a native zkEVM Layer-2 solution. It comes with bytecode-level compatibility. So, there is no need to rewrite contracts to deploy on Scroll mainnet. Developers can migrate their apps without any change.
According to the L2 Beat data, after the mainnet launch, Scroll’s TVL reached $4.88M.
Chainway’s Bitcoin DA Adapter
Rollups on Bitcoin? Why not? Several teams working on building Rollups on Bitcoin. Chainway, a venture builder organization, reached a significant milestone!
Chainway, announced and open-sourced its freshly developed BitcoinDA, a Data Availability Adapter which allows Sovereign SDK to be compatible with Bitcoin. Bitcoin DA consists of two trait implementations: DaVerifier and DaService. You can find more info here.
It looks like we will see sovereign Rollups that use Bitcoin as a Data Availability Layer and are secured by Bitcoin. Modular future is bright anon!
Spectating Corner
That’s all from L2 Planet for now, hope to see you in 15 days :)