Weekly Project Updates: Arbitrum Initiates Short-Term Incentive Program Proposal, Solana Hosts Million-Dollar Hackathon, etc

Sep 09, 2023

1. Ethereum’s Weekly Summary

a. Vitalik: Centralization of Nodes Is Among Ethereum’s Foremost Challenges link

On September 5th, according to Cointelegraph, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated during a blockchain event in South Korea that node centralization is one of the major challenges facing the Ethereum network. Currently, most Ethereum nodes are run through centralized services such as Amazon Web Services, which poses a risk of centralization. Vitalik emphasized that reducing and simplifying the cost of running nodes is key to addressing this issue, with statelessness playing a crucial role. He estimated that completely solving this technical problem might take up to 20 years.

b. Christine Kim’s Summary of the 117th Ethereum Consensus Layer Core Developer Meeting (ACDC) link

On September 8th, according to Christine Kim’s summary of the 117th Ethereum Consensus Layer Core Developers Meeting (ACDC), the meeting primarily revolved around the following topics: Devnet Testing Progress (Devnet-8 testing is progressing well, and the launch of Devnet-9 has been postponed from the originally scheduled September 12th to the 19th). Decision on EIP-4844 Blob Parameters (To better understand the impact of blobs on block propagation, developers conducted experiments and found that larger blocks lead to increased delays. Blocks ranging from 64 to 128 KB can reach 80% of nodes within 2 seconds of slot initiation. Blocks exceeding 250 KB take an average of 2 seconds longer to propagate. As a result, developers are considering increasing the “target blob limit” and “maximum blob limit” from 2/4 to 3/6). EIP-7495 (Introducing a new, more flexible form of simple serialization). Revisiting the Restriction on Validator Entry and Exit Rates (Due to time constraints, there was limited support for incorporating this into the Dencun upgrade. Some developers proposed limiting validator entry and exit rates to 12/epoch. Previously, this variable was derived from “total number of validators/65536” and was approximately 10/epoch. However, as the validator set grows, this variable increases exponentially. While a larger validator set enhances network security and decentralization, it also imposes greater performance costs on the network. The community is also considering a proposal to modify the “maximum effective balance” of validators to address this issue in the long term, specifically by increasing the staking limit to 32 ETH).

2. Arbitrum Community Initiates ‘Arbitrum Short-Term Incentive Program’ AIP Proposal, Aiming to Allocate Up to 75 Million ARB to Active Protocols link

On September 4th, the Arbitrum Incentives Working Group submitted the “Arbitrum Short-Term Incentive Plan” (AIP) proposal on the Arbitrum community forum. The proposal aims to allocate a maximum of 75 million ARB tokens from the DAO treasury as rewards to active participants in the Arbitrum protocol to meet short-term community needs. This proposal will go through two rounds of voting, consisting of a financial proposal and an application process. The financial proposal involves allocating 75 million ARB tokens to a multi-signature address for the implementation of the plan. An additional 37,000 ARB tokens will be reserved for community and project promotion-related operational budgets.

3. Solana’s Weekly Summary

a. Solana Foundation Announces Collaboration with Hong Kong University of Science and Technology’s CryptofinTech Lab link

On September 6th, the Solana Foundation announced a collaboration with the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) Cryptocurrency and FinTech Laboratory. The Solana Foundation will provide support for the laboratory to establish Solana-based blockchain gaming courses and offer financial and technological assistance for student innovation projects. Prior to this, Professor Wang Yang, Vice President of HKUST, had repeatedly advocated for the Hong Kong government to take action in issuing the HKDG stablecoin, challenging the dominance of the US dollar-pegged stablecoins.

b. Visa Allows Users to Send USDC to Specific Merchants via Solana in New Pilot link

On September 5th, Solana announced via Twitter that Visa is expanding its stablecoin settlement pilot program to include Solana. In this new pilot phase, Visa will be sending USDC to specific merchants through the Solana network. In addition to expanding the settlement pilot with Solana, Visa also revealed that payment companies WorldPay and Nuvei are piloting settlement payments using USDC on the Solana blockchain.

c. Solana Announces Hyperdrive Hackathon link

On September 6th, Solana announced the Hyperdrive Hackathon, scheduled from September 6th to October 15th. It features a prize pool of $1 million in seed funding and covers various tracks such as DePIN, artificial intelligence, DeFi, payments, DAOs, and more.

4. dYdX Community Approves Adoption of dYdX V4 and Migration to dYdX Chain Proposal link

On September 4th, the dYdX community approved the proposal for adopting dYdX V4 and migrating to the dYdX Chain. This proposal, initially presented by Wintermute, gained community support. Following this approval, the dYdX community will implement the open-source dYdX V4 software as the next version of the dYdX protocol. Additionally, they will utilize DYDX as the native L1 token of the dYdX Chain.

5. MetaMask Unveils New ‘Sell’ Feature link

On September 5th, MetaMask made an announcement via Twitter about the introduction of a new feature called ‘Sell.’ This feature allows users to convert their cryptocurrencies into fiat currencies through MetaMask Portfolio and transfer the funds to their bank accounts. Currently, this feature is available in the United States, the United Kingdom, and select European regions. Initially, it supports ETH on the Ethereum mainnet and plans to expand to native gas tokens on Layer 2 networks shortly.

6. Yuga Labs Launches Rewarding Decrypt Series ‘Moon Puzzle’ link

On September 5th, Yuga Labs made an announcement via Twitter about the launch of their Moon Puzzle, a decryption series based on their Bitcoin NFT collection, TwelveFold. They plan to release one Moon Puzzle each week over twelve weeks. The first person to solve the puzzle will be rewarded with 0.12 BTC. Participants are required to carve the solution onto satoshis and submit it, with no specific entry requirements.

On the same day, Yuga Labs released their first TwelveFold puzzle, which was swiftly solved by a participant within 10 minutes.

7. Strategic Finance Core Member of MakerDAO Recommends Allocating $100 Million for Development and Testing of Tokenized U.S. Treasury Products link

On September 8th, the MakerDAO community proposed allocating $100 million to develop tokenized U.S. Treasury Bonds products, including T-Bill collateral like Flux fDAI, frictionless products such as Maple Cash usDC, and long-term products like Backed Finance bIB01 and bIBTA. On September 7th, MakerDAO added $50 million in RWA assets through BlockTower Andromeda, primarily invested in short-term U.S. Treasury Bonds. Currently, MakerDAO’s total RWA assets amount to approximately $2.514 billion.

8. Lido on Solana Project Team Seeks $1.5 Million Financial Support from Lido DAO link

On September 5th, the Lido on Solana project team submitted a proposal to the Lido DAO community seeking financial support to continue their development efforts on Solana. The team incurred a loss of $484,000 in the 2022–2023 period while working on the Lido on Solana project. The team has presented two fundamental options: firstly, Lido DAO providing financial support, including budgets for development, marketing, and customer support, totaling $1.5 million; secondly, if unable to secure financial support, initiating the sunset process for Lido on Solana, similar to Lido on Polkadot and Kusama.

9. NFT Lending Protocol ParaSpace Releases ParaX Whitepaper link

On September 9th, the NFT lending protocol ParaSpace unveiled the ParaX whitepaper. The ParaX ecosystem is constructed atop the existing ParaSpace and Parallel products, encompassing elements such as the metahuman interface, account abstraction, zkVM, and PEPS Stack mobile applications, among others. ParaX aims to streamline interactions with Web3 applications.

10. Mina Protocol Mainnet to Introduce ZK Smart Contracts link

On September 9th, the lightweight blockchain protocol Mina Protocol announced that the Mina mainnet will be introducing ZK smart contracts. The key features of the upgrade include programming zkApps using o1js, enhancing security and efficiency through Kimchi, and discontinuing super rewards to increase staking adoption. Testworld Mission 2.0 is preparing for the upgrade, with the testnet divided into 4 phases, including zkApp end-to-end (E2E) testing, external security audits, protocol and performance testing, and readiness for the upcoming upgrade. Currently, the first two phases have been completed.

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