Ethereum Layer-2 (L2) on-chain activity has been increasing to the extent that the leading two networks now process more transaction volume than the Ethereum network. Layer-2 networks Arbitrum and Optimism have seen an increase in transactions over the past three months. Comparatively, aside from a few spikes, transactions on the Ethereum network have declined by around 33% since late October according to Etherscan. This has enabled the two L2s combined to flip Ethereum for this metric, according to Dune Analytics data. The chart shows Ethereum processed over 1.06 million transactions on Jan. 10 whereas Arbitrum and Optimism combined processed over …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling platform StarkNet has overhauled its in-house Cairo coding language to make Web3 development accessible to developers. An announcement shared with Cointelegraph outlined the upgrades to Cairo 1.0, which is touted to emulate characteristics of the popular programming language Rust. The overhaul intends to allow developers with general coding experience to begin building decentralized applications on StarkNet’s Ethereum layer-2 network. StarkWare co-founder and president Eli Ben-Sasson told Cointelegraph that making layer-2 development more accessible to developers of varying backgrounds was the main reason for Cairo’s revamp: “Primary drivers were safety and ease of use, and conducting the overhaul …

Very few projects have come close to matching the security and decentralization of the Ethereum network. However, the inherent overhead of maintaining these two critical features has left Ethereum burdened by low throughput and prohibitively high costs. As a result, alternative layer-1 blockchains (L1s) — which normally sacrifice security and decentralization to provide scale — have emerged to nip away at Ethereum’s market share. However, with Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-equivalent scaling solutions bringing high throughput and low transaction fees to Ethereum itself, the question is: Do we really need these alternative L1 networks? Despite a rocky year for the industry, …

The private layer-2 chain Aztec Network announced on Dec. 15 a $100 million Series B funding round led by venture capital firm a16z crypto. Other investors in the round include A Capital, King River, Variant, SV Angel, Hash Key, Fenbushu, and AVG. By partnering with a16z, the company plans to hire new engineers and build a "next-generation encrypted architecture" that allows users to verify that blockchain rules were followed without revealing any underlying information. Encrypted blockchains allow users to transact with privacy and anonymity. “What we’re building is a revolutionary piece of technology that transforms how we interact with each …

Are L2 networks the saviors? The emergence of a new tier of blockchains called layer-2 chains that have leveraged new cryptographic techniques like zero-knowledge-proofs (ZKPs) has helped address the scalability enigma. While the world was busy solving the blockchain trilemma at the L1 level, there were a bunch of smart developers who understood that optimization need not necessarily happen at the L1 level. One can create a network on top of L1 networks to solve fundamental problems. There are a few L2 networks, such as Polygon, Immutable and the Bitcoin lightning network, which use concepts such as sharding and rollups …

Zero-knowledge (ZK)-Rollup tech company StarkWare has officially open sourced its new programming language compiler, Cairo 1.0, which will soon be supported on Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution StarkNet in Q1 2023. The news was announced by StarkWare — the company behind StarkNet — in a Nov. 25 Twitter post. StarkWare’s rollup technology and recursive proofs offer the potential to compress millions of transactions on L2 into a single transaction on Ethereum, however the project has been criticized for maintaining control over its IP, not least of all by its more open source focused competitor zkSync. StarkWare described open sourcing Cairo as …

Matter Labs, the developer behind the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible zkSync, has received major industry backing as it pledges to fully open source its platform — marking the first such initiative for a ZK-rollup technology. Matter Labs confirmed on Nov. 16 that it had closed a $200 million Series C funding round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, with additional participation from LightSpeed Venture Partners, Variant and existing investor Andreessen Horowitz. The company has now raised $458 million in financing across all rounds, including $200 million from BitDAO that’s earmarked for funding ecosystem projects. Founded in 2018, Matter Labs is …

The year 2022 in crypto was eventful in many ways. However, the negative impacts of a bear market dampened the excitement around the blockchain upgrades that significantly brought crypto ecosystems closer to the future of finance. For Bitcoin, it was the Taproot soft fork upgrade, which was aimed at improving the scripting capabilities and privacy of the Bitcoin network. Ethereum underwent the Merge upgrade to transition from a proof-of-work to a proof-of-stake (PoS) consensus mechanism. Leading decentralized Ethereum scaling platform Polygon kicked off the year with mainnet upgrades based on Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP)-1559, otherwise known as the London hard …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum has seen a massive surge in activity since its Nitro update in August, having just clocked around 62% as many transactions as the Ethereum base layer. In a Nov. 1 report, crypto research firm Delphi Digital noted that as of the week ended Oct. 24, Arbitrum’s number of total transactions has increased by 550% since August, citing data from Dune Analytics. This week, @arbitrum had ~62% as many transactions as Ethereum L1. pic.twitter.com/DyuDNAjRGz — Delphi Digital (@Delphi_Digital) November 3, 2022 In an earlier Tweet, Delphi Digital initially phrased Arbitrum as accounting for 62% of all …

Asset management firm Stone Ridge, the parent company of Bitcoin company NYDIG, has launched the first startup accelerator that focuses on the Bitcoin Lightning Network and the Taro protocol, called In Wolf’s Clothing (Wolf). The accelerator consists of 8-week programs in which the best founders and startup teams from around the world will be brought to New York City, with accommodation and travel costs covered. The teams which apply and are accepted into the program will receive a guaranteed investment of $250,000. One team will be chosen by a panel of judges to receive an additional $500,000 of funding during …

A cross-chain bridge between BitBTC and the Ethereum layer-2 network Optimism has been able to avoid a potentially costly exploit thanks to the work of an eagle-eyed Twitter user. The custom cross-chain bridge offers a ramp for users to send assets between Optimism’s network and BitAnt's decentralized finance (DeFi) ecosystem, which includes yield services, NFTs, swaps and the BitBTC token, in which 1 million BitBTC represents 1 Bitcoin (BTC). The BitBTC bridge bug was highlighted by L2 network Abirtrum tech lead Lee Bousfield in an Oct. 18 Twitter post, warning that “BitBTC's Optimism bridge is trivially vulnerable.” Bousfield said he …

Staked ETH withdrawal and lower gas fees are some of the developments expected with the next critical improvements for the Ethereum network, the Shanghai upgrade. The testnet version, dubbed Shandong, is now live. Developers can now begin working on the implementations; a process expected to continue until September 2023. This is the first major update since Ethereum's consensus switched to Proof-of-Stake (PoS) in September after the Mainnet and Beacon Chains merged. Moreover, the coming upgrade introduces an elemental change to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the technology that powers the network smart contracts. EIP-3540, or EVM object format, is one of …