The banking giant is building a rollup on Ethereum using Matter Labs’ ZKsync technology.
Banking giant Deutsche Bank is building out a layer-2 rollup network on Ethereum with Matter Labs’ ZKsync technology.
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Bloomberg reported the project Wednesday, and a representative for Matter Labs confirmed the story.
The chain will be “a public and permissioned L2,” Omar Azhar, the head of business development at Matter Labs, told CoinDesk over Telegram. When asked to elaborate, he referred a reporter to another participant in the project, Memento Blockchain, which did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Generally “public permissioned” means anyone can see what’s happening on the network but only authorized participants can do certain things.
The project is a sign of a renewed interest in blockchain technology among institutions, as prices for various cryptocurrencies reach all-time highs. It also echoes the private enterprise blockchains that were in vogue nearly a decade ago. Those systems were disconnected from public chains like Ethereum and Bitcoin, though they sometimes borrowed code from them.
According to the Bloomberg report, the bank is creating the layer-2 network in order to address regulatory compliance issues that come with public blockchains in finance. (Regulated institutions have to know who they are dealing with, which is hard in completely open networks like the main Ethereum chain). The bank believes that by creating a layer-2 on top of Ethereum, it will improve the speed of transactions as well as address those compliance needs.
The ZKsync-based rollup could allow banks to experiment with blockchains, and let them select which validators could run said blockchain, Boon-Hiang Chan, Deutsche Bank’s Asia-Pacific industry applied innovation lead, told Bloomberg. The L2 blockchain may also give regulators “super admin rights,” allowing them to look more deeply into the movement of funds, Chan said.
Memento Blockchain announced the L2 endeavor on Nov. 6, but it received little attention at the time. The chain is currently in a test network environment. It is built with ZK Stack, a customizable toolkit that lets developers build their own blockchains based on ZKsync’s technology.
The L2 is part of Dama 2, a multi-chain initiative led by Deutsche Bank. Dama 2, in turn, is part of the Singapore Monetary Authority’s Project Guardian, which is bringing together 24 major financial institutions that are looking into ways to use blockchains to tokenize their assets.
Also: ENS picks tech for its L2; Bitcoin’s Runes Get an AMM
Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.
In this issue:
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Solana was the biggest draw for new crypto developers in 2024
No wonder: Solana’s transaction volume is off the charts
Coinbase alums take next step toward no-code blockchain development
Kraken’s ‘Ink’ layer-2 goes live
Avalanche activates biggest-ever upgrade
Ethereum’s ENS picks Consensys’ tech for its L2
Bitcoin’s Stacks L2 gets an automated market maker for Runes
Most Influential 2024: EigenLayer’s Sreeram Kannan
This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday.
Network News
NEW DEVS ❤️SOLANA: The Solana ecosystem, ground zero for the memecoin craze, was the most popular blockchain among new developers this year, according to a report released last week by Electric Capital. In July, this community became the first since 2016 to bring on board more devs than Ethereum. Solana attracted 7,625 new developers in 2024, the most of any chain and a little over 1,000 more than Ethereum. The results underscore the challenge Ethereum faces as rival smart contract platform Solana’s low fees and fast transactions attract investment and talent. Read more.
SPEAKING OF SOLANA: Solana’s network activity has lit up as the Pudgy Penguins NFT project debuted its native token, PENGU, on the programmable blockchain. Solana registered a total transaction tally of 66.9 million Tuesday, the highest daily volume since its inception in 2020, according to data source Artemis. To highlight how busy it was, Solana’s transaction count eclipsed the total of all other major chains combined. Read more
THE INK IS DRY: Kraken, the seventh-largest crypto exchange, said its layer-2 rollup network, built on top of the Ethereum blockchain, has gone live. The network, called Ink, is Kraken’s answer to Base, the highly successful blockchain launched by rival exchange Coinbase. Like Base, Ink is based on the OP Stack, a customizable framework that lets developers build their own rollups using Optimism’s technology. The team had originally planned for Ink to go live in early 2025, so the launch of its main network is ahead of schedule. Read more
AVALANCHE UPGRADE: Avalanche, a layer-1 blockchain launched in 2020 that’s now the tenth-largest by total value locked (TVL), activated its highly anticipated Avalanche9000 upgrade Monday, marking the ecosystem’s biggest technical changes to date. The network has been prepping for these changes for months, with new features that will cut the costs for sending transactions, operating validators and building applications on the network. Leaders at Avalanche previously said that part of the goal with the upgrade is to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage them to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets, or “L1s.” Read more.
A BOON FOR RUNES: Crypto degens have a new – and, if all goes according to plan, faster, cheaper and safer – way to trade Runes, the Bitcoin ecosystem’s answer to memecoins. An automated-market maker (AMM) for the Runes protocol went live on Wednesday on Stacks, following the unveiling of the layer-2 network’s native BTC-backed asset sBTC on Tuesday. It’s the first AMM for such tokens on Stacks. The teams behind decentralized exchange (DEX) Bitflow Finance and Bitcoin bridge Pontis developed the AMM. Runes launched in April and spurred a flurry of activity, paying 78.6 BTC ($8.18 million) in fees in the first 90 minutes. However, less than a month later, this excitement waned considerably, with fees dropping more than 50%. Bitflow’s aim is for its AMM to help Runes scale and address some of the shortcomings holding it back. Read more.
ENS PICKS L2 TECH: ENS Labs, the company behind the Ethereum Name Service, has picked Linea’s technology to build its upcoming layer-2 network, Namechain. Linea is a zero-knowledge rollup that came out in July 2023 and was built by Ethereum infrastructure giant Consensys. It is the seventh-largest rollup network, according to L2Beat, with $1 billion locked in its ecosystem. Rollups are a special type of blockchain where one can transact faster and at a lower cost. There are two kinds of rollups: optimistic and zero-knowledge. Optimistic rollups use optimistic proofs, which have a seven-day window to dispute transactions before they are finalized. Zero-knowledge rollups, by contrast, finalize proofs within minutes. ENS has been described as “the phone book for Web3,” but a more precise analogy is the web’s domain name service (DNS). The domain name “CoinDesk.com” is easier to remember and type than a numerical IP address. Similarly, ENS handles like parishilton.eth, which the namesake heiress acquired in 2021, are more relatable than the strings of letters and numbers that make up Ethereum wallet addresses. For this service, “we need fast finality,” said Nick Johnson, the founder and lead developer of ENS. That’s because “you want to be able to update your ENS name and have the chain reflect it in the smallest interval possible. And to do that and have it remain decentralized and secure, we need fast finality, and optimistic roll-ups can’t deliver that.” Read more.
NO CODE, NO PROBLEM? Patchwork, a startup focused on simplifying blockchain and smart-contract development founded by former Coinbase employees, has released the next version of its low-to-no-code tools for building decentralized applications (dapps). Currently linked to Coinbase’s Base and backed by Coinbase Ventures, the “Create-Patchwork” picks-and-shovels approach lowers the barriers to building blockchain applications and attaching data to them. Following the trend toward easily generated content, the complex world of blockchains and smart-contract design is on a path to no-code applications, or a “text-to-app” experience. Create-Patchwork is the first of several features the team plans to roll out in early 2025 and a foundational step to enable creators to generate contracts and applications in seconds using natural language inputs. “Patchwork is an Ethereum protocol that makes it really easy to build dynamic on-chain applications,” co-founder Kevin Day said in an interview. “It lets on-chain things own other on-chain things, and it allows anyone to attach programmable data to on-chain things.” Read more
EIGENLAYER’S SREERAM KANNAN: KING OF THE PROFESSOR COINS
EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan at ETH Denver 2024 (Danny Nelson/CoinDesk)
For a crypto founder who’s attracted so much controversy, Sreeram Kannan is surprisingly sanguine.
In a wide-ranging interview after his selection as one of CoinDesk’s “Most Influential” figures in crypto for 2024, the EigenLayer founder was generous with his time, chatting more than an hour beyond our scheduled slot. I was surprised at his openness because the last time we spoke, a colleague and I had just published an investigation into potential conflicts of interest at his company, Eigen Labs, and in the interim Kannan had disavowed our reporting point-by-point on a Blockworks podcast.
This time, Kannan emerged in a different light. Whatever his misgivings about CoinDesk’s past coverage, they didn’t seem top-of-mind.
What emerged wasn’t the portrait of a defensive tech founder, but rather that of a driven, thoughtful academic-turned-entrepreneur still adjusting to a spotlight few in this industry ever enjoy. Instead of bitterness or evasion, I found ambition, reflection and a quiet kind of excitement.
Kannan seemed as astonished as anyone by how swiftly EigenLayer had transformed from a concept into one of crypto’s most talked-about experiments, telling CoinDesk that he continued to view EigenLayer as a “scrappy startup.”
Over the past 12 months, EigenLayer — which allows emerging blockchain applications to borrow Ethereum’s robust security — went from a relative unknown to an industry heavyweight. The platform raised more than $100 million from venture firms including Andreessen Horowitz and, before even fully launching, drew hundreds of millions of dollars in deposits from crypto users seeking extra yield. Many were incentivized by a viral points program that investors hoped would translate into a lucrative future token airdrop.
EigenLayer’s success during the bear market was striking, and Kannan may have played a larger role than any other entrepreneur in revitalizing decentralized finance on Ethereum. But not everything went according to plan. Industry critics took issue with the EIGEN token distribution plan — which locked up tokens for months and barred claimants from certain geographies — as well as the platform’s slower-than-expected feature rollout and concerns about “rehypothecation,” or the reuse of collateral for multiple purposes. In August, the CoinDesk investigation (that Kannan disputed in the podcast) raised questions about EigenLayer’s conflict-of-interest policies, which may have allowed employees preferential access to tokens powered by its platform.
None of this seemed to derail Kannan’s intellectual ascent. Beyond running Eigen Labs, he still holds a position as an affiliate professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Washington, and his theory of “restaking” — letting people reuse staked Ethereum assets to secure other networks — has sparked a wave of innovation and copycats. He’s become a familiar face on the conference circuit, where he unpacks his vision of blockchains as tools for solving humanity’s endless “coordination problems.”
Blockchains, Kannan says, “are the biggest upgrade to human civilization since the U.S. Constitution.”
CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL PROFILE BY COINDESK’S SAM KESSLER:
Money Center
‘Wrapped’ in intrigue
Coinbase Says It Nixed wBTC Because Justin Sun Posed ‘Unacceptable Risk’
WBTC Episode ‘Reopened Old Wounds’ of Centralized Failures: Bitcoin Builders Association
Deals and grants
Stablecoin Payments Platform BVNK Raises $50M to Fuel U.S. Expansion
RWA-Focused Plume Raises $20M from Brevan Howard, Others Ahead of Mainnet Launch
Custody Firm Taurus Partners With Temenos Bringing Crypto Wallets to Thousands of Banks
Regulatory and policy
Next U.S. Senate Banking Chair Calls Crypto ‘Next Wonder’ of World
Calendar
Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas
Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland
January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.
Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.
Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.
The protocol was built on the architecture of LayerZero, which raised $120 million at a $3 billion valuation earlier this year.
The venture capital arm of Binance has invested $10 million in Radiant Capital, a decentralized finance (DeFi) lending and borrowing protocol.
The new funds will go toward tech and product development, which includes expanding collateral and deployment on the Ethereum mainnet
Radiant is built on architecture from LayerZero Labs, another Binance Labs portfolio company. The lending platform aims to take on DeFi’s fragmented liquidity problem by serving as a money market where users can deposit and borrow assets across multiple chains.
Traders, known as Dynamic Liquidity Providers, can lock in the native RDNT token to profit from interest and flash loan fees and have governance authority within the Radiant DAO. The protocol’s platform fees are paid out in bitcoin (BTC), ether (ETH), BNB Coin (BNB) and stablecoins.
Radiant, which currently has about $265 million in total value locked, according to DeFi Llama data. The platform supports more than 20 collateral options and plans to add new options in the future as the Radiant DAO expands the functionality to additional chains.
“Radiant Capital’s commitment to facilitating seamless cross-chain transactions for DeFi, and performance on Arbitrum and BNB Chain demonstrates its potential for driving mass adoption,” said Yi He, co-founder of Binance and head of Binance Labs, in the press release.
Radiant was built on the interoperability and cross-chain messaging infrastructure of LayerZero, which raised $120 million in April at a $3 billion valuation.
Tokens of Radiant Capital RDNT jumped over 10% to 31 cents after the news of Binance’s investment.
UPDATE (July 20, 13:03 UTC): Adds RDNT token move in last para. Updates headline.
Son verilere göre altcoinler içinde Polygon, oyun alanında en fazla aktif cüzdan sayısına sahip ekosistem olmayı başardı.
Ortalıkta bu kadar çok protokol ve Blockchain terimi varken, bir oyun geliştiricisinin nereden başlayacağını anlaması kafa karıştırıcı olabilir. İlk ve en önemli tavsiyemiz, Web3 oyun endüstrisini araştırmak. Son verilere göre altcoinler içinde Polygon, bu alanda en fazla aktif cüzdan sayısına sahip ekosistem olmayı başardı.
Üzerinde oyun geliştirilebilecek en iyi altcoinler
Delphi Digital’in son araştırmasına göre Polygon ekosistemi, toplam aktif cüzdanların %34’üne sahip durumda. Bu da onu %26,80’de olan Solana’nın önünde liderliğe taşıdı. BNB Chain ise %17’yle üçüncü sırada yer alıyor. Ronin ve Hive ise onu takip ediyor. Bu arada lider Blockchain olan Ethereum’un esamesi bile okunmuyor!
Polygon (MATIC)
Polygon, Ethereum için bir ölçeklendirme platformu görevi gören bir Layer-2 side chain. Buradaki fikir, kullanıcılara Ethereum’un tüm avantajlarını, yüksek gaz ücretleri ve uzun onay süreci gibi dezavantajları olmadan sağlamak. Geliştiriciler, dünyanın en büyük play-to-earn oyunlarından bazılarını Polygon üzerine inşa etti. Örneğin, Sunflower Land, Arc8 ve Pegaxy Poygon’un üzerinde. Bu isimlerin yanı sıra, bir çok dapp, daha geniş bir kitleye ölçeklenmelerine yardımcı olmak için Polygon’u seçti. Altcoin projesinin yerel tokenı MATIC.
Solana (SOL)
Altcoinler içinde Solana, dünyanın en ünlü Blockchain’lerinden biri. Proje, oyun geliştiricilerinin projelerini üzerine inşa etmeleri için de güçlü bir aday olmaya devam ediyor. Kriptokoin.com’dan takip ettiğiniz üzere protokol 2022’nin sonlarında FTX borsasının çöküşünden sonra zarar gördü. Bununla birlikte, Solana’daki deneyimli oyun uzmanları ekibi, gelecekte hiçbir şeyin projeleri raydan çıkarmayacağına dair güçlü pozisyonunu koruyor. Dünya çapında yılda birkaç kez düzenlenen konferanslar olan Solana Hackathons, Move-to-earn oyunu StepN ve tarım simülasyonu metaverse DeFi Land gibi ünlü web3 oyunlarının ortaya çıktığı harika merkez.
BNB Chain (BSC)
BNB Chain, Binance’in Blockchain’i. Altcoinler arasında EVM uyumlu olması bir avantaj saplıyor. Bu da ona diğer Blockchain’lere köprü kurmak için mükemmel bir konum sağlıyor. Binance ve BNB tokenı daha çok merkezi bir borsa ve DeFi ile kripto ticaretinin ana omurgalarından biri olarak biliniyor. Ancak birçok oyun geliştiricisinin de tercih ettiği bir platform haline geldi. BNB Chain’deki en büyük oyunlardan bazıları Era7: Game of Truth, MOBOX, Tiny World, SecondLive ve X World Games. Ağ aynı zamanda Alien Worlds (WAX), CPL (Polygon) ve Tap Fantasy (Solana) ile de köprü kuruyor.
Hive Network (HIVE)
Başlangıçta Hive, Steem Blockchain’den çatallandı. Şimdi platform, ticaret kartı oyunu Splinterlands’e ev sahipliği yapıyor. Faaliyetlerin aslan payından kart oyunu sorumlu. Bununla birlikte, Hive aslında herkesin proje oluşturabileceği açık bir ekosistem. Hive ekosistemini şüphesiz Splinterlands yönetiyor. Ancak daha küçük projeler de her zaman ortaya çıkıyor. Bahar 2023’te fütüristik bir boş strateji oyunu TerraCore piyasaya sürülürken, Splinterlands ekibi Soulkeep adlı bir kule savunma oyunu üzerinde çalışıyor.
Ronin Netwrok (RON)
Ronin, Axie Infinity Blockchain’i olarak ün kazandı. Ancak, kullanıcı sayısı ve işlem hacmi açısından diğer ağır toplara da ev sahipliği yapıyor. Sky Mavis, Ronin Network’u geliştirip yönetiyor. Bu arada Axie Infinity’nin, başlatıldıktan sonra Ethereum’dan Ronin’e taşındığını belirtmek gerekiyor. Başlangıçta proje, Axie Infinity pazaryeri için işlem ücretlerini sıfır olarak belirledi. Ancak Nisan 2022’de Sky Mavis küçük maliyetler getirmeye başladı. Bu sabit bir oran değil. Ayrıca, Ronin Network farklı fiyatları gösteren bir açıklama yayınladı.
The cross-chain transfer protocol seeks to improve liquidity of the major crypto payments rail.
USDC issuer Circle Internet Financial on Wednesday released a new method to move the major stablecoin between blockchains that it says is faster, safer and cheaper than the so-called “bridges” that pervade decentralized finance (DeFi).
Called the “Cross-Chain Transfer Protocol,” the technology debuts for USDC transfers between Ethereum and Avalanche, with more chains coming in the second half of 2023. DeFi apps can integrate the relevant smart contracts to make it easy for users to move their stablecoins about.
The tech attempts to break down the barriers currently fragmenting USDC’s $30 billion market cap across many different blockchains. Though Circle issues “native” USDC on many top ecosystems including Ethereum and Avalanche, those asset tranches were more or less partitioned; those who wanted to “bridge” the divide had to engage in complicated and sometimes expensive cross-chain transfers.
Circle’s new method seeks to replace bridges, which solved that problem by creating another: a derivative token called a wrapped asset. CCTP works by destroying USDC on the source chain and re-creating it on the destination chain.
The process could pay the biggest dividends when it comes to asset swaps. It could be used to move cross-chain and cross-token transfers behind the scenes.
“With CCTP, developers can simplify the user experience and their users can trust that they are always transacting with a highly liquid, safe and fungible asset in native USDC. This milestone makes USDC a natively multi-chain digital dollar,” Joao Reginatto, VP of Product said in a press release.
Wallet company MetaMask, bridge operator Wormhole and bridge aggregator LI.FI are among the infrastructure providers with CCTP coverage at launch.
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Circle could not immediately be reached for comment.
