Weekly project updates: Ethereum's Zhejiang testnet is live, etc

1. ETH’s weekly summary

a. Ethereum’s first public withdraws testnet to launch 1st of Feb link

Parithosh, DevOps at the Ethereum Foundation, tweeted that the first public withdrawals testnet Zhejiang is launching 1st of Feb at 15 UTC.

b. Ethereum’s first public withdrawal testnet Zhejiang is live link

Nethermind said that Ethereum’s first public withdrawal testnet Zhejiang is live, and Shanghai+Capella will be triggered at epoch 1350 (next week).

c. The Zhejiang testnet will activate the Shanghai upgrade on February 7 link

The conference call of Ethereum developers on February 2 pointed out that assuming all public testnets of Shanghai upgrade smoothly, developers are expected to activate the upgraded mainnet in mid-March. According to Christine Kim’s blog. The Zhejiang testnet will activate the Shanghai upgrade on February 7, and then release upgrades on the Sepolia testnet (mid-February) and Goerli testnet (late February and early March).

d. The burning amount of Ethereum reached 3040 on February 2 link

The burning amount of Ethereum reached 3040 on February 2, reaching a new high since November 10 last year. The main burning sources are Uniswap and OpenSea. The cryptocurrency greed index has remained around 60 for several days.

2. Maker’s weekly summary

a. MakerDAO to establish Defense Fund to cover legal defense costs link

The MakerDAO community voted to establish a special fund, the Defense Fund, to cover legal defense costs, which provides an emergency budget of 5 million DAI.

b. MakerDAO founder wants $14M to fight climate change link

Rune Christensen, the founder of MakerDAO and former CEO of the project’s now-dissolved foundation, is asking the protocol for $14M worth of MKR tokens to fight climate change. On Feb. 1, Christensen published a draft of “The Maker Constitution” to the project’s governance forum. The document asserts that “Scientific Sustainability” is a core principle for the project.

3. Aave’s weekly summary

a. Social engagement of Lens Protocol continues to reach record highs link

Social engagement (posts, comments, retweets) of Lens Protocol, Aave’s Web3 social protocol, continues to reach record highs, with nearly 300,000 posts on Lens in January, a record high. As of February 3, Lens Profile NFT holders have surpassed 100,000, with a floor price of 65 USDC and a floor price increase of over 30% in the last 30 days.

b. The Aave V2 to V3 migration tool is live link

Aave announces the launch of its V2 to V3 position migration tool, which currently supports Ethereum, Polygon and Avalanche. Aave recommends that users migrate no more than five positions at a time and be mindful of the new Health Factor to mitigate liquidation risks.

4. Layer 0’s weekly summary

a. Nomad CTO says LayerZero has two critical trusted-party vulnerabilities link

Nomad CTO James Prestwich says there are two critical trusted-party vulnerabilities in the LayerZero smart contracts that could lead to the theft of all user funds. LayerZero CEO Bryan Pellegrino dismissed these claims, stating that these statements only apply to projects that use the network’s “defaults” and do not apply to any project that sets its own configuration.

b. a16z and Jump back LayerZero and Wormhole as a bridge between Ethereum and the BNB chain respectively link

Wormhole won the community “temperature check” vote by approximately 11 million token votes. An official vote to approve Wormhole as a bridge between Ethereum and the BNB chain is yet to come. “To be totally unambiguous, we at a16z would have voted 15m tokens toward LayerZero if we were technically able to,” a16z investing partner Eddy Lazzarin wrote.

c. Stargate proposes to reissue Stargate (STG) Token on March 15th link

The reason is that Alameda purchased 10% of the total supply of STG from the Stargate Community in March 2022, and promised to lock it until March 2025, but the current transfer data shows that hackers are stealing.

5. Layer 2’s weekly summary

a. The Optimism Foundation proposes the first protocol upgrade to the Optimism Collective: Bedrock link

This upgrade offers a new level of modularity, simplicity, and Ethereum equivalence for Layer 2 solutions. The Bedrock release enables performance improvements across the board, including transaction costs, throughput characteristics, and sync speeds. Most users will not be impacted by the upgrade as the current mainnet is already EVM-equivalent. If this vote passes, the Bedrock upgrade will be scheduled for execution 2 weeks after the vote passes, on March 15, at 9:00 AM PST.

b. Lyra is now live on Arbitrum, integrating with GMX link

Lyra tweets that with the deployment of Lyra Newport, the community has unlocked a number of technical features and usability benefits, including cash collateral, tighter spreads and modular design.

c. zkSync 2.0’s next milestone Fair Onboarding Alpha is coming soon link

During Fair Onboarding Alpha, zkSync will welcome all ecosystem projects to deploy on zkSync 2.0 while the system is closed to external users. The protocol’s code will be open sourced at this stage. This approach allows devs to test their code in a closed environment, without giving any team a competitive advantage. The Fair Onboarding Alpha milestone will also include a new fee model to ensure transactions and block roll-ups are taken into account for overall system costs, improved proof generation performance, and fixes to all audit findings.

6. Wallet’s weekly summary

a. Coinbase Wallet adds transaction previews and token approval alerts link

Coinbase Wallet now shows users an estimate of how the token and NFT balances will change during a transaction before users hit ‘confirm’. These two functions are only available on Ethereum and Polygon.

b. ImmutableX plans to launch Immutable Passport link

Passport is a non-custodial wallet and authentication tool designed for games that streamlines onboarding for gamers through passwordless sign-on and automated wallet creation. ImmutableX thibks it’s the solution for making mainstream adoption possible.

c. ConsenSys announced its newest initiative, MetaMask Learn link

ConsenSys announced its newest initiative, MetaMask Learn, which is a free-to-use resource available in 10 languages for anyone interested in learning about web3. It provides an interactive MetaMask UI environment to help onboard those new to self-custody and get started in web3.

d. ZenGo published EIP-6384 to address offline signature hacks link

ZenGo’s solution is a new draft EIP, now live on the Ethereum Foundation’s website: EIP-6384 leverages the fact that the current offline signature standard (EIP-712) already specifies and cryptographically binds the signed message with the smart contract that would eventually interpret it. The wallet will be able to query the contract and present the relevant description to the end user.

7. NFT’s weekly summary

a. Premier League signs deal with NFT-based fantasy soccer game link

The Fantasy soccer game Sorare users will be able to purchase and use official Premier League-licensed NFTs under the exclusive multi-year agreement. Sorare may have paid £30m for it.

b. NFT DEX Sudoswap has airdropped its Token SUDO to eligible users link

It is still not transferable and needs governance vote. Previously, Sudoswap was controversial when it announced the airdrop allocation, too many tokens were allocated to users of Sudo’s previous project.

c. The number of Polygon NFT transactions in January exceeded Ethereum NFT link

The number of Polygon NFT transactions in January exceeded Ethereum NFT for the second consecutive month, but the average transaction fee was much lower. Various data of the NFT lending ecosystem have hit record highs, with BendDAO’s borrowing volume exceeding $36 million.

d. Coinbase NFT announced the closure of the Creator Drops feature link

Coinbase NFT announced the closure of the Creator Drops feature, while emphasizing that the Marketplace will not be shut down. Since the launch in May 2022, the total transaction volume is only 7.34m. But the head of its product has received salary of hundreds of millions.

e. OpenSea to start rolling out the next phase of Drops link

OpenSea said it will give creators the tools to deploy smart contracts across all supported EVM chains, configure drop mechanics, personalize landing pages using self-serve WYSIWYG editing tools, and more. OpenSea also introduced 3hr Hold Period to mitigate theft-related risk, sellers will be prevented from accepting offers on certain items for 3 hours after some transfers and sales.

f. NFTfi hits record highs in January with several figures link

Peer-to-peer NFT lending agreement NFTfi hit record highs in January with 17,936.63 ETH lending and 4,399 lending transactions. NFTfi holds 30–40% of the current NFT lending market share.

g. NFT platform X2Y2 to unlock 12.5M treasury tokens and 25M team tokenslink

X2Y2 announces that the team will not sell any token from this upcoming unlock or any tokens unlocked thus far for the foreseeable future.

h. Takashi Murakami to release collection of 13 NFTs linked to Hublot watches link

Japanese artist Takashi Murakami has teamed up with Swiss luxury watchmaker Hublot to release a new collection of real-world watches linked to NFTs. They were inspired by Japanese video games and television shows from the 1970s.

8. BNB Chain unveiled BNB Greenfield whitepaper link

BNB Chain unveiled BNB Greenfield whitepaper, which is a decentralized storage system and the 3rd blockchain in the BNB ecosystem. The BNB Chain core team cooperates with AWS and others, and will launch the test network within a few months.

9. DeFi lending protocol Everlend Finance on Solana to shut down link

Everlend Finance, a DeFi lending protocol on Solana, has announced it will shut down because liquidity no longer exists. Everlend codebase will be open-sourced. Solana’s TVL currently only ranks twelfth.

10. Membrane Finance launches EUROe on Ethereum link

Finnish company Membrane Finance launched EUROe on Ethereum and received the Electronic Money Institution licence from the FIN-FSA, claiming to be Europe’s first EU-regulated full-reserve stablecoin. It will deploy on Solana, Polygon, and Arbitrum later.