a. ETH Research Grant announces round 2 recap and result link
The Ethereum Research Grant has completed its second funding round at DoraHacks.io. Out of the 26 teams that applied for the grants, five were chosen to receive grants of $5,000 in total based on their community voting ranking. Here are the grantees selected from the 2nd round applicants of ETH Research Grant, ranked by MACI community voting: Antsyb, Eigen Network, Topia, DeGov MODEL, MemeBook.
b. Ethereum node operators urged to upgrade ahead of Shanghai/Capella upgrade link
All node operators on Ethereum are encouraged to upgrade their nodes in advance of the upgrade, which is scheduled to activate on April 12, 2023 at 6:27 PM (ET). The maximum bug bounty for identifying a vulnerability in the Shanghai/Capella upgrade has been doubled from $250,000 to $500,000 between now and the time of the fork.
2. MakerDAO to keep USDC as its primary reserve link
On March 24, the MakerDAO community voted to keep USDC as its primary reserve, with 79% in favor and the rest preferring more diversification. As for the USDC PSM, the proposed parameters were to lower the swap fee for USDC to DAI from 1% to 0% and to increase the target available debt from 250 million DAI to 400 million DAI.
3. Layer 2’s weekly summary
a. Arbitrum lending protocol Radiant v2 is live link
On March 19, Radiant, a leading lending protocol on Arbitrum, announced the launch of v2. According to the announcement, nearly $7 million in fees has been paid by over 32,000 users. The new version introduces locked LP-exclusive RDNT token emissions, faster seamless cross-chain lending, improved UI/UX, multiple new chains launched, adoption of LayerZero OFT, and extension of RDNT emissions until 2027.
b. Star Xu: OKB Chain will be a L2 Chain of Ethereum link
On March 20, Star Xu, founder of OKX exchange, said that the new exchange public blockchain OKBChain will be a L2 Chain of Ethereum, starting from side chain technology and will develop to ZK technology. The old OKT Chain will continue to be kept as L1.
c. Immutable partners with Polygon Labs to create the Immutable zkEVM link
On March 21, Immutable announced a strategic partnership with Polygon Labs to create the Immutable zkEVM. According to 0xScope, an address (0xa8…7a49) suspected of insider trading deposited 1.5 million IMX into Binance two hours before the announcement, and may bring more than $750,000 in revenue.
d. Starknet announced the establishment of five committees link
On March 21, Starknet announced the establishment of five committees, including the Provisions Committee, which is responsible for planning, overseeing and executing the provision of the Starknet ecosystem token — STRK.
e. Starknet alpha v0.11.0 is out and live on Testnet link
On March 22, Starknet alpha v0.11.0 was launched on the testnet, allowing developers to deploy and interact with Cairo 1.0 contracts on the Starknet testnet. Successful operation on the testnet is a prerequisite for deploying Cairo 1.0 contracts on the mainnet, and the upgrade to Starknet alpha v0.11.0 on the mainnet will be subject to a governance vote for the first time.
f. GMX community proposed to deploy GMX on BASE link
On March 21, the GMX community proposed to deploy GMX on Coinbase´s Level 2 BASE. BASE is an Ethereum L2 network launched by Coinbase in February and is currently in the testnet version. According to Defillama data, GMX currently is the largest DeFi protocol on Arbitrum.
g. The number of transactions on zkSync reached a record high link
On March 21, the number of transactions on zkSync reached a record high of 259,225 within 24 hours, approaching Optimism’s record of 259,759. The number of active addresses also reached 56,773, second only to Arbitrum and surpassing Optimism. In addition, there were 16,000 new addresses created in a single day. Another popular airdrop, StarkNet, has also seen a similar significant increase in data. However, it is worth noting that according to @subinium data panel, despite the increasing number of deposits on zkSync in recent days, the average deposit amount is still relatively low.
h. zkSync Lite congestion causes trading errors on ZigZag DEX link
On March 24th, the zkSync DEX ZigZag announced on its community Telegram channel that due to congestion issues with zkSync Lite, market-making bots were struggling to fulfill orders, leading to “nonce mismatch” and “invalid timestamp” errors for users. This means that both limit and market orders are difficult to execute, and trades are getting stuck during matching and submission. During this time, successful trades cannot be guaranteed.
i. zkSync Era Mainnet is now open to all link
On March 24, zkSync Era Mainnet Alpha announced that it is now open to all. Developers, projects, and users can now experience the functionality of zkEVM. It has taken over a year and millions of dollars to test and audit all components of zkSync Era, and there is now confidence that it is safe enough to be made available to the public. zkSync Era has had native account abstraction from day one, allowing any account to pay fees with any token and even trade at zero cost on protocols willing to subsidize usage.
4. MetaMask’s weekly summary
a. MetaMask and MoonPay expand partnership to bring Web3 payments to Nigerian users link
On March 21, MetaMask announced an expanded partnership with Nigerian web3 payment company MoonPay, allowing MetaMask users in Nigeria to purchase cryptocurrencies with local bank transfers. It is estimated that nearly 12.4 million people (5.7% of Nigeria’s population) own cryptocurrency assets, making Nigeria one of MetaMask’s largest markets globally and ranking third in mobile active users.
b. ConsenSys’ MetaMask Institutional to add staking marketplace link
On March 22, the institutional version of web3 wallet Metamask unveiled its staking marketplace as it partners with Kiln, Blockdaemon and Allnodes, which will go live on March 27. However, The United States is strengthening supervision of staking.
c. MetaMask is now compatible with EIP-4361 link
On March 24, MetaMask announced its compatibility with EIP-4361, as known as Sign In with Ethereum. It also offers a “domain binding” feature, which will detect signatures/approvals from malicious URLs. This feature was implemented in collaboration with digital identity authentication company Spruce.
5. Space ID’s weekly summary
a. Space ID (ID) released details for claiming airdrops link
On March 19, Space ID (ID) released details for claiming airdrops, which can be claimed on the BNB Chain starting from March 22. The total distribution for early adopters and ecosystem contributors is 42 million ID tokens, which is about 2.1% of the total supply of ID tokens. The snapshot time was 22:00 on March 14. Users can check their airdrop amount at https://space.id/voyage.
b. Space ID team announces additional airdrop following snapshot change link
On March 20, due to dissatisfaction from the community, the Space ID team announced that the snapshot time was changed from March 14th to 10:00 pm on March 10, and an additional 5.6 million ID tokens will be rewarded to all users. With the updated snapshot and additional airdrop, a total of approximately 7.6 million ID tokens will be rewarded to all eligible users, and the number of tokens for each user will increase.
6. Sui’s weekly summary
a. Mysten Labs announced the acquisition of certain assets from SuiNS link
On March 20, Mysten Labs, the initial developer of the Sui Layer 1 blockchain, announced the acquisition of certain assets from SuiNS, an open, distributed naming service dedicated to the Sui blockchain. The acquisition will enable developers and users to easily and securely build their on-chain identity on Sui.
b. Sui announces mainnet launch in Q2 without official airdrop plans link
On March 22nd, Sui announced on Twitter that their mainnet will be launched in Q2 of this year and there are currently no official airdrop plans.
c. Mysten Labs buys back FTX’s preferred shares for $96.3 million link
On March 23, the Mysten Labs offer comprises $95 million in preferred stock and $1 million worth of SUI token warrants back From FTX. This offer falls just short of the failed exchange’s $102 million investment. Mysten Labs is the company behind the Move language project Sui.
7. Avalanche’s weekly summary
a. Avalanche C Chain resumes normal operation after 2-hour block halt link
The Avalanche C chain has stopped producing blocks for an hour and has not yet recovered. The Avalanche blockchain browser shows that the latest block time is 7:26 UTC+8, and the block height is 27788298. Avalanche has yet to respond to requests for comment. Korean exchanges Upbit Bithumb and others have stated that due to Avalanche (AVAX) network problems, Avalanche (AVAX) deposit and withdrawal services have been suspended. Ava Labs co-founder: Network been unstable for a bit over an hour. It was a bug with v1.9.12. Fix was just released. If you’re an Avalanche validator please upgrade to v.1.9.14 ASAP.
b. Pre-release code for the Avalanche Cortina Upgrade will be published link
On March 24, Avalanche announced the release of Avalanche Cortina upgrade pre-release code on the Fuji testnet, which will be activated on March 30 at 23:00. The latest version of AvalancheGo will migrate X-Chain to run on Snowman++ consensus, making X-Chain compatible with Avalanche Warp Messaging and making it easier for exchanges to support X-Chain. In addition, batch authorization rewards will be introduced and the C-Chain Gas limit will be increased to 15 million gas.
8. Osmosis Foundation converts more than 10% of treasury holdings to BTC link
On March 20th, Sunnya97, co-founder of Osmosis, announced that the Osmosis Foundation has converted cash reserves exceeding 10% of the treasury to BTC. Osmosis is the largest decentralized exchange in the Cosmos ecosystem. However, the total amount of funds in the treasury and the specific ratio of conversion to Bitcoin are currently uncertain.
9. Chainlink Labs and PwC Germany announce strategic partnership link
On March 25, Chainlink Labs announced that it has established a strategic partnership with PwC Germany. PwC Germany is involved in blockchain technology through the development of internal blockchain solutions, including blockchain explorers and transaction analyzers, tokenization frameworks, smart contract formal verification frameworks, digital asset valuation models, and transfer rule integrations.
10. NFT’s weekly summary
a. The first loan in Bitcoin Ordinal Punks history has been done via Arcade link
On March 20, the first loan in Bitcoin Ordinal Punks history has been done via Arcade, H/T @CirrusNFT. Ordinal Punks 58 holders wrapped on Ethereum and borrowed 32 ETH on Arcade, the term was 30 days, and the APR was 20%. In addition, the current cumulative fees paid for Ordinals Inscriptions minting have exceeded 100 BTC.
b. Magic Eden announces the launch of an audited Bitcoin NFT marketplace
On March 22, Magic Eden announced the launch of an audited Bitcoin NFT marketplace, where traders can buy inscriptions or other NFTs minted with satoshis on the Bitcoin network. Magic Eden announced collaborations with Bitcoin wallets Hiro and Xverse to allow traders to list, buy, and sell Ordinal NFTs.
c. LooksRare announced the launch of the first phase of its aggregator link
On March 22, NFT trading platform LooksRare announced the launch of the first phase of its aggregator, allowing users to batch purchase NFTs from both LooksRare and OpenSea. The platform also stated that the aggregator’s smart contract had passed formal security audits from Peckshield and Code4rena.
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