Weekly Project Updates: EDCON 2024 to be Held in Japan, etc

1. ETH’s Weekly Summary

a. “EDCON 2024”, Ethereum Developer Conference, to be Held in Japan link

According to @EDCON2024, the Ethereum Developer Conference “EDCON 2024” will be held in Japan. EDCON 2023 (Community Ethereum Development Conference) just took place in Podgorica, Montenegro, from May 19th to 23rd, 2023. Vitalik himself delivered a speech. In addition to EDCON, Ethereum has various community events throughout the year, such as EthCC, ETHDenver, Devcon, and ETHglobal.

b. Ethereum Developer @superphiz Calls for Community Action to Address Overconcentration of Validators in Lido ETH link

On June 1st, Ethereum developer @superphiz shared a discussion warning in which Vitalik advised that no entity should control more than 15% of validators. However, over 32% of ETH validators are currently using Lido, and the community should take action to address this issue. Currently, Lido has not taken any real steps to address this problem, and there is no reason to expect a significant decrease in their share in the future.

c. 3,821,111 ETH Staked in ETH2.0 Deposit Contract in May link

According to the data panel shared by @hildobby_, in the month of May, a total of 3,821,111 ETH were staked in the ETH2.0 deposit contract, marking the highest monthly deposit amount in history. Among them, over 1 million ETH were staked through Lido. As of June 1st, the ETH2.0 deposit contract has accumulated over 21.6 million ETH in total, resulting in a staking rate of 18.17%.

d. Ethereum Foundation Announces Opening of Applications for the Fourth Batch of Ethereum Protocol Grants (EPF) link

On June 1st, the Ethereum Foundation announced the opening of the fourth round of Ethereum Protocol Fellowship (EPF) applications. The application period is from June 1st to June 16th. The fellowship offers a four-month scholarship from July to November 2023 for researchers. The program will conclude with an on-site event at Devcon in Istanbul.

2. L2 Network Starknet Announces Mainnet Activation of v0.11.2 Version link

On June 1st, the L2 network Starknet announced the activation of version v0.11.2 on its mainnet, with the main feature being the activation of Cairo 1. Starknet had previously claimed that Cairo 1 would enhance the stability of Cairo development projects and advance its services in permissionless networks, such as network protection (allowing for stronger DoS protection) and user protection (providing Ethereum-level resistance to censorship).

3. Scroll Mainnet to Launch in Early August this Year link

On June 1st, Lea, the partnership lead of the Ethereum scalability project Scroll, posted a Temp Check on the Aave governance forum suggesting the deployment of Aave v3 MVP (Minimum Viable Product) to the Scroll mainnet. Lea also mentioned that the Scroll mainnet is scheduled to launch in early August this year, with plans to include Aave V3 as one of the first DeFi dApps in its ecosystem. In March, Scroll raised $50 million in funding, valuing the project at $1.8 billion. Currently, the Scroll Goerli testnet has nearly 1.4 million addresses and has completed over 2.8 million transactions.

4. zkSync Era Sees Active Addresses and Transaction Count Approaching Arbitrum, Surpassing Optimism link

On May 30th, according to data from Artemis and the Dune dashboard by @sankin_eth, despite zkSync Era approaching Arbitrum in terms of active addresses and transaction volume, it still lags behind in terms of fund balance. Currently, the ETH balance on the Arbitrum chain is approximately 1.07 million, with stablecoins totaling around 1.77 billion USD. On the Optimism chain, the ETH balance is 290,000, with stablecoins totaling around 470 million USD. In contrast, zkSync Era has an ETH balance of only 120,000, with stablecoins totaling around 129 million USD.

5. Karen Mok Wears CryptoPunks Dress on Stage for “InfinityAndBeyond” link

In the music program “InfinityAndBeyond” produced by Mango TV and Hunan TV, which aired on May 27th, Chinese singer Karen Mok appeared on stage wearing a CryptoPunks-themed dress. The dress was designed by Vivienne Tam and was part of the Metaverse, Past, Present, and Future collection. It featured CryptoPunks numbers 4372, 3752, 7279, 2950, and 1942 printed on it.

6. Meme Coin FLOKI Featured on CCTV-5, Price Surges Over 10% link

In the live broadcast of the singles final of the 2023 World Table Tennis Championships on CCTV 5 on May 28th, Memecoin FLOKI appeared as a sponsor on the billboard with an official website link. As a result, FLOKI experienced a temporary increase of over 10% in value. Previously, the International Table Tennis Federation announced its partnership with FLOKI, and FLOKI was granted venue advertising rights in the series of tournaments.

7. Blur Borrowing Protocol Blend Achieves Daily Record with 14.5k ETH in Lending Volume on May 28th link

According to NFTgators citing data from @1kbeetlejuice, the borrowing and lending protocol Blend on May 28th reached a record high daily trading volume of 14.5k ETH. In the past week (May 22nd-28th), the weekly trading volume of Blend in terms of USD reached a new high of 98 million USD, accounting for approximately 90% of the market share in the borrowing and lending protocol space. However, NFTstatistics.eth, the Research Director at Proof, expressed doubts about the actual distribution of Blend points. In a controlled experiment, it was found that loans with relatively lower value received more points compared to loans with relatively higher value.

On May 27th, according to NFTGo Research, in the past 30 days, the trading volume of Blur reached 270k ETH, almost three times that of OpenSea. However, OpenSea had a higher number of transactions at 322k compared to Blur. The average transaction volume per address on Blur was 7.16 ETH, while on OpenSea it was 0.66 ETH. Additionally, Blur traders tend to engage in more frequent transactions than those on OpenSea. More than 90% of Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC) transactions occurred on Blur, while OpenSea accounted for only 4.2%. There is also an estimated 35k ETH in wash-trading on Blur.

8. PancakeSwap Launches Tower Defense GameFi Project: Pancake Protectors link

On May 30th, the Binance Smart Chain (BNB) decentralized exchange (DEX) PancakeSwap launched a tower defense GameFi project called Pancake Protectors. The project is supported by the GameFi protocol Mobox, which operates on the BNB chain. Pancake Protectors integrates the native token of PancakeSwap, Cake, allowing players to use CAKE to accelerate their upgrade progress, recruit heroes, and stake CAKE to earn resources.

9. Cross-Chain NFT Marketplace Magic Eden Announces Official Launch of Core Market Contracts link

On May 29th, Magic Eden, a cross-chain NFT marketplace, announced the official opening of its core market contract, allowing users to directly parse platform transactions through Interface Definition Language (IDL). Additionally, developers can now use CPI to create and complete listings. Magic Eden has removed the requirement of co-signatures for related functionalities, allowing anyone to build on their NFT listing contract. The M2 open-source code has been uploaded to GitHub by Magic Eden.

10. zkEVM Kakarot Completes Pre-Seed Funding Round link

On June 2nd, modular zkEVM project Kakarot, based on CairoVM, announced the completion of its Pre-Seed funding round. The specific amount of funding was not disclosed. Early supporters of the project include Vitalik Buterin, StarkWare, Node Guardians Co-founder and CEO Sam Benyakoub, among others. At the same time, Kakarot unveiled its roadmap, which includes three phases: Phase 1: Kakarot will exist as an EVM within the Starknet Layer 2 solution; Phase 2: Collaboration with Madara to create L3 zkEVMs; Phase 3: Combination of Kakarot and Madara to enable type 1 zkEVM functionality.