Celestia's self-positioning is the "Best Data Availability (DA) Layer" under the modular blockchain narrative. Celestia has created its own public chain, specifically to provide data publication services for rollup projects. "Data Publication" ensures that individuals who need to access the latest data can quickly obtain the required data. Many in the past have confused data publication with data availability, mixing it up with historical data retrievability. This misconception is being continuously corrected by the Ethereum Foundation and Celestia's official channels.

July was an exciting month for the Aleo ecosystem, with several projects gaining great momentum in development and community growth. Meanwhile, Aleo zkMeetups were also taking place worldwide. Here are some of the highlights from the month.

As an Aleo ambassador, I’m thrilled we hosted the first-ever Aleoverse Uncovered Twitter Space event to showcase the remarkable projects building the future of privacy on Aleo.

The highly anticipated upgrade of Ethereum, called "The Merge," took place on September 15, 2022, marking a new milestone in the Ethereum 2.0 era. After years of operation under the Proof-of-Work (POW) mechanism, Ethereum has transitioned to the Proof-of-Stake (POS) mechanism.

Zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) are expected to play a major role in Ethereum scaling and the development of the blockchain industry. Although new algorithms are being developed, the challenge of generating proofs remains. Off-chain computation is one of the key paths of blockchain scaling, hence generating proofs off-chain has become the preferred option. ZKPs are increasingly gaining favor as a solution to the decentralization problem of the proof generation process. With the Ethereum Merge, the existing market of GPU processing power has no choice but to seek for other alternatives, ZKPs in this case, present new possibilities for these mining rigs.

As we near the end of this year, let’s take a look at the wrap-up of DeFi in 2022. Despite the market turmoil, DeFi is a powerful brand that is embraced by both large and small companies. It’s still a catchy rallying cry for a financial system that’s transparent, global, and digitally native.

1\. The Backbone of Web3

We seem to be a bit optimistic right now, even though billions of dollars in venture capital investments were squandered following the market meltdown. Despite our best efforts, it’s quite embarrassing to have almost nothing that genuinely impacts anyone’s life after multiple bull rounds.

The bankruptcy of FTX and Alameda Research has struck devastation on the crypto world, with lenders, exchanges, and funds all failing. The collapse has also wreaked havoc on markets, with the overall crypto market value plummeting 14 percent from $1.0T on November 6 (the day the FTX run started) to about $889B today.