A look at some of the exciting developments in the scaling world (29/04/2023).

INDEX:

• The Execution Layer Landscape

• zkSync DEX Merlin Hacked

• RaaS AltLayer Now supports Arbitrum Orbit

• LayerZero Now Live on ZkSync Era

• Lens Protocol Launches New OP L3 Solution

• Google Cloud and Polygon Enter Partnership

The Execution Layer Landscape

Researcher and Twitter user @nuss_eli shared an excellent tweet presenting his perspective on the current and future of the layer-2 landscape.

Key points he makes include:

• The type of proof system (fraud or validity) will have less and less bearing as the industry reaches maturity since they can interchange.

• We will see new ways of improving transaction execution, like parallelism, as all that will matter is execution speeds.

• Projects have a range of solutions to choose from depending on whether they want value capture, composability, or something in between.

• Key questions for the space include decentralization concerns, the need for a token, and chain interoperability.

Here is a link to his detailed article for anyone interested in a deeper dive.

zkSync DEX Merlin Hacked

Merlin, a zkSync-based decentralized exchange, has been hacked for over $1.82 million shortly after receiving a code audit from smart-contract auditor Certik.

Certik responded by tweeting:

Initial findings point to a potential private key management issue rather than an exploit as the root-cause. While audits cannot prevent private key issues, we always highlight best practices to projects.

However, some researchers feel that Certik failed to identify an issue in the code.

The issue has once again raised doubts about smart contract security and the effectiveness of audits within the community.

As users in the space, it is always helpful to be sceptical of newer projects, as popular crypto Twitter contributor @CryptoKoryo shares in his following tweet.

But he agrees that this was not straightforward, especially given that the project had collaborated with several influencers in the space and their code was recently audited.

RaaS AltLayer Now supports Arbitrum Orbit

Rollup-as-a-service company AltLayer announced its support for the new Arbitrum Orbit platform recently.

Orbit is a technology that lets developers create layer three blockchains on top of either Arbitrum One or Nova in a permissionless fashion.

With a few simple clicks, AltLayer's rollup launchpad would allow coders and users with little to no coding skills to spin up a customized Layer 3 linked to Arbitrum in under 5 minutes.

LayerZero Now Live on ZkSync Era

Omnichain interoperability protocol, LayerZero announced it is now live on the zkSync Era mainnet.

This marks another step towards interoperability between chains.

Projects on Era can now expand to other chains supported by LayerZero, and projects on LayerZero can move into the Era chain.

Lens Protocol Launches New OP L3 Solution

The famous decentralized social graph on Polygon, Lens, announced the launch of its scaling solution built on top of the OP stack, Momoka.

Lens said:

Momoka is an Optimistic L3 scaling solution, that will process transactions at hyperscale, and is designed to support the next generation of web3 social users.

Momoka enables the Lens ecosystem to scale to greater TPS by processing its Polygon transactions off-chain, which is currently unfeasible when running on an EVM chain.

Momoka, an Optimistic L3, provides significantly increased throughput and reduced costs without sacrificing user sovereignty; allowing us to realize our vision of scaling Lens to the world.

Read more about it here.

Google Cloud and Polygon Enter Partnership

Google Cloud and Polygon Labs have established a multi-year strategic agreement to accelerate the adoption of Polygon protocols such as Polygon PoS, Polygon Supernets, and Polygon zkEVM using Google Cloud infrastructure and developer tools.

The announcement was made at the Consensus 2023 forum.

The main idea is to make it easier for developers to build, launch, and grow their Web3 products and decentralized applications (dApps) on Polygon protocols.

Till next time, have a great weekend!