Layer-two scaling protocols for Ethereum have surged in adoption in recent months as gas prices climb again, and the layer-two ecosystem is now processing more daily transactions than the Bitcoin network, according to recent findings. According to CoinMetrics data collated by industry analyst and Week In Ethereum News founder Evan Van Ness, there were more transactions on Ethereum layer twos than on the Bitcoin network on Monday. Layer-two protocols processed around 250,000 transactions for the day, whereas there were around 210,000 on Bitcoin. Fun fact: There are already more daily transactions on Ethereum's layer2 (~250k) than on Bitcoin (~210k yesterday …

Offchain Labs, the team behind the highly anticipated Ethereum layer two platform, Arbitrum One, has completed the public mainnet launch of its optimistic rollups solution. Announced on Aug. 31, Offchain Labs also revealed that it has secured $120 million in a Series B fundraising round. The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and also saw participation from heavyweight crypto investors Polychain Capital, Pantera Capital, Alameda Research and Mark Cuban. Lightspeed partner Ravi Mhatre also joined Offchain Labs’ board as part of the round. Amy Wu, also a partner at Lightspeed, stated: “[Offchain Labs’] dedication to the Ethereum developer community …

Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch has announced its deployment on the Optimistic Ethereum (OE) mainnet, highlighting a considerable reduction in user transaction fees and confirmation delays. Sergej Kunz, co-founder of the 1inch Network, stated that "The 1inch launch on Optimistic will facilitate a dramatic increase in transaction speed." While deposits utilizing the OE network are set to be credited almost instantly, withdrawals will require a waiting period of seven days. These wait times are expected to improve when fast withdrawal service is enabled sometime in the future. At the time of launch, the OE network will only be able to handle …

Leading data oracle provider Chainlink has announced its successful launch on Arbitrum One — the beta mainnet deployment of layer-two Ethereum scaling solution, Arbitrum. Announced Thursday, the launch will allow developers building on Arbitrum One to access financial market data directly on-chain, providing enhanced functionality to decentralized exchanges, algorithmic stablecoins and other advanced decentralized finance (DeFi) products on the Arbitrum One network. Chainlink is now live on @Arbitrum One, providing hundreds of smart contract applications direct access to #Chainlink's decentralized services, starting with high speed, low-cost Price Feeds and expanding to more off-chain computations. — Chainlink - Official Channel (@chainlink) …

The chief technology officer of the SushiSwap decentralized exchange has revealed why the protocol is no longer keen to scale using layer-two solutions from Optimistic Ethereum. The layer-two solutions provider OΞ whitelisted several projects last year, including Uniswap and Synthetix, granting them preferential access to its platform as it was being built. SushiSwap was also keen to get on this whitelist, but it was not forthcoming, resulting in a decision to delay any further development. In its official documentation, Optimism clearly states “contract deployments to the Optimistic Ethereum mainnet are currently restricted by a whitelist.” In a thread on Wednesday …

A high-performance, layer-two solution based on zk-rollups is designed to bring cross-chain privacy to digital assets. The Zecrey protocol enables account balances and transaction amounts to be encrypted — delivering anonymity and hiding relationships between senders and recipients. It also means that only an owner knows how much crypto is in their wallet. Bridges to a number of blockchain platforms also ensure a number of digital assets can interact with each other, all while ensuring confidentiality isn’t compromised. This is thanks to the use of the customized Sigma protocol. All of this is achieved without foregoing speed, and the protocol …

Decentralized derivatives and synthetic asset trading protocol Synthetix has launched trading on the Optimistic Ethereum layer-two scaling platform. The long-awaited launch was announced by the Synthetix protocol exchange Kwenta on Friday. It enables the exchange to offer faster transactions and lower fees using optimistic rollup technology. Initially, there will be just four synthetic assets available for trading on layer two — sUSD, sETH, sBTC and sLINK. The data collected from this alpha launch and testing phase will enable the protocol to optimize synth trading on layer two and prepare for the beta launch, the announcement stated. Trading on layer two …

Biconomy, a multichain infrastructure network for decentralized applications, has concluded a $9 million private funding round that was co-led by venture firms DACM and Mechanism Capital. Ahmed Al-Balaghi, CEO of Biconomy, said his protocol has been designed to address some of the biggest challenges with Web 3.0 transactions such as gas fees, Ether-only payments and fragmented layer-two solutions. He explained: “If we are able to solve even a fraction of those challenges, we believe we will be able to onboard the next billion users into the DeFi and broader Web 3.0 ecosystem.” Related: A multichain future will accelerate innovators and …

Decentralized finance (DeFi) remains one of the fastest-growing subsectors of the cryptocurrency ecosystem and newly launched platforms looking to grow their userbase and attract liquidity typically offer high-interest staking pools for the first few weeks after launching. One new project that has steadily gained traction in terms of user growth and total value locked (TVL) since farming went live is DinoSwap (DINO), a Polygon network-based cross-chain protocol that rivals the likes of PancakeSwap and other automated market makers. Data from CoinGecko shows DINO that saw its price trade as high as $4.28 upon launch and a surprise flash crash pushed …

Social media platform Reddit announced it would be using scaling solution Arbitrum to handle scaling its Ethereum-based Community Points system. In a Thursday announcement, Reddit administrator jarins said the platform had launched its own layer-2 rollup using Arbitrum technology for its rewards points. Reddit said it had deployed the layer-2 solution on top of the Rinkeby testnet before it plans to migrate to the Ethereum mainnet. The platform cited Arbitrum’s features of being decentralized, being developer-friendly, and having broad ecosystem support in its decision. Arbitrum essentially “rolls up” transactions on a gasless sidechain with a separate set of security and …

Layer-two scaling platform Celer Network has officially launched the mainnet version of cBridge, a multi-chain network that gives users the ability to more easily swap assets across multiple blockchains. With cBridge, users can instantly transfer tokens across Ethereum, Polygon, Binance Smart Chain and Arbitrum networks without experiencing any liquidity bottlenecks, Celer announced Thursday. The company claims that cBRidge solves many of the existing challenges preventing the full integration of layer-two scaling solutions, including an overly complex user experience and the significant resources required to move assets across multiple chains. Related: A multichain future will accelerate innovators and entrepreneurs Mo Dong, …

Charts turned green as Bitcoin (BTC) price rallied to $32,858, but a number of analysts also cautioned that the market may not be out of the woods yet. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that the top movers over the past 24-hours were Telcoin (TEL), Polygon (MATIC) and Axie Infinity (AXS), indicating that the recovery is widespread and not just confined to large-cap cryptocurrencies. As seen in the list above, the top-performing tokens represent a variety of cryptocurrency subsectors, including nonfungible tokens, artificial intelligence and decentralized finance projects. Telcoin secures new trading pairs on QuickSwap Telcoin (TEL), a …