The long-awaited layer two scaling solutions upgrade for Uniswap has finally been spotted in the wild with the launch of version 3 on Optimistic Ethereum. In a post on July 13, the world’s most popular decentralized exchange stated that it was pleased to finally announce the alpha launch of Uniswap v3 on the Optimistic Ethereum (OΞ) mainnet. The alpha launch is a limited version of the full system which helps developers deploy the system gradually and address any issues that may arise. The blog post elaborated: “Please treat this as an early alpha product. Optimistic Ethereum is a complex Layer …

Hop Protocol, a team working on interoperability within Ethereum’s layer-two ecosystem, has launched its Hop bridge for the first time. A Monday blog post notes that the bridge has been launched with limited functionality, currently supporting “instant” USD Coin (USDC) transfers between the Ethereum mainnet, Polygon and xDai Chain. Hop plans to expand the number and assets it supports over “the next couple of weeks,” including crypto assets Ether (ETH), Polygon (MATIC), and Wrapped Bitcoin (WBTC), as well as stablecoins Dai (DAI) and Tether (USDT), and forthcoming layer-two networks Optimism and Arbitrum. We're proud to officially launch the Hop bridge …

Following a $1.25 million seed funding round, a cryptocurrency payments and identity management app is moving deeper into decentralized finance. Numio has partnered with zkSync to provide a trustless layer-two solution for payments that it says are instantaneous and as much as 100 times cheaper than transactions on the clogged and expensive Ethereum blockchain. Numio promises peer-to-peer scalability of 2,000 transactions per second. Led by HashKey Capital, the funding round will allow Numio to push into DeFi, including cryptocurrency trading, swaps, pooling, and staking on Ethereum's layer two. Also on the roadmap is support for e-commerce and point-of-sale capability, letting …

Crypto and blockchain enthusiasts take pride in belonging to a community that is working on the future of financial systems. Yet, the community is innately fragmented thanks to multiple blockchains working independently of each other. The dream of mass adoption of blockchain and decentralized finance faces a major hurdle: a lack of interoperability. Meanwhile, decentralized applications (DApps) — the fruits of decentralization — are being held up. DApp developers face difficulties while transacting between different blockchain networks, and the reason behind this is they are stuck in the Ethereum ecosystem. Despite having the best infrastructure, Ethereum is losing its foothold. …

Cryptocurrency prices surged on June 29 as Bitcoin (BTC) price pushed through the $35,000 resistance level and lifted the total market cap by $93 billion, with $50 billion of that total flooding into altcoins. Bitcoin put on a 7% gain on the day to climb back above $36,000 and leading traders to expect a rally to the $38,000 to $41,000 level if (BTC) can flip the $35,000 level into support. As the market turned green, data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro tracked notable bullish developments in a number of select altcoins including Polygon (MATIC), SushiSwap (SUSHI) and PancakeSwap (CAKE). Polygon (MATIC) …

Ethereum (ETH) scalability infrastructure developer Polygon has announced the rollout of a general-purpose, scalable data availability solution called Avail. According to a release issued on Monday, Polygon revealed that Avail will function as a data available tool for execution layers like sidechains, standalone networks, and layer-two protocols. One of the major hurdles for effective blockchain scaling is the data availability problem. Malicious actors can broadcast blocks to the network with incomplete data and other participants will be none the wiser. To tackle this problem, the Polygon team stated that Avail utilizes erasure coding and polynomial commitment to combat data encoding …

With decentralized finance growing fast enough that mainstream financial companies are taking notice, it’s a good time to be able to offer an alternative to Ethereum. The platform on which most of the DeFi business is built, Ethereum, is struggling under its weight. Compounded by the explosive growth of NFTs, Ethereum is proving too slow and far too expensive to handle DeFi as congestion drives the per-transaction gas price through the roof. Which is why a project like Free TON that says it can offer not only faster and cheaper transactions but the room to grow without running into trouble …

Dominic Williams, founder of Dfinity and its Internet Computer, has slammed the scaling solutions put forward by Polkadot and Ethereum for offering a disjointed user experience. The self-described “blockchain maximalist” criticized Ethereum’s burgeoning ecosystem of second-layer scaling solutions, describing Ethereum as starting to resemble a ridiculously elaborate “Rube Goldberg machine” of “layer-two cloud applications.” Williams asserted layer twos cause points of friction for Ethereum users and exposes them to counterparty security vulnerabilities, emphasizing that more than half of Ethereum’s nodes are hosted by Amazon Web Services: “A lot of these proof-of-stake networks today that people invest in are really just …

Aave has surged to the top of the DeFi ranking by total value locked (TVL) amid its recent embrace of layer-two for scaling. According to Aave’s website, the v2 and Polygon deployments of the popular crypto-powered money market protocol currently represent more than $20 billion in locked capital, holding more than $12.6 billion and $7.8 billion in the respective versions. According to DeFi Llama, Aave v2 is currently the largest decentralized protocol by assets locked, while Aave’s Polygon deployment would rank fourth despite launching just six weeks ago. Aave’e embrace of layer-two solution, Polygon, appears to have bolstered its adoption …

Composable Finance, a decentralized finance (DeFi) interoperability protocol, has announced a $7 million raise backed by 16 notable blockchain investment firms. According to a release issued on Tuesday, the funding round was led by Advanced Blockchain AG and Rarestone Capital. Other participants included Alameda Research, Spartan Group, Divergence Ventures and Blockchain Capital, among others. Composable Finance is seeking to enhance DeFi synchronicity via a two-pronged approach to interoperability on both Ethereum and Polkadot, with the latter forming a basis for further cross-chain interactions. According to Cosmin Grigore, CEO of Composable Finance, blockchain interoperability will push the emerging technology into “a …

In a landscape of so-called scaling solutions primarily composed of sidechains and EMV-enabled competitors, one widely anticipated “rollup” layer 2 sidechain for Ethereum has finally arrived. Offchain Labs announced the launch of Abritrum One with a blog post late last night. Arbitrum One is currently live on Ethereum in a beta state, though teams that wish to participate and build implementations with the rollup tech need to apply for access: Introducing Arbitrum One, our mainnet beta: live on Ethereum and open to developers now!https://t.co/3Jca2dZw0D — Arbitrum (@arbitrum) May 29, 2021 The market has long been eager for a true layer …

The launch of the new Polygon x RenVM Bridge was announced on Twitter by Polygon on Thursday, which emphasized the bridge will allow Bitcoin (BTC) and other assets to be used on the high-speed and low-cost layer-two network. Ren and Polygon have teamed up to launch a bridge allowing BTC and other assets to be transferred between Bitcoin and the Ethereum scaling solution. Excited to announce the launch of a direct bridge to Polygon by @renprotocol! With the Polygon x RenVM Bridge, users can move #BTC and many more assets directly to Polygon, enabling high-speed, low-cost txns for these assets. …