One of the core development teams behind the Ethereum (ETH) Merge, Prysmatic Labs, has been acquired by Offchain Labs, the developer of Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum. Announced in an Oct. 13 blog post by Offchain Labs, the deal's financial terms were not disclosed, but it was noted Prysmatic Labs chose to join Offchain Labs "for many reasons," but mainly because of the two companies' alignment in their core beliefs. Prysmatic Labs co-founder Raul Jordan said the move will "build a unified team stronger than the sum of its parts." "Merging with Offchain Labs made perfect sense to us as an …

A new layer-3 (L3) prototype aimed at further solving Ethereum’s scalability issues is set to be deployed for testing as soon as Q1 2023. zkSync, a provider of zero-knowledge blockchain solutions on Oct. 10 announced it is aiming to deploy a new EVM-compatible layer-3 prototype called “Pathfinder” on testnet early next year. zkSync is a L2 Ethereum scaling protocol designed to bring down network usage costs. It launched a 1.0 version back in June 2020, and is now gearing up for the launch of zkSync 2.0 later this month. In its most recent blog post the team explained that the …

A self-described white hat hacker has uncovered a “multi-million dollar vulnerability” in the bridge linking Ethereum and Arbitrum Nitro and received a 400 Ether (ETH) bounty for their find. Known as riptide on Twitter, the hacker described the exploit as the use of an initializing function to set their own bridge address, which would hijack all incoming ETH deposits from those trying to bridge funds from Ethereum to Arbitrum Nitro. Riptide explained the exploit in a Medium post on Sept. 20: “We could either selectively target large ETH deposits to remain undetected for a longer period of time, siphon up …

While Ethereum-based layer-2 solutions have been focused on hyperscaling the network, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes layer 3s will serve a far different purpose — providing “customized functionality.” Buterin shared his thoughts in a Sept. 17 post, providing three “visions” of what layer 3s will be used for in the future. The Ethereum co-founder said a third layer on the blockchain makes sense only if it provides a different function to layer 2s, which have been used mainly to enhance scaling via Zero-Knowledge (ZK) Rollup technology. “A three-layer scaling architecture that consists of stacking the same scaling scheme on top …

Hype does not always equate to greater adoption, as the on-chain data from the second quarter of 2022 shows Solana (SOL) surpassing Ethereum (ETH) in users’ daily transactions despite various drawbacks from both macroeconomic conditions and network outages. Throughout the second quarter, Solana’s daily transactions consistently increased, ending with more than 40 million daily transactions compared to Ethereum’s 1 million daily transactions between April and June, confirmed Nansen’s State of the Quarter Report. Solana’s significant increase in daily transactions was observed on daily non-vote transactions when compared to Ethereum — despite sporting higher volatility. On-chain data revealed that decentralized exchanges …

Arbitrum is one of Ethereum’s layer-2 scaling solutions designed to improve smart contracts’ efficiency and transaction execution on the network while reducing fees drastically and adding extra privacy features. L2 networks are software that sit on top of the base layer of a blockchain like Bitcoin or Ethereum to boost the platform’s efficiency and offer inexpensive transactions. In recent years, Ethereum’s surge in the development and adoption of Web3, nonfungible tokens (NFTs) and decentralized applications (DApps) has resulted in the platform’s excessive congestion leading to skyrocketing fees. Different solutions have been explored to resolve Ethereum’s scalability, including layer-1 dedicated upgrades. …

Decentralized exchange aggregator 1inch is rewarding users with free tokens for their participation on Optimism — a move the organization says will further incentivize activity on the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution. The exchange aggregator announced Tuesday that it would equally distribute 300,000 OP tokens among its most active wallets and regular users on Optimism through a retrospective Merkle drop. 1inch said 3,782 wallets have been selected for the airdrop. OP token is the native cryptocurrency of Optimism giving holders the ability to participate in the network’s multi-tiered governance system. OP token’s current value is $1.22, having gained 5% on the …

When Bitcoin was trading above $60,000, the smartest analysts and financial-minded folk told investors that BTC price would never fall below its previous all time high. These same individuals also said $50,000 was a buy the dip opportunity, and then they said $35,000 was a generational buy opportunity. Later on, they also suggested that BTC would never fall under $20,000. Of course, “now” is a great time to buy the dip, and one would think that buying BTC at or under $10,000 would also be the purchase of a lifetime. But by now, all the so-called “experts'' have fallen quiet …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Arbitrum is set to undergo one of its most significant upgrades on Wednesday, set to increase transaction throughput, slash transaction fees and simplify cross-chain communication between Arbitrum and Ethereum. Referred to as the “Nitro” upgrade, Arbitrum reconfirmed the date of the upgrade in a Twitter post on Aug. 29, confirming that the upgrade will take effect on Aug. 31 at 10:30 AM Eastern Time, while noting a two to four hours of network downtime period is to be expected. Reminder — Arbitrum One is upgrading to Nitro on Wednesday 8/31. There will be 2-4 hours of …

After years of waiting, Ethereum is finally prepared to become a full-fledged proof-of-stake (PoS) blockchain. Besides Ethereum's native token Ether (ETH), the valuation of several other tokens have not only benefited greatly, but could also keep outperforming ETH after the Merge. Ethereum steps closer toward the Merge The leading smart contract platform completed the last of its three public testnets dubbed "Goerli," on Aug. 11. Therefore, there should be no delays in Ethereum's "Merge," expected to go live on Sep. 19. Ether price jumped 5% to approximately $1,950, its highest level in over two months, after the Goerli update. Meanwhile, …

The number of decentralized applications (DApps) on Ethereum-scaling-platform Polygon has topped 37,000, marking a 400% increase since the start of 2022. The Polygon team shared the figures via an Aug. 10 blog post, which was sourced from partnered Web3 development platform Alchemy, noting that the figure represents the cumulative number of applications ever launched on both the testnet and mainnet. It also noted that the number of monthly active teams — a measure of developer activity on a blockchain — reached 11,800 at the end of July, up a whopping 47.5% from March. The project team also highlighted a breakdown …

According to data from DeFi Llama, total value locked (TVL) on Optimism, a layer-two scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain, has surged 284% in the past month. The vast majority of TVL consists of users lending and borrowing assets on Aave through Optimism's layer-two chain. Investors have been bidding up digital assets related to the Ethereum ecosystem in anticipation of The Merge upgrade, which will see the blockchain transition from a proof-of-work network to that based on proof-of-stake. According to a recent Ethereum developer call, the tentative date for The Merge coming online has been scheduled for September 19. As …