Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has shown support for Optimism’s new governance structure, noting that proposals such as using the OP token for gas fees shows “explicit representation of non-token-holder interests.” The Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution deployed the first round of its long-awaited OP token airdrop on Wednesday as part of its new governance project the “Optimism Collective.” Optimism’s new governance structure involves two parties dubbed the “Token House” and “Citizens’ House.” The former is composed of OP governance token holders and the latter consists of “soul-bound” non-transferrable citizenship nonfungible token (NFT) owners. While it is unclear if Buterin is fully …

Automated market maker and decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol Balancer has officially deployed on Optimism, the highly touted Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, in a move designed to enhance user functionality by increasing scalability and reducing fees. Balancer’s Optimism deployment was carried out in conjunction with Beethoven X, a decentralized investment platform on the Fantom Network that forked from Balancer v2. Together, both teams are said to have developed a decentralized exchange that is set to compete in the Optimism ecosystem. Balancer Labs CEO Fernando Martinelli said his project's Optimism deployment reflects the belief that layer-2 scaling solutions will be effective in …

Optimism’s freshly launched governance token, OP, has plunged 40% since peaking at $2.10, leading members of the community to discuss baring those who dumped their tokens from future airdrops. Cointelegraph reported on Tuesday that the Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution was overwhelmed with demand for the first OP governance token airdrop, as 5% of the token supply was distributed to around 250,000 eligible users. As per CoinGecko data, the token opened at roughly $1.43 before surging to $2.10, but as more users got their hands on the free airdrop over the day, OP dropped to as low as $1.09 before climbing …

Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Optimism has been overwhelmed with “all-time high demand” following the launch of its highly anticipated airdrop on Wednesday. Users racing to collect their tokens were greeted with failed or delayed transactions as the Optimism team raced in the background to add additional capacity to the network. As previously reported in April, Optimism is airdropping the new OP governance token — over multiple phases — alongside the launch of a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) dubbed “The Optimism Collective.” Nearly 250,000 addresses are able to receive the airdrop, with the eligibility set for Optimism early adopters and regular …

Unwithered by the ongoing bear market, Bitcoin’s (BTC) underlying architecture continues to outperform itself — further securing, decentralizing and speeding up the impenetrable peer-to-peer (P2P) network. The same holds true for the Bitcoin Lightning Network (LN). The Bitcoin Lightning Network capacity attained an all-time high of 3915.776 BTC, as evidenced by data from Bitcoin Visuals, displaying a commitment to the cause of improving BTC transaction speeds and reducing fees over the layer-2 protocol. The Bitcoin LN was first implemented into the Bitcoin mainnet in 2018 to address Bitcoin’s infamous scalability issues and has ever since been able to maintain an …

Ethereum (ETH) layer-2 developer StarkWare has raised a further $100 million in its latest fundraising round despite the prevailing downturn in cryptocurrency markets. StarkWare’s series D fundraising round sees the firm’s valuation up to $8 billion, marking a four-fold increase in value just six months after its Series C round in November 2021. Tech investment firm Greenoaks Capital led the latest fundraising round in addition to private equity firm Coatue, Tiger Global and other investors. StarkWare has established itself as a major player in the Ethereum layer-2 scaling space, boasting more transaction throughput than the Bitcoin network and collectively more …

A mysterious Redditor has made a data-driven prediction that the next major phase of development in the blockchain space will be in layer-2 solutions, primarily on Ethereum. The May 22 post explains that “We’re at a turning point” where the industry is moving away from bridging between L1 blockchains toward L2s which are “right out of the gate, more secure and decentralized than alt-L1s and are built to use sound money on a credibly neutral platform:” “L2 adoption is happening now, even if it is slow and in bursts. Behind the scenes, L2’s are improving reliability, decreasing fees, and increasing …

Crypto venture fund giant Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) has highlighted that development and demand on Ethereum are “unmatched” despite the network’s high transaction fees. The firm does warn, however, that its “popularity is also a double-edged sword,” given that Ethereum prioritizes decentralization over scaling, resulting in competing blockchains stealing market share with “promises of better performance and lower fees.” The comments came via a blog post introducing a16z’s 2022 “State of Crypto” report, with the firm’s data scientist Daren Matsuoka, head of protocol design and engineering Eddy Lazzarin, general partner Chris Dixon and head of content Robert Hackett all working together …

Hop Protocol, a cross-chain bridge designed to facilitate the quick transfer of tokens between different Ethereum layer-2 scaling solutions, has unveiled a new governance model alongside an airdrop that will see early users receive 8% of the total supply of soon-to-be-released HOP tokens. Similar to Optimism, which recently unveiled a new governance structure that will see early users airdropped 5% of the total supply of the HOP token. Because of this, Hop Protocol is aiming to create a community-oriented decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) called Hop DAO that seeks to aid layer-2 scalability. An official date for the airdrop has yet …

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin believes that layer-2 transaction fees need to be under $0.05 to be “truly acceptable.” Buterin made the latest comments in response to a Twitter post from the “Bankless” podcast host Ryan Sean Adams, who shared a screenshot of the average transaction fees for eight eight Ethereum layer-2 platforms. The data is from L2fees.info, a website that compares the cost of Ethereum’s layer-1 network in comparison to layer-2s built on top of it. The only layer-2 to meet Buterin’s desired transaction fee under $0.05 is the Metis Network at $0.02, however, a token swap on the platform …

Layer-2 (L2) solutions for the Ethereum (ETH) network have grown in prominence over the last year because of the need for scalable networks that offer low-fee transactions and led to numerous projects that built cross-chain bridges with competing blockchain networks. One project that has benefitted from the growth of the L2 scaling solutions is Synthetix (SNX), a decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol that enables the creation of synthetic assets and offers exposure to derivatives and futures trading on the blockchain. Data from Cointelegraph Markets Pro and TradingView shows that since hitting a low of $4.44 on April 11, the price of …

Arthur Breitman, the co-founder of layer-1 protocol Tezos (XTZ), spoke with Cointelegraph's Jackson DuMont at the Paris Blockchain Week Summit (PBWS) last week about what it would take to unlock the true potential of decentralized finance, or DeFi. Breitman delivered a keynote speech following this interview about the company's strategy. Related: Paris Blockchain Week, April 14: Latest updates from the Cointelegraph team on the ground According to Breitman, "people haven't really tapped into DeFi for real-world assets being tokenized." When he says real-world assets, he means stocks, real estate, digital art or "anything you can think of." While calling for …