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Self Chain Ousts CEO Ravindra Kumar After $50M OTC Scam Allegations

Layer-1 blockchain Self Chain announced that it has terminated its CEO Ravindra Kumar after allegations of a $50 million over-the-counter (OTC) scam.

The allegations broke on Friday with claims that Kumar was involved in a string of OTC scams including firms such as Aza Ventures, which published the allegations on Telegram.

Kumar responded at the time by posting: “I've been accused of serious wrongdoing, which is completely false. My legal team and I are working on a statement to address this matter. Stay tuned for updates.”

An OTC transaction is one that takes place outside of an exchange in order to avoid slippage on larger transactions. It often involves the buyer, seller and a middleman brokering the deal.

The Self Chain token (SLF), which trades on Binance, is now down by 35.9% in the past week after selling off in relation to the allegations.

“Ravindra Kumar’s role as CEO has been formally terminated,” Self Chain wrote in a Monday tweet. “He will no longer hold any position, responsibility, or association with Self Chain in any capacity going forward.”

No Self Chain founding members have ever been authorized to engage in OTC deals involving $SLF,” it continued. “Any other deals circulating in the market have not been officially approved or sanctioned by the team in any way whatsoever.”

Kumar retweeted Self Chain's tweet and removed reference to himself as CEO from his profile.

Posted on

Ethereum To $20K? Investor Says Real-World Adoption Holds The Key

Ethereum’s chances of reaching the $20,000 level are fueling debate among investors and analysts. The success of the Ethereum network is dependent on real-world usage and rising activity on its platforms, so it is an area of focus in the cryptocurrency space.

Real-World Usage Is The Key

Ryan Berckmans, an investor in Ethereum, thinks that the key to a $20,000 ETH price is practical use. He says that the high fees, while normally a disadvantage, are actually an indicator of faith in the altcoin. If users are paying more, it is because they trust in the value of the network.

Berckmans makes the comparison with Bitcoin, which continues to hold value despite 99% of its usage being centralized. He reiterates that Ethereum needs to pay attention to developing its real-world growth if it is to replicate this success.

Importance Of High Fees

Restoring high total fees is critical for Ethereum’s price increase. Berckmans argues that even if a hypothetical scenario sees $1 trillion in stablecoins on Ethereum’s Layer 1, it wouldn’t be enough without high fees to back it up.

He suggests that the Ethereum network must prioritize robust growth to ensure that investor confidence is restored. Without this growth, reaching the ambitious target of $20,000 seems unlikely.


Scaling Through Layer 1 And Layer 2

Berckmans stresses the need for more Layer 1 applications and better integration with Layer 2 solutions. This expansion is vital for sustainable growth. Ethereum must increase the distribution of its Layer 1 assets to Layer 2s while also diversifying the solutions available on Layer 2. This kind of scaling is essential to accommodate growing network activity and user demand.


Focusing On Utility-Driven Growth

As Ethereum celebrates the 10-year anniversary of its mainnet, Berckmans insists that the network has come a long way but still has much further to go.

Ethereum is the most capitalized blockchain by application but will need to scale dramatically to maintain its position. By prioritizing the development of a culture centered around real-world uses and economic development, the crypto asset can build a bridge to its price target.

The Ethereum network is at a crossroads. The altcoin needs to maximize real-world usage and have growth at the top of its agenda. In doing so, it may well hit that much-sought $20,000 target in the future — at least according to Berckmans.

Featured image from Gemini Imagen, chart from TradingView

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The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum’s blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche’s big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What’s good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That’s the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake’s proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That’s really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It’s not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake’s proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” Read more

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network’s processes inoperable. Read more

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an “optimium,” a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and “attesting,” or confirming, blocks in the protocol. Read more

AVALANCHE’S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as “L1s,” even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche’s “primary network,” the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. Read more

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. Edan Yago, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain’s testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the Hotel California or a roach motel for the bridged BTC. “This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM,” BitcoinOS said in a press release. “Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned.”

Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby’s Dune Analytics dashboard.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum’s native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin’s price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK’S OMKAR GODBOLE

Money Center

Vibe shift

Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain

Not just fun and games?

Why Memecoins Matter

Bringing in the big Sun

Trump’s Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun’s $30M Token Purchase

Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial as Adviser

“Reports are greatly exaggerated”

Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: Emergence, Prague

Dec. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Finance Week

Dec. 11-12: AI Summit NYC

Dec. 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week

Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris

Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum’s blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche’s big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What’s good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That’s the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake’s proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That’s really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It’s not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake’s proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” Read more

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network’s processes inoperable. Read more

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an “optimium,” a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and “attesting,” or confirming, blocks in the protocol. Read more

AVALANCHE’S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as “L1s,” even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche’s “primary network,” the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. Read more

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. Edan Yago, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain’s testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the Hotel California or a roach motel for the bridged BTC. “This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM,” BitcoinOS said in a press release. “Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned.”

Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby’s Dune Analytics dashboard.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum’s native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin’s price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK’S OMKAR GODBOLE

Money Center

Vibe shift

Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain

Not just fun and games?

Why Memecoins Matter

Bringing in the big Sun

Trump’s Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun’s $30M Token Purchase

Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial as Adviser

“Reports are greatly exaggerated”

Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: Emergence, Prague

Dec. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Finance Week

Dec. 11-12: AI Summit NYC

Dec. 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week

Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris

Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum’s blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche’s big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What’s good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That’s the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake’s proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That’s really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It’s not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake’s proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” Read more

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network’s processes inoperable. Read more

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an “optimium,” a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and “attesting,” or confirming, blocks in the protocol. Read more

AVALANCHE’S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as “L1s,” even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche’s “primary network,” the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. Read more

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. Edan Yago, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain’s testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the Hotel California or a roach motel for the bridged BTC. “This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM,” BitcoinOS said in a press release. “Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned.”

Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby’s Dune Analytics dashboard.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum’s native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin’s price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK’S OMKAR GODBOLE

Money Center

Vibe shift

Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain

Not just fun and games?

Why Memecoins Matter

Bringing in the big Sun

Trump’s Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun’s $30M Token Purchase

Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial as Adviser

“Reports are greatly exaggerated”

Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: Emergence, Prague

Dec. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Finance Week

Dec. 11-12: AI Summit NYC

Dec. 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week

Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris

Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk’s weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I’m Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk’s deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum’s blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche’s big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of The Protocol, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly The Protocol podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What’s good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That’s the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake’s proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That’s really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It’s not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake’s proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” Read more

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network’s processes inoperable. Read more

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an “optimium,” a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and “attesting,” or confirming, blocks in the protocol. Read more

AVALANCHE’S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as “L1s,” even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche’s “primary network,” the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. Read more

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. Edan Yago, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain’s testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the Hotel California or a roach motel for the bridged BTC. “This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM,” BitcoinOS said in a press release. “Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned.”

Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum’s Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby’s Dune Analytics dashboard.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum’s native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin’s price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK’S OMKAR GODBOLE

Money Center

Vibe shift

Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain

Not just fun and games?

Why Memecoins Matter

Bringing in the big Sun

Trump’s Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun’s $30M Token Purchase

Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump’s World Liberty Financial as Adviser

“Reports are greatly exaggerated”

Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: India Blockchain Week, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: Emergence, Prague

Dec. 9-12: Abu Dhabi Finance Week

Dec. 11-12: AI Summit NYC

Dec. 11-14: Taipei Blockchain Week

Jan 9-12, 2025: CES, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: World Economic Forum, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: WAGMI conference, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: Adopting Bitcoin, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: PLAN B Forum, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: Satoshi Roundtable, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: ConsensusHK, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: NFT Paris

Feb 23-March 2: ETHDenver

May 14-16: Consensus, Toronto.

May 27-29: Bitcoin 2025, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.

Posted on

The Protocol: Bitcoin Bridged Trustlessly to L2; Ethereum’s Blob Mob

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development. I'm <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/author/marc-hochstein/" target="_blank">Marc Hochstein</a>, CoinDesk's deputy editor-in-chief for features, opinion and standards.

IN THIS ISSUE:

Ethereum's blob mob

Staking on Starknet

Avalanche's big upgrade

L2 teams beam over Beam Chain

Sui suffers a brief outage

Bitcoin bridged, trustlessly

This article is featured in the latest issue of <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a>, our weekly newsletter exploring the tech behind crypto, one block at a time. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/newsletters/the-protocol/" target="_blank">Sign up here</a> to get it in your inbox every Wednesday. Also please check out our weekly <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/podcasts/the-protocol/" target="_blank">The Protocol</a> podcast.

Network news

BEAMING OVER THE BEAM CHAIN: What's good for the L1 is good for the L2s. That's the assessment the teams behind zkSync and Polygon, two of the leading layer-2 networks running on top of Ethereum, gave of Justin Drake's proposal to overhaul the $400 billion blockchain, dismissing suggestions it would make their auxiliary networks redundant. “That's really a misconception,” said Alex Gluchowski, the CEO of Matter Labs, the developer firm behind zkSync. “The changes that Justin announced are focused on the consensus layer, not on the execution layer. It's not going to affect the execution layer.” In addition to incorporating ZK, Drake's proposal seeks to shorten block times, which could cut transaction costs for L2s settling on Ethereum. Drake also said he wants to introduce single-slot finality, meaning blocks with transaction data could be finalized immediately, and that information would become permanent right away. “All of those things are great because we depend on Ethereum as the global settlement layer,” Gluchowski said. Brendan Farmer, a co-founder at Polygon, also told CoinDesk he doesn’t think the Beam Chain would obsolesce layer-2s. Instead, he said, the upgrade would “make rollups work better.” However, others in the crypto community were underwhelmed by the whole plan, lamenting in particular that Drake’s five-year timeline wasn’t ambitious enough, leaving ample room for centrally-developed chains like Solana to eat Ethereum’s lunch.” <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/ethereum-layer-2-teams-welcome-proposal-to-overhaul-blockchain" target="_blank">Read more</a>

SUI OUTAGE: Sui Network (SUI), a relatively new blockchain, experienced an unexpected two-hour outage on Thursday. The downtime was caused by a bug in its transaction scheduling logic, which led to its validator network crashing. The issue was resolved, the network said. Blockchain outages can take place for a plethora of reasons, ranging from a 51% attack to technical errors. A common error is that of nodes – or individual entities that process transactions – being unable to sync with each other, causing the blockchain to go offline. Software bugs may be another error vector, where outdated code can render the network's processes inoperable. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/21/sui-network-back-up-after-scheduling-bug-leads-to-two-hour-downtime-sui-recovers" target="_blank">Read more</a>

STAKING ON STARKNET: Starknet has become the first major rollup blockchain running on top of Ethereum to let users earn money by staking their tokens and validating transactions. (Metis was the first layer-2 to do so but is far smaller and is an "optimium," a different kind of L2.) Now, anyone who has at least 20,000 STRK tokens (roughly $12,000 at recent prices) can pledge the asset as collateral and earn rewards for validating transactions. Users with less than 20,000 STRK can delegate their tokens to validators to stake on their behalf. (Validators that behave maliciously or neglect their duties stand to forfeit staked tokens.) Validators and delegators that want to withdraw staked tokens must wait 21 days to receive them as well as any rewards earned from staking. Implementing staking on Starknet is part of a multiphase plan. During this first phase, StarkWare, the company developing Starknet will study staking habits on the network, and from there will assess whether and how its validators can be given the additional responsibilities of creating and "attesting," or confirming, blocks in the protocol. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/26/crypto-staking-goes-live-on-starknet-in-first-for-ethereum-l2-blockchains" target="_blank">Read more</a>

AVALANCHE'S BIG UPGRADE: Avalanche, the eighth-largest blockchain by total value locked (TVL), is moving ahead with a major technical makeover. The Avalanche9000 upgrade went live in a test network environment Monday, bringing the changes one step closer to the main network. Avalanche9000 will be the largest upgrade that Avalanche has seen. It is designed to cut the costs of sending transactions, operating validators and building apps on the network, whose native token (AVAX) is the 11th-largest cryptocurrency, with a $16 billion market cap. The foundation is trying to attract developers to Avalanche and encourage users to create customized blockchains using its technology, known as subnets. Somewhat confusingly, subnets are now officially referred to in the Avalanche community as "L1s," even though they are roughly analogous to the layer-2, or L2, networks that augment Ethereum and other blockchains. (Avalanche's "primary network," the equivalent of a layer-1 in other ecosystems, is considered a subnet.) The team is hoping to bring Avalanche9000 to mainnet by yearend. Among other changes, 9000 would allow for a new type of validator with which anyone can launch their own subnets. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2024/11/25/avalanche-blockchains-largest-ever-upgrade-goes-live-on-testnet?_gl=1*1ycxzn7*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Read more</a>

ONE-WAY TICKET: BitcoinOS, a smart contract project led by crypto O.G. <a href="https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2024/10/26/from-smuggling-gold-out-of-africa-to-bridging-bitcoin-and-cardano" target="_blank">Edan Yago</a>, has executed what it bills as the first trustless bridge transaction for any blockchain. Using zero-knowledge cryptography, a nominal amount of bitcoin (0.0002 BTC, about $19 and change) was locked up on the main blockchain's testnet, and a proof was generated minting tokens on the testnet for Merlin Chain, a layer-2 network. No oracle or custodian was involved, according to BitcoinOS. For now, however, Merlin Chain is like the <a href="https://genius.com/37517" target="_blank">Hotel California</a> or a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXUQ_4gMoG0" target="_blank">roach motel</a> for the bridged BTC. "This is one half of the bridge showing the ability to bridge assets from Bitcoin to an EVM," BitcoinOS said in a press release. "Once the other half of the bridge is completed, Merlin Chain users can settle their Bitcoin-pegged assets back to the mainchain by proving that the tokens were burned."

Ethereum's Blob Mob

Usage of binary large objects, or blobs, has surged on the Ethereum network, signaling that more users are embracing layer-2 scaling tech for faster and more affordable transactions.

This year, Ethereum's Dencun upgrade introduced blobs, which allow large chunks of data to be temporarily attached to transactions, and later deleted after the data is verified. (You can think of a blob as a <a href="https://www.cyfrin.io/blog/what-is-eip-4844-proto-danksharding-and-blob-transactions#what-is-a-blob-transaction" target="_blank">sidecar that rides along with a motorcycle</a> for a time but eventually gets detached and discarded.) Layer-2 protocols such as BASE, Arbitrum, and Optimism use blobs to bundle transactions together, process them off-chain and then post them to the Ethereum main chain for verification without permanently gumming up the works.

The number of blobs posted to the network consistently averaged more than 21,000 this month, matching the record activity seen in March, according to pseudonymous data analyst Hildobby's <a href="https://dune.com/hildobby/blobs" target="_blank">Dune Analytics dashboard</a>.

Posting blobs costs a fee, which fluctuates depending on network conditions. The fees are paid in Ethereum's native token ether, and are burned just like regular transaction fees, taking supply of ETH off the market, a positive for the coin's price.

In this way, blobs mitigate the much-discussed cannibalization of the main chain by L2.

The blob base submission fee spiked as high as $80 on Monday, the highest since March, and the average number of blobs posted in each Ethereum block rose to 4.3. More importantly, blob fees have burned over 214 ETH worth $723,000 over the last seven days, the sixth largest source of fee burns on the network over that period, according to data from ultrasound.money.

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/26/ethereum-blob-usage-explodes-as-traders-rush-to-layer-2-solutions" target="_blank">CLICK HERE FOR THE FULL ANALYSIS BY COINDESK'S OMKAR GODBOLE</a>

Money Center

Vibe shift

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/22/coinbase-app-gets-left-behind-as-memecoin-craze-drives-traders-on-chain?_gl=1*12vt1du*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Coinbase App Gets Left Behind as Memecoin Craze Drives Traders On-Chain</a>

Not just fun and games?

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/opinion/2024/11/25/why-memecoins-matter" target="_blank">Why Memecoins Matter</a>

Bringing in the big Sun

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/25/trumps-sluggish-de-fi-project-gets-a-big-boost-from-justin-suns-30-m-token-purchase?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Trump's Sluggish DeFi Project Gets a Big Boost From Justin Sun's $30M Token Purchase</a>

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/business/2024/11/26/justin-sun-joins-donald-trumps-world-liberty-financial-as-adviser?_gl=1*lnsg8n*_up*MQ..*_ga*MTExNTkwOTY0Ny4xNzMyNjM1NDE3*_ga_VM3STRYVN8*MTczMjYzNTQxNi4xLjEuMTczMjYzNTQyNS4wLjAuNzc0MTY1MjQy" target="_blank">Justin Sun Joins Donald Trump's World Liberty Financial as Adviser</a>

"Reports are greatly exaggerated"

<a href="https://www.coindesk.com/markets/2024/11/27/think-ethereum-s-eth-is-dead-surging-metrics-show-otherwise" target="_blank">Think Ethereum’s ETH is Dead? Surging Metrics Show Otherwise</a>

Calendar

Dec. 4-5: <a href="https://indiablockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">India Blockchain Week</a>, Bangalore

Dec. 5-6: <a href="https://www.theblock.co/post/283406/the-block-launches-emergence-a-premier-conference-for-the-digital-assets-industry" target="_blank">Emergence</a>, Prague

Dec. 9-12: <a href="https://adfw.com/" target="_blank">Abu Dhabi Finance Week</a>

Dec. 11-12: <a href="https://newyork.theaisummit.com/" target="_blank">AI Summit NYC</a>

Dec. 11-14: <a href="https://www.taipeiblockchainweek.com/" target="_blank">Taipei Blockchain Week</a>

Jan 9-12, 2025: <a href="https://www.ces.tech/" target="_blank">CES</a>, Las Vegas

Jan. 15-19: <a href="https://www.weforum.org/events/world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-2024" target="_blank">World Economic Forum</a>, Davos, Switzerland

January 21-25: <a href="https://329b0589.isolation.zscaler.com/profile/2332cf23-bc6a-418b-a941-f595d0e3ea25/zia-session/?controls_id=22337358-9ef1-4c14-8042-bae40f505928&region=pdx&tenant=cac35314c425&user=065ae33aa0b7fd8bb4e9ae9286b2fcf7c62d677db428d6cd9b6e4d01e6ffa098&original_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwagmi.miami%2F&key=sh-1&hmac=5349b2cbc41b5242c21267747a0dc197c5cb3cc3c860fe73f8de2f049e1adea8" target="_blank">WAGMI conference</a>, Miami.

Jan. 24-25: <a href="https://adoptingbitcoin.org/capetown-2024/" target="_blank">Adopting Bitcoin</a>, Cape Town, South Africa.

Jan. 30-31: <a href="https://planb.sv/" target="_blank">PLAN B Forum</a>, San Salvador, El Salvador.

Feb. 1-6: <a href="https://satoshiroundtable.org/" target="_blank">Satoshi Roundtable</a>, Dubai

Feb. 19-20, 2025: <a href="https://consensus-hongkong2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">ConsensusHK</a>, Hong Kong.

Feb. 23-24: <a href="https://www.nftparis.xyz/" target="_blank">NFT Paris</a>

Feb 23-March 2: <a href="https://www.ethdenver.com/" target="_blank">ETHDenver</a>

May 14-16: <a href="https://consensus2025.coindesk.com/" target="_blank">Consensus</a>, Toronto.

May 27-29: <a href="https://x.com/LasVegasLocally/status/1817280637457551831" target="_blank">Bitcoin 2025</a>, Las Vegas.