The multi-chain collaborative development has become an inevitable trend in the future of blockchain technology

LayerZero is becoming the foundational network infrastructure for the future whole-chain ecosystem

With the upcoming release of Sui's mainnet, it is believed that Sui will soon experience a wave of development climax

Layer1 blockchain project Sui announced that its mainnet will be launched in the second quarter of this year, along with a series of educational activities and content called "Wave to Mainnet", to help the community understand the potential of the Sui protocol before the mainnet launch. Sui and Aptos are both part of the Meta-series blockchain, established almost simultaneously. Compared to Aptos, Sui focuses more on innovative underlying technology and aims to become the first internet-scale programmable blockchain platform. Although Sui has not developed as quickly as Aptos, projects driven by technological innovation often have the potential for explosive growth. With the imminent release of the Sui mainnet, it is believed that Sui will soon experience a period of rapid development.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Sui quietly tills the soil while Aptos stands in the spotlight</h1>Aptos inherits the open source technology and development experience of the Die project over the past three years, which enables it to quickly build the underlying infrastructure and layout ecological projects. In contrast, Sui chose to build the Layer1 network from scratch, leading to a much slower development process. Therefore, Aptos was more attractive to investors in terms of attracting capital and attention in the early stages. Additionally, both as Layer1 public chains aimed at improving the security and scalability of the blockchain, and creating a high-performance blockchain infrastructure network for billions of people, there are differences in strategy and focus between the two.Aptos places more emphasis on marketin, being marketed as a unique product created by the best developers from the IT industry, which has been effective in attracting a large number of investors. Last year, it launched its mainnet and went live, although its price has fallen over 76%, it has shown strong performance since the beginning of the year, and its total market capitalisation is still USD 2.08 billion. In terms of ecological project cooperation, Aptos focuses on cooperation with well-known companies, such as Google Cloud for infrastructure acceleration programs, NPIXEL for game cooperation, and MoonPay for payment integration in ecological system projects such as Petra, which have brought huge traffic and attention to Aptos and promoted the rapid development of its ecological projects.Unlike Aptos, Sui places greater emphasis on innovative applications of underlying technology. For example, the improved Move language of Sui can more clearly indicate object ownership, mutability, and composability, making it naturally suitable for building metaverse infrastructure. In terms of ecological projects, since the Sui mainnet has not yet been launched, most of its projects are still in the testing stage, so Sui is far less well-known than Aptos in terms of attention. Therefore, in many cases, Aptos is like a superstar standing in the limelight, while Sui is more like a cultivator quietly paying in the background.Sui and Aptos are both Layer1 public chains, and their founding teams both come from Diem and belong to the same Move track, so they have a competitive relationship from the beginning. However, since Sui built the Layer1 network from scratch, the development process was relatively stagnant, and most of the market's attention was focused on Aptos in the early stages, so the competition between the two was not obvious at the beginning. Until recently, Sui's successful completion of the Wave 2 test and announcement of the imminent launch of the mainnet has caught the attention and vigilance of Aptos. Last month, Sui's CTO accused Aptos of pressuring the Pontem team, the organizers of MOVECON (the first large-scale forum in the Move ecosystem), to cancel the Sui team's speech and even remove the Sui Foundation from the list of event organizers. This indicates that Aptos has begun to view the emerging Sui as a competitor and has indirectly confirmed Sui's market position and potential.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Compared to Aptos, Sui has clear advantages in underlying technology</h1>Although Sui still has many shortcomings compared to Aptos, such as in terms of ecosystem projects and community size, Sui has been committed to innovation and application in underlying technology and has accumulated rich technological advantages in the past year. From Sui-Move language to Narwhal-Tusk consensus mechanism to storage fund token economics, Sui has made significant innovations in every aspect of blockchain projects. In this respect, even compared to other new Layer1 public chains such as Aptos, Sui is unique.Sui-MoveAptos and Sui both use Move language, but they differ in some aspects. Aptos followed the classic design of the Diem white paper, while Sui upgraded and adjusted it to form the unique Sui-Move language. The biggest difference with Move is that Sui adopts an object-centric model instead of an address-centric model. Therefore, almost everything on Sui, such as tokens, smart contracts, NFTs, etc., can be represented as "objects." Each object has a series of attributes, including owner address, read/write properties, transferable properties, functional properties, etc. Sui-Move clearly states the ownership, sharing, mutable or immutable characteristics of objects, while Aptos does not. In addition, Sui's ownership API is more concise than Aptos' API because it more clearly displays the blockchain design. In terms of functionality, Sui-Move has certain advantages in security, smart contract support, programming mode flexibility, and compatibility over Move language.Narwhal &amp; TuskThe consensus mechanism of Sui minimizes communication between validators in order to achieve lower latency in processing transactions. Sui's consensus mechanism is divided into two parts: Narwhal and Tusk. Narwhal is a memory pool protocol for storing unconfirmed blockchain transactions and broadcasting them before the consensus protocol validates them. Its task is to achieve consensus while maintaining data availability, and it is independent of the consensus protocol, allowing it to tolerate asynchronous or intermittent faults. Tusk is an asynchronous consensus protocol responsible for transaction ordering. The protocol uses shared randomness to eliminate additional communication between nodes and allows each node to determine the total order of transactions. When used in conjunction with the Narwhal protocol, it ensures high performance even in the event of failures.In theory, the scalability of Sui's design has no known upper limit. In terms of security, compared to synchronous blockchains (i.e. most proof-of-work blockchains), Sui's security attributes can withstand adverse network conditions, network partitions, or DoS attacks on validators because it does not impose any synchronization assumptions on the network.Developer ExperienceAptos' core feature is seamless upgrade, which allows developers to focus on building without disturbing users. In comparison, the Sui Software Development Kit (SDK) provides more convenience for developers. The SDK offers open-source, universal, and user-friendly tools, and allows developers to save a lot of time debugging smart contracts, waiting for audits, and building basic tech stack elements. Furthermore, the SDK also attempts to connect other ecosystems and non-crypto use cases, such as gaming APIs directly connecting to a universal Layer1 instead of a sidechain or gaming-focused L2; "SuiEcho" guides the community by promoting the portability of digital assets from other ecosystems to Sui; and "Handshake" is a frontend tool that serves as a channel for distributing, redeeming, and collecting Sui digital assets (such as payments and merchant coupons) to both crypto and non-crypto users.Sui Token EconomyIn addition to a series of technical innovations aimed at optimizing the system's composability and scalability, Sui also implements a unique token economics model. Unlike the token economics model of traditional proof-of-stake chains, Sui's token economics model adds a "storage fund" function. As blockchain is a data structure that only grows and never shrinks, the amount of data that needs to be maintained on the chain will increase over time, and costs will accordingly rise. This leads to later users of Sui having to pay higher fees than early users. The "storage fund" is designed to solve this problem by allowing early users to pay more fees, enabling all users to use the network based on similar fee levels.<img class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__image editor-image" src="https://coinvoice-international.oss-cn-hongkong.aliyuncs.com/profital-prod/article/20230405/2023040523060958365474.png" alt="" width="inherit" height="inherit">Furthermore, Sui's storage fund also pays validators in the system, or people who actually store the blockchain data and complete data maintenance work. As maintenance work increases, payouts to validators also increase. This will incentivize more people to become validators in the system, and as more people become validators, the total available storage space will also increase, further reducing the gas fees for writing to the blockchain. Sui's token economics model is a typical representative of a highly scalable chain economics model, using game theory to ensure that gas fees remain relatively constant throughout the entire lifecycle of the blockchain.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Inventory of Sui Ecological Projects</h1>MovEXMovEX is the first AMM+ order book mixed liquidity DEX on Sui, which combines the advantages of AMM and order book to provide liquidity trading experience for everyone by creating mixed liquidity pools. Internally, MovEX has a settlement engine that allocates orders between AMM and order book, which ensures that the slippage of traders is minimized and the fairness of liquidity providers is guaranteed. Liquidity providers can also provide one-sided liquidity by customizing price ranges, effectively managing impermanent loss.MovEX supports market trading and limit order trading, two features commonly found in centralized trading platforms. Ordinary users can provide liquidity to the liquidity pool with a customized price range, while professional traders and liquidity providers can become liquidity providers through the order book, similar to market makers in centralized exchanges. Currently, the MovEX product is still in the testing phase, and users can experience the product by linking to the application through the Sui Wallet.Sui WalletSui Wallet is a browser extension that serves as a portal to the Web3 world, allowing users to connect to DApps and sign human-readable transactions from trusted DApps. It is the official wallet of the Sui blockchain, allowing users to create, import, and persistently store mnemonic and derived private keys, transfer coins and NFTs, and view owned fungible tokens and NFTs. Sui wallet was initially developed for Sui developer testing and is currently the most widely recognized wallet on the testnet.SuiswapSuiswap is a DEX of the automatic market maker mechanism (AMM) on Sui chain, supporting the exchange and trading of native assets within the Sui ecosystem. Currently, Suiswap supports users to claim test tokens, trade or build LPs to provide liquidity to the liquidity pool, and the final form of the product will be seen after Sui mainnet goes live.Leizd ProtocolLeizd Protocol is a decentralized lending application within the Sui ecosystem that operates lending function in over-collateralized form. The application uses decentralized dollar stablecoin USDZ as an intermediate asset and, like MakerDAO on the Ethereum chain, realizes risk control of lending products by minting stablecoins. In Leizd Protocol, the borrower can deposit crypto assets as collateral to mint USDZ, then borrow the required USDZ, and exchange it for stablecoins such as USDT or USDC to use. At maturity, the borrower only needs to return the borrowed USDZ and interest to withdraw collateral assets. Depositors can also collateralize crypto assets to mint USDZ for earning interest, or exchange USDZ for other crypto assets and deposit them into the deposit pool to earn interest.It is reported that Leizd Protocol plans to deploy on multiple chains on Sui and Aptos networks, allowing users to realize lending and borrowing with assets on both chains. However, the test product of Leizd Protocol has not yet been launched and the product is still in the concept introduction stage.BlueMoveBlueMove is a platform that supports the creation and trading of NFTs and has been successfully deployed on the Sui and Aptos networks. The platform's smart contracts use a modular system and clearly define the execution scope through standardized signatures, which allows for the introduction of new features over time without compromising security, such as collection offers, feature offers, and multiple cancellations.In addition, BlueMove has issued a total of 300 million MOVE tokens, of which 5% is used for airdrops, 40% for rewarding active traders and collectors on the platform, 15% for rewarding users who stake MOVE tokens, and the remaining for financing and team development. The main utility of MOVE tokens is on-chain governance and membership benefits.Currently, users can buy or sell NFTs on BlueMove and receive MOVE rewards. Moreover, users can also get a share of the platform's transaction fees and additional MOVE rewards by staking MOVE tokens.Abyss WorldsAbyss World is an action role-playing game developed by Metagame Industries based on the Sui Layer 1 blockchain, with a strong Web3 technology and gaming experience. It aggregates Web2 and Web3 game players, allowing players to experience immerse gameplay in a virtual world. The various characters, maps, and storylines within the game will be supported by Sui blockchain technology, enabling players to create a realistic gaming world. According to the roadmap, Abyss World will officially start public testing in the third quarter of this year.In Web3 gameplay, NFTs are a key option to attract users to participate in projects early. Abyss World began the sale of its first batch of Genesis NFT Gazer series on March 23. These NFTs are not just small images, but are tied to in-game rights and features: players who own NFTs can share potential revenues within the game, gain more rare items and skins, and get early access to the game's internal testing. In addition, due to the deep collaboration with Mysten Labs, NFTs not only bind Abyss World's native game token AWT but also have the rights to Sui token airdrops, making it one of the top projects in the Sui ecosystem.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Summary</h1>Sui is the first permissionless Layer1 blockchain designed from scratch and dedicated to providing a more user-friendly experience for Web3 users. However, technology only offers value when it solves actual problems and when people are willing to pay for it. Sui has been focused on innovating and applying underlying technology, which has brought it rich technical advantages. With the launch of Sui's mainnet approaching, it is now time to translate these technical advantages into market competitiveness. Through the "Wave to Mainnet" series of activities, Sui is moving from behind the scenes to the forefront, demonstrating the accumulated technical strength over the years. In the future, how underlying technology promotes overall DX/UX and who can attract more users and liquidity will be gradually answered over time.

Can the rapidly developing Sui become the next disruptor of Layer1?

The Bitcoin NFT market has opened up a new round of competition.

With the explosive popularity of the Bitcoin NFT protocol Ordinals, the entire Bitcoin NFT market has entered a new round of competition. As one of the first blockchains capable of producing Bitcoin ordinals, Stacks has benefited greatly from this. In the past ten days, its token STX has doubled in price. Although the recent market has started a downward trend and the STX price has fallen to $0.69, it is still a popular currency and favored by many investors. However, the popularity of Ordinals has also raised a question. As more and more Bitcoin NFT projects emerge, the Bitcoin network may become congested, which will test Bitcoin's minimalist ideology. For Stacks, as a Bitcoin L2 public chain, this is both a challenge and a rare opportunity.
Bitcoin Star Public Chain Stacks is Born to Breakthrough
There has always been a technical problem in blockchain called the "impossible triangle", which means that only two out of three aspects, decentralization, security, and scalability, can be satisfied. As one of the earliest public chains, Bitcoin also follows this principle. Bitcoin performs the best in decentralization and security, but has made significant compromises in scalability, resulting in poor scalability. It takes 10 minutes to write a new block, and transaction confirmation time can be as high as several tens of minutes. Because of these limitations, although Bitcoin has developed for more than a decade, it still exists as a pure value public chain.
In addition to technical aspects, social divisions are also one of the reasons affecting Bitcoin's expansion. Bitcoin purists believe that Bitcoin, as a value public chain, is already good enough and does not need to be expanded to improve transaction speed. They believe that expanding may change Bitcoin's consensus mechanism, leading to a hard fork and affecting Bitcoin's security and decentralization properties. In addition, deploying various complex smart contracts and applications on the Bitcoin network will also cause congestion and increase gas fees, which deviates from Satoshi Nakamoto's vision of Bitcoin as a peer-to-peer (P2P) cash system. Therefore, they oppose Bitcoin expansion and advocate maintaining the simplicity and stability of the Bitcoin network.
Technical challenges and community divisions have made the process of Bitcoin expansion slow and tortuous. Before the emergence of Stacks, many projects tried to improve Bitcoin's scalability, but most of them disappeared, and only a few forked projects briefly became popular due to hype. In comparison, Stacks is undoubtedly the most successful.
The success of Stacks is mainly due to finding a balance between Bitcoin purists and expansionists.
The native Bitcoin network itself does not support smart contracts and decentralized applications, so a second-layer protocol is needed to achieve these functions. Stacks is such a protocol that deploys smart contracts and decentralized applications on the Bitcoin network by building a new blockchain. The Stacks blockchain interacts with the Bitcoin network, using Bitcoin's security and network effects to ensure its security and decentralization, while not making any modifications to the Bitcoin network, maintaining the simplicity and stability of the Bitcoin network.
Innovation and Advantages of Stacks Technology
Recently, due to the popularity of Ordinals, the public has focused on the issue of Bitcoin's scalability that was previously overlooked, and they were surprised to discover the existence of Stacks. While people tend to think of Stacks as a short-term trend, they do not realize that Stacks has been quietly working on building the Bitcoin Layer 2 network for nearly 10 years.
Stacks is an independent blockchain based on the Bitcoin blockchain, created by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea in 2013. It adopts the "Proof of Transfer" (PoX) protocol and utilizes the security of Bitcoin and Stacks token (STX) to implement smart contracts. Early on, Stacks focused on DApps development and providing decentralized experiences with the security of Bitcoin. As congestion and high fees plagued Bitcoin, Stacks began researching and deploying second-layer technologies like Lightning Network to process high throughput, low cost, and instant settlement transactions under Stacks 2.0.
Stacks has many technological advantages, which are reflected in the following aspects:
(1) PoX Mining Mechanism: Stacks uses the PoX mining mechanism instead of the traditional PoW or PoS mining mechanism, which solves many problems in traditional mining mechanisms such as energy consumption and computing power competition.
(2) Clarity Smart Contract Language: Stacks has developed a smart contract language called Clarity, which has a strong type system and clear execution logic. It can execute secure smart contracts without intermediaries, thereby improving the reliability and operability of smart contracts.
(3) Decentralized Identity Verification: Stacks provides a decentralized identity verification system called Blockstack, which uses blockchain technology and public key infrastructure to verify and manage user identities, improving user privacy and security.
(4) Integration with Bitcoin: Stacks is integrated with Bitcoin, and can extend Bitcoin's security, reliability, and market participation to the Stacks ecosystem, achieving higher decentralization and security.
(5) Compatibility with Existing Web Technologies: Stacks can be compatible with existing web technologies, such as developing decentralized applications using JavaScript, making it easier for developers to build decentralized applications. In general, the technological innovation and advantages of Stacks allow it to achieve higher decentralization, security, and reliability with better scalability and sustainability, providing strong support for the growth of its ecosystem.
Bitcoin NFT Rise: Stacks' Opportunities and Challenges
The emergence of Ordinals has sparked another round of hype in the Bitcoin application field. As a representative L2 project of Bitcoin, Stacks is in an excellent position to benefit from market speculation. According to Defi Llama's data, the funds on Stacks increased by 254% in the last 30 days (February 1 to March 2) and TVL increased from $7.56 million to $26.8 million. Stacks' native token STX has doubled in the past two weeks. Although STX's price has experienced a correction in the last few days due to a market downturn, investors generally remain optimistic about the future of STX.
Investors' optimism about STX is mainly based on the expected 2024 Bitcoin halving market. As the token of the Bitcoin second-layer scaling protocol, the value of STX is closely related to Bitcoin. Therefore, although STX seems to have exhausted the growth trend based on the Ordinals news, it is still considered a cryptocurrency worth long-term investment due to Bitcoin's future half-life market and Stacks' good development trend.
The Ordinals-driven Bitcoin NFT craze is getting bigger and it may become the summer of Bitcoin NFT this year. This is an excellent development opportunity for Bitcoin scaling protocols such as Stacks. Especially Stacks, it is not only highly integrated with the Bitcoin ecosystem technically, but its economic model is also more sustainable and decentralized, making it more development space than other public chains.
In addition to the positive side, the explosion of Ordinals also raises a previous issue: if NFT causes network congestion, Bitcoin's minimalist ideological doctrine will face a test. Will the Bitcoin community allow this speculative activity or block the long-term development of the network?
Currently, the opposition's view is centered on the damage NFT has caused to Bitcoin's original use case. Some community members stated, "Allowing Bitcoin to be used for NFTs is a bit like allowing hospitals to host rave parties." Supporters believe that the rise of Bitcoin NFTs has found new application scenarios beyond traditional value storage, providing Bitcoin with more gameplay and financial use cases. From a data perspective, both perspectives can be verified. According to OKLink's data, Ordinals' "inscription" is consuming 50% of Bitcoin block space, and block space utilization has reached 100%. On the other hand, from the perspective of the mining community, the emergence of Bitcoin NFTs has also brought them new revenue growth paths. In the past week, the fees accumulated by writing "inscriptions" using the Ordinals protocol have reached $880,000. Currently, neither party can convince each other. This seems to have returned to the debate between Bitcoin purists and expansionists that Stacks initially faced. Last time, Stacks found a balance point between the two parties. This time, can a balance point acceptable to both parties be found for the debate sparked by Bitcoin NFTs? This is a severe challenge for Stacks and other Bitcoin's L2 networks.
Stacks Popular Ecosystem Projects Review
With the rise of the Bitcoin NFT craze, more and more investors are bullish on Stacks. As an important part of the Bitcoin ecosystem, Stacks provides users with more secure, efficient, and sustainable smart contract services and has the potential for collaborative innovation with other cryptocurrency projects and traditional financial markets. Given Bitcoin's large user base, Stacks' close integration with the Bitcoin ecosystem, more sustainable and decentralized economic model, better privacy protection, and higher performance make it have greater development space than other public chains. Projects worth paying attention to in the current Stacks ecosystem include:
Alex
Recently, Bitcoin has undergone cultural and technological transformation through Ordinals and Stacks. On Stacks, a project that is expected to emerge in the future is ALEX. ALEX is a DEX designed for Bitcoin and the first platform to provide one-stop DeFi services on Bitcoin through Stacks.
The core functions of the ALEX protocol include decentralized trading and decentralized lending. Users can trade on a decentralized exchange and obtain liquidity from liquidity providers. With collateral-based lending, users can collateralize digital assets to obtain stablecoins for fund management without the need to sell assets. ALEX also issues governance tokens ALEX, and users holding ALEX tokens can participate in the protocol's governance process, including proposal submission, voting, and decision-making. Through liquidity mining mechanism, ALEX Labs incentivizes users to provide liquidity and participate in the protocol's ecosystem, earning ALEX tokens as rewards.
Gamma
Gamma is an NFT marketplace in the Stacks ecosystem, formerly known as STXNFT. The market aims to be the center of Web3, attracting collectors, creators, and investors to explore, trade, and showcase NFTs through the Bitcoin ecosystem.
Recently, with the rise of BTC NFT (Ordinals technology), NFT activities on Stacks are also gradually increasing. According to DappRadar data, Gamma's trading volume has grown by more than 300% in the past 30 days, thanks to low-cost and fast NFT minting speed provided by the Stacks ecosystem.Gamma is a premier NFT marketplace where users can explore dozens of different collections that are becoming increasingly popular. In addition, the Gamma platform provides a professional, creator-first NFT Launchpad for digital artists to find an easy way to deploy low-code smart contract functionality. Using Gamma, even inexperienced artists can create smart contract functionality for their NFTs in minutes, ensuring ownership of their NFTs and protecting their work, like copyright. In addition, Gamma also serves as a social platform for creators to gather, collaborate and share ideas. Gamma already has many popular NFT collections, which have built up a fanatical following in the Web3 world. In fact, many collections are already in high demand, and some projects even offer secondary collections to lower the barrier to entry to their community.
Arkadiko
Arkadiko is a DeFi platform built on the Stacks ecosystem, aimed at providing users with various financial products and services, including borrowing, trading, collateralizing, earning rewards, and more. Unlike other DeFi platforms, Arkadiko is built on the Stacks ecosystem and uses Stacks' unique technology architecture, which means it can provide decentralized financial services on the Bitcoin blockchain.
The primary application of the Arkadiko platform is a collateralized asset minting platform for the USDA stablecoin, similar to the MakerDAO model. Users deposit STX into Arkadiko's Vault and mint the soft-pegged USD stablecoin, USDA, through over-collateralization. The deposited STX can also earn rewards through the Stacks PoX mechanism. In addition, users can also use STX tokens as tools for trading and paying fees, and obtain loans by collateralizing STX tokens. Arkadiko's lending rates are low and very attractive to users. Furthermore, Arkadiko also offers liquidity pools, stablecoin trading, and yield farming functions, allowing users to participate in more DeFi products and services. The Arkadiko development team is committed to providing more innovative DeFi products and services to provide a better financial experience for users.
CityCoins
CityCoins is a cryptocurrency designed to provide financial support to cities, promoting the development of urban economies. The project was co-founded by Muneeb Ali and Ryan Shea in 2021 and is supported by the Stacks ecosystem.
The main function of CityCoins is to provide financing for cities and help them achieve sustainable development. Holders of CityCoins can choose to invest them in a specific city's fund, providing financial support to that city. These funds can be used for various projects in the city, such as infrastructure construction, public services, and community development. Holders of CityCoins can earn returns from the fund and receive discounts on CityCoins. In addition, CityCoins can also be used to purchase goods and services specific to a particular city. For example, tourists can use CityCoins to purchase restaurant, hotel, and tourist attraction tickets, as well as other city goods and services. Overall, CityCoins aims to provide more economic support to cities while also providing economic returns to holders. This innovative cryptocurrency model provides a new financing mechanism for sustainable urban development and an interesting investment option for holders. Summary&nbsp;
With the rise of Ordinals, the Bitcoin NFT market is rapidly developing. This is both an important opportunity and a daunting challenge for Stacks. In order to meet the high throughput demands of Bitcoin NFT projects, Stacks needs to further leverage its technical advantages in Bitcoin Layer 2 scaling solutions and launch more scalable network solutions. At the same time, Stacks also needs to strengthen its integration with the Bitcoin network to ensure its security while not affecting the stability of the Bitcoin network. If Stacks can successfully overcome these challenges, it will become one of the most successful scaling solutions in the Bitcoin field, laying the foundation for the future development of the Bitcoin network.

BITCOIN

How far can the Bitcoin-powered public chain Stacks go in the future?

The Sui mainnet has been up and running for nearly a month, and let me tell you, it’s been quite a rollercoaster ride.

1 Month In Sui — What Is Happening Now?

"The Beacon Chain has life." On May 11th and 12th, 2023, Ethereum faced two temporary loss of finality events that tested its resilience.

<h2 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h2">Introduction</h2>"The Beacon Chain has life." On May 11th and 12th, 2023, Ethereum faced two temporary loss of finality events that tested its resilience. Despite these challenges, the network maintained its vitality, autonomously recovering from both incidents. We're about to delve into these noteworthy events, scrutinizing their impact and the subsequent enhancements implemented to prevent similar incidents in the future.<img class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__image editor-image" src="https://mirror.xyz/_next/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimages.mirror-media.xyz%2Fpublication-images%2F2q_wYQe3fPkXlQZcS-MFQ.png&amp;w=3840&amp;q=75" alt="" width="2000" height="949"><h2 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h2">The Incidents</h2>May 11 and 12, 2023, will be marked as significant dates in Ethereum's history, where its resilience was put to the test. On May 11, around 20:19 UTC, Ethereum's Mainnet network witnessed a significant drop in block production, causing a four-epoch delay in finalization - a first for Ethereum. The following day, a similar incident occurred, this time stretching the delay to nine epochs and leading to an inactivity penalty.During these incidents, a substantial dip in network participation was observed. The first drop occurred in epoch 200,551, resulting in a temporary halt in finalization until epoch 200,555. The second participation drop was seen in epoch 200,750, causing another pause in finalization until epoch 200,759.Despite the initial concerns, Ethereum's network showcased its inherent robustness by autonomously recovering from both incidents. These events not only affirmed the resilience of Ethereum's Beacon Chain but also highlighted areas for potential enhancements. As we progress through this article, we'll explore these areas in greater detail.<img class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__image editor-image" src="https://hx24-prod.mars-block.com/image/crawler/2023/05/30/1685412988475185.jpg" alt="以太坊" width="inherit" height="inherit"><h3 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h3">Inactivity Leak</h3>During periods of non-finality, the Ethereum network deploys a crucial mechanism called the "inactivity leak.” This feature is ingrained in Ethereum 2.0's proof-of-stake protocol, engineered to sustain network functionality amidst significant disturbances - from events like World War III to large-scale natural disasters - that could result in a sizable number of validators going offline, thereby obstructing block finalization.In the event that the network fails to finalize blocks for four consecutive epochs (~16 minutes), it triggers the inactivity leak mode. Under this regime, validators failing to attest to blocks start to lose a part of their staked Ether (ETH). This penalty intensifies quadratically over time until block finalization resumes.This mode wields a dual deterrent. Firstly, it negates rewards for validators' attestations. Secondly, it imposes escalating penalties on non-participating validators proportionate to the duration of their inactivity. This mechanism incentivizes validators to stay actively involved, accelerating network recovery. It is a cornerstone feature that safeguards network integrity during major disruptions.You can read more about this in the comprehensive guide on Ethereum 2.0 incentives and mechanisms at Eth2Book&nbsp;<a href="https://eth2book.info/capella/part2/incentives/inactivity/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__link">here</a>.<h2 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h2">The Impact</h2>For Network Participants (Validators):As per the estimates provided by&nbsp;<a href="https://twitter.com/benjaminion_xyz" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__link">Ben Edgington</a>, assuming an 8 epoch leak with 65% of validators offline, the inactivity leak led to approximately 28 ETH being burned. This equates to about 0.0006 ETH per offline validator.Furthermore, during the duration of the outages, attestation rewards were reduced to zero, resulting in an additional loss of around 50 ETH that could have been otherwise issued. Taken together, the estimated total loss for the validators, in terms of both inactivity penalties and lost attestation rewards, is around 78 ETH.For Users:Contrarily, end users experienced minimal impact. Despite the decline in available block space leading to reduced transaction processing capacity, there was no dramatic surge in gas prices, which stayed below the daily peak. More significantly, the network maintained liveness throughout these incidents.This meant that Ethereum continued to process transactions without any major disruptions, demonstrating its resilience. Consequently, users could maintain their operations on the Ethereum network largely uninterrupted, underscoring the robustness of the system even in the face of challenges.<h2 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h2">The Causes</h2>At the heart of the issue with Prysm was an absent caching mechanism for block replays. This absence escalated the system load, generated excessive go routines, and heightened CPU stress. In some instances, new replays commenced even before the previous ones concluded, further straining the system.Another compounding factor was Prysm's improper processing of attestations from previous epochs - data that should have been disregarded, but wasn't. This inefficiency, coupled with the suboptimal use of the head state, stressed the system particularly in the face of a deposit surge and a growing validator registry.The incidents also unveiled key differences in the strategies adopted by different Ethereum clients. While Lighthouse chose to drop attestations to maintain network liveness, Prysm and Teku, among others, defaulted to generating blocks using old attestations when faced with execution client issues.Despite the challenges, these incidents were critical in providing insights into software inefficiencies, design choices, and network conditions, making the Ethereum network more robust. This series of events has not led to any permanent damage, but rather has reinforced the resilience and versatility of Ethereum's network design.<h2 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h2">The Recovery</h2>The resilience of Ethereum's Beacon Chain was truly tested during these incidents, and it passed with flying colors. The Ethereum Beacon Chain seems to be alive, healing itself.A key factor in the successful recovery was the diversity of clients on the Ethereum network. The existence of multiple clients, each with their unique ways of handling the network, proved to be a boon. For instance, while Prysm and Teku clients struggled under the load of old attestations, Lighthouse's strategy of dropping attestations ensured that part of the network stayed live and functional.In essence, Ethereum's resilience comes from its client diversity, a factor that played a crucial role in helping the network recover on its own, thereby negating the need for any manual intervention.<h2 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h2">Lessons Learned</h2><ul class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__ul"><li value="1" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__listItem">Testnet vs Mainnet:&nbsp;The incidents underscored the discrepancies between testnet environments and the Mainnet. With over 600,000 validators and a significant volume of withdrawal operations on the Mainnet, it's clear that the complexities and unpredictability of a live network often exceed those of test environments. This signals the need for more rigorous stress testing to better prepare for real-world network conditions.</li><li value="2" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__listItem">Inactivity Leak Penalties:&nbsp;The effectiveness of inactivity leak penalties on the Mainnet was reinforced during the incidents. These penalties play an essential role in promoting active validator participation, maintaining network liveness, and enabling network recovery.</li><li value="3" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__listItem">The Importance of Liveness:&nbsp;The incidents underscored the vital role of liveness in a blockchain network. Under the design of the LMD Ghost protocol, Ethereum maintained its liveness throughout the process, ensuring users experienced minimal impact. Unlike certain blockchains that may face downtime during network issues, Ethereum prioritizes liveness over throughput. This approach safeguards users and the proper functioning of the network, emphasizing that without liveness, network functionality and user security are compromised, regardless of throughput.</li><li value="4" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__listItem">Importance of Client Diversity:&nbsp;The recovery process emphasized the value of having a diverse client base. Different Ethereum clients have unique responses to network incidents, contributing to the overall resilience and robustness of the network.</li><li value="5" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__listItem">Network Resilience:&nbsp;The incidents served as a powerful testament to the Ethereum network's resilience. Despite significant challenges, the network self-recovered and bounced back stronger, embodying the concept of antifragility in complex systems. This resilience sets a strong precedent for the broader crypto ecosystem and signifies the robustness of Ethereum's underlying architecture and design principles.</li></ul>The incidents on May 11 and 12, 2023, served as pivotal moments in Ethereum's journey. They provided tangible proof of the Beacon chain's vitality, even amidst challenging circumstances. As Ethereum continues to evolve, it builds upon these experiences, growing not only more robust but also more antifragile - ready to forge ahead in its journey of decentralization and beyond.

Ethereum

Ethereum's Finality Challenge: A Retrospective on the Beacon Chain's Vitality

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From UGC to UGP: Consumer Brands & Co-Creation

The execution layer landscape has become quite crowded

Optimism

Starkware

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The Execution Layer Landscape：L2s, L3s and Everything in Between

I would like to define some lagging indicators to measure each stage of the lifecycle

Exploration of MEV Latencies

Layer2 may still have greater profit potential

In 2023, Layer2 concept fully exploded. Among the dozens of Rollup Layer2 networks, crypto giants such as Coinbase and ConsenSys also started to deploy their own native Layer2 networks, entering into the competition.Since the birth of Bitcoin, public chains have always been the most coveted holy grail of the crypto sphere, and numerous teams have been eager to build a blockchain that can accommodate the next billion users. With the maturity of solutions such as Rollup and modularization, more and more institutions can quickly deploy Layer2 blockchains.Coinbase is the world's first publicly traded cryptocurrency asset trading platform, with its fund Coinbase Ventures investing in over 340 crypto projects. Even former employees of the company have built more than 10 well-known crypto organizations (such as Polychain, Paradigm, dYdX, etc.). ConsenSys, on the other hand, is a giant in the crypto infrastructure field, with its products more focused on the underlying layer, such as MetaMask.Why did these crypto giants choose to proactively embrace native Layer2 at this time? Are they following the trend or laying out their strategies for the next bull market? What are their respective advantages and disadvantages? This article will elaborate on the happenstance and logic behind Coinbase and ConsenSys launching their own Layer2 blockchains, as well as their operational strategies.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Why did Coinbase and ConsenSys launch layer 2 networks?</h1>Despite belonging to different industries, Coinbase and ConsenSys are facing similar challenges, including a lack of product innovation and a need to capture value in different market cycles.Firstly, let's take a look at Coinbase's Base. Base is a layer 2 network built on Optimism's OP Stack, incubated internally by Coinbase. The blockchain will use Coinbase's products, users, and assets as seeds to become an open ecosystem. The development timeline is as follows:- February 23, 2022: Coinbase announces the launch of Ethereum layer 2 network Base and establishes the Base Ecosystem Fund.- February 27, 2023: Base integrates Coinbase's self-custody wallet and dApp wallet.- March 26, 2023: The Base Ecosystem Fund announces four main support directions: stablecoins that track inflation rates, reputation platforms, limit order book (LOB) platforms, and safer DeFi products.- April 1, 2023: Layer 2 network Base announces that it will launch on the mainnet in the coming months.Product innovation has been a slow progress for Coinbase over the past decade. As a cryptocurrency trading platform, Coinbase's spot trading volume has been lower than Uniswap for two consecutive months. Coinbase Protocol Lead Jesse Pollak said at the ETH Denver conference that while product innovation may not be a top priority, the company is now focusing on changing this situation. Launching Base is actually an investment in "creating a platform" to enable developers to build useful products.Linea is a zk-rollup designed by ConsenSys R&amp;D and operated by ConsenSys. It allows developers to deploy any smart contract, use any tool, and develop as they would on Ethereum. Its features also include Type 2 zkEVM, which can be down-compiled to EVM bytecode and provable in circuits. The development timeline is as follows:- October 14, 2022: ConsenSys launches the "Type 2" zk-EVM specification, allowing developers to deploy any smart contract.- December 14, 2022: ConsenSys launches the zkEVM testnet private beta.- January 10, 2023: ConsenSys zkEVM beta testnet is open for external registration.- March 28, 2023: ConsenSys renames zkEVM as Linea and opens its testnet for public use.Before the launch of Linea, ConsenSys had five products: MetaMask, Diligence, Quorum, Infura, and Truffle, with MetaMask being the most successful. With the rise of account abstraction wallets, there will be a huge shift in the wallet landscape. Whether ConsenSys is feeling a sense of crisis or not is debatable. MetaMask's frustrating user experience and Swaps' 0.875% high transaction fees have made MetaMask the "dragon" in the cryptocurrency wallet industry.Compared to internal concerns, how to adapt to the cyclical nature of cryptocurrency is an external challenge facing cryptocurrency giants. In 2022, Terra, 3AC, and FTX collapsed, and BTC fell from $69,000 to around $16,000, putting many cryptocurrency companies at risk of bankruptcy or job cuts. According to Coindesk, the entire cryptocurrency industry is estimated to have laid off 27,000 people from April 2022 to January 2023.Coinbase and ConsenSys are also inevitably affected. On January 10, 2023, Coinbase announced a 20% job cut, involving about 950 people. On January 18, 2023, ConsenSys laid off 97 people. It is worth noting that this is also the time when Base and Linea are preparing to launch, and it appears that Coinbase and ConsenSys have determined to think about cost reduction and efficiency improvement strategies.Layer 2 may be an excellent solution for the above difficulties.First of all, the modular rollup infrastructure has shown initial effectiveness, with platforms such as OP Stack and Celestia allowing anyone to quickly deploy decentralized blockchains without the overhead of bootstrapping new consensus networks. At the same time, Layer 2 can run without the need to issue tokens, which will be applicable to legal compliance. Adam Cochran, a business analysis professor at the University of South Carolina and a DeFi researcher, believes that Coinbase has unparalleled influence in both users and partners. Although it claims not to issue currency, as a Rollup, transaction fees are all for the sorter, with an expected annual value of $400 million.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Operational strategy</h1>BaseWith over 110 million verified users and custody of assets worth $80 billion, Coinbase's support of Base creates an easy bridge between CeFi and DeFi. Integration between Coinbase exchange, Coinbase Wallet, and Base has the potential to be a solution that brings real users into DeFi.Additionally, Base isn't burdened by on-chain revenue concerns, making it advantageous for becoming a fertile ground for more DeFi products. Of the 57 Base launch partners surveyed by data analyst Panda Jackson, only 26 (45%) were invested in by Coinbase Ventures, with most partners having existing tokens and well-functioning products.Moreover, any existing products integrated between Coinbase and Base will maintain their original KYC/AML measures. CEO Brian Armstrong affirms that there currently exist some centralized components within Base, but as time passes, they will become gradually more decentralized. Coinbase is responsible for trade monitoring and the like, and Base's current statement of "no plans to issue new tokens" confirms this.LineaConsenSys holds enormous crypto traffic, chiefly composed of user-facing MetaMask and developer-facing Infura and Truffle, and is considered the standard-bearer for Ethereum products and services. In a reflection on six years of entrepreneurship, Metamask co-founders Aaron Davis &amp; Dan Finlay stated that, in 2022, MetaMask had over 30 million monthly active users. Infura co-founder E.G. Galano also disclosed in an interview that over 400,000 developers were registered on Infura and could handle over 8.5 billion blockchain network requests daily.With network effects, Linea makes it easy for users to have a smoother crypto experience. Linea will natively integrate MetaMask and Truffle, while Infura will launch a decentralized infrastructure network in 2023. Meanwhile, ConsenSys will move towards greater compliance. Last November, ConsenSys updated its privacy policy on its website, stating that when users use Infura as the default RPC in MetaMask, corresponding IP addresses and ETH addresses would be collected.Moreover, ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin is an original member of Ethereum's founding team who proposed using the C++ programming language to write Ethereum's architecture and was primarily responsible for the technical side. Joe Lubin's status within the Ethereum ecosystem could become Linea's secret weapon.<h1 class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__h1">Conclusion</h1>The successive launch of Base and Linea indicates the gradual improvement of blockchain infrastructure and the upcoming stage of diverse Layer2 solutions. It also shows that Coinbase and ConsenSys are attempting to address current challenges and expand platforms capable of accommodating more users.As centralized organizations for public chains, Base and Linea face their greatest challenge in governance. Earlier, Binance, OKX, and Crypto.com had all developed their own ecological public chains but seemed unable to gain acceptance from members of the native community of cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum. Even after Arbitrum announced airdrops and governed by DAO, the foundation scandalously sold tokens without going through the governance process, indicating the core team's apparent lack of "adaptability" to decentralized operations.Despite this, embracing Layer2 also shows that Coinbase and ConsenSys are striving to adapt to different market cycles and increase their value capture capabilities. With the upcoming EIP-4844 upgrade further lowering Layer2 transaction fees, Layer2 may still have greater profit potential.Reference:<a href="https://www.verdict.co.uk/coinbase-and-consensys-cut-staff-amidst-cold-crypto-winter-winds/" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__link">https://www.verdict.co.uk/coinbase-and-consensys-cut-staff-amidst-cold-crypto-winter-winds/</a><a href="https://base.mirror.xyz/" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__link">https://base.mirror.xyz/</a><a href="https://linea.mirror.xyz/" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__link">https://linea.mirror.xyz/</a><a href="https://www.ft.com/content/949ee788-6630-4aac-9c4d-b6b0a45f4e25" class="PlaygroundEditorTheme__link">https://www.ft.com/content/949ee788-6630-4aac-9c4d-b6b0a45f4e25</a>

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LayerZero is becoming the foundational network infrastructure for the future whole-chain ecosystem

Can the rapidly developing Sui become the next disruptor of Layer1?

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1 Month In Sui — What Is Happening Now?

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AC Capital：Sui Ecosystem Overview