The Protocol: Solana's Allure for Devs; Avalanche's Big Upgrade

6 months ago

Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's play wrap-up of the astir important stories successful cryptocurrency tech development. I'm Marc Hochstein, CoinDesk's lawman editor-in-chief for features, sentiment and standards.

In this issue:

Solana was the biggest gully for caller crypto developers successful 2024

No wonder: Solana's transaction measurement is disconnected the charts

Coinbase alums instrumentality adjacent measurement toward no-code blockchain development

Kraken’s 'Ink' layer-2 goes live

Avalanche activates biggest-ever upgrade

Ethereum's ENS picks Consensys' tech for its L2

Bitcoin's Stacks L2 gets an automated marketplace shaper for Runes

Most Influential 2024: EigenLayer's Sreeram Kannan

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NEW DEVS ❤️SOLANA: The Solana ecosystem, crushed zero for the memecoin craze, was the astir fashionable blockchain among caller developers this year, according to a study released past week by Electric Capital. In July, this assemblage became the archetypal since 2016 to bring connected committee much devs than Ethereum. Solana attracted 7,625 caller developers successful 2024, the astir of immoderate concatenation and a small implicit 1,000 much than Ethereum. The results underscore the situation Ethereum faces arsenic rival astute declaration level Solana's debased fees and accelerated transactions pull concern and talent. Read more.

SPEAKING OF SOLANA: Solana's web enactment has lit up arsenic the Pudgy Penguins NFT task debuted its autochthonal token, PENGU, connected the programmable blockchain. Solana registered a full transaction tally of 66.9 cardinal Tuesday, the highest regular measurement since its inception successful 2020, according to information root Artemis. To item however engaged it was, Solana's transaction number eclipsed the full of each different large chains combined. Read more

THE INK IS DRY: Kraken, the seventh-largest crypto exchange, said its layer-2 rollup network, built connected apical of the Ethereum blockchain, has gone live. The network, called Ink, is Kraken's reply to Base, the highly palmy blockchain launched by rival speech Coinbase. Like Base, Ink is based connected the OP Stack, a customizable model that lets developers physique their ain rollups utilizing Optimism’s technology. The squad had primitively planned for Ink to spell unrecorded successful aboriginal 2025, truthful the motorboat of its main web is up of schedule. Read more

AVALANCHE UPGRADE: Avalanche, a layer-1 blockchain launched successful 2020 that's present the tenth-largest by full worth locked (TVL), activated its highly anticipated Avalanche9000 upgrade Monday, marking the ecosystem's biggest method changes to date. The web has been prepping for these changes for months, with caller features that volition chopped the costs for sending transactions, operating validators and gathering applications connected the network. Leaders astatine Avalanche antecedently said that portion of the extremity with the upgrade is to pull developers to Avalanche and promote them to make customized blockchains utilizing its technology, known arsenic subnets, oregon “L1s." Read more.

A BOON FOR RUNES: Crypto degens person a caller – and, if each goes according to plan, faster, cheaper and safer – mode to commercialized Runes, the Bitcoin ecosystem's reply to memecoins. An automated-market shaper (AMM) for the Runes protocol went unrecorded connected Wednesday connected Stacks, pursuing the unveiling of the layer-2 network's autochthonal BTC-backed plus sBTC connected Tuesday. It's the archetypal AMM for specified tokens connected Stacks. The teams down decentralized speech (DEX) Bitflow Finance and Bitcoin span Pontis developed the AMM. Runes launched successful April and spurred a flurry of activity, paying 78.6 BTC ($8.18 million) successful fees successful the archetypal 90 minutes. However, little than a period later, this excitement waned considerably, with fees dropping much than 50%. Bitflow's purpose is for its AMM to assistance Runes standard and code immoderate of the shortcomings holding it back. Read more.

ENS PICKS L2 TECH: ENS Labs, the institution down the Ethereum Name Service, has picked Linea's exertion to physique its upcoming layer-2 network, Namechain. Linea is simply a zero-knowledge rollup that came retired successful July 2023 and was built by Ethereum infrastructure elephantine Consensys. It is the seventh-largest rollup network, according to L2Beat, with $1 cardinal locked successful its ecosystem. Rollups are a peculiar benignant of blockchain wherever 1 tin transact faster and astatine a little cost. There are 2 kinds of rollups: optimistic and zero-knowledge. Optimistic rollups usage optimistic proofs, which person a seven-day model to quality transactions earlier they are finalized. Zero-knowledge rollups, by contrast, finalize proofs wrong minutes. ENS has been described arsenic "the telephone publication for Web3," but a much precise analogy is the web's domain sanction work (DNS). The domain sanction "CoinDesk.com" is easier to retrieve and benignant than a numerical IP address. Similarly, ENS handles similar parishilton.eth, which the namesake heiress acquired successful 2021, are much relatable than the strings of letters and numbers that marque up Ethereum wallet addresses. For this service, "we request accelerated finality,” said Nick Johnson, the laminitis and pb developer of ENS. That's due to the fact that “you privation to beryllium capable to update your ENS sanction and person the concatenation bespeak it successful the smallest interval possible. And to bash that and person it stay decentralized and secure, we request accelerated finality, and optimistic roll-ups can't present that." Read more.

NO CODE, NO PROBLEM? Patchwork, a startup focused connected simplifying blockchain and smart-contract improvement founded by erstwhile Coinbase employees, has released the adjacent mentation of its low-to-no-code tools for gathering decentralized applications (dapps). Currently linked to Coinbase’s Base and backed by Coinbase Ventures, the “Create-Patchwork” picks-and-shovels attack lowers the barriers to gathering blockchain applications and attaching information to them. Following the inclination toward easy generated content, the analyzable satellite of blockchains and smart-contract plan is connected a way to no-code applications, oregon a “text-to-app” experience. Create-Patchwork is the archetypal of respective features the squad plans to rotation retired successful aboriginal 2025 and a foundational measurement to alteration creators to make contracts and applications successful seconds utilizing earthy connection inputs. “Patchwork is an Ethereum protocol that makes it truly casual to physique dynamic on-chain applications,” co-founder Kevin Day said successful an interview. “It lets on-chain things ain different on-chain things, and it allows anyone to connect programmable information to on-chain things.” Read more

EIGENLAYER'S SREERAM KANNAN: KING OF THE PROFESSOR COINS

For a crypto laminitis who's attracted truthful overmuch controversy, Sreeram Kannan is amazingly sanguine.

In a wide-ranging interrogation aft his enactment arsenic 1 of CoinDesk’s “Most Influential” figures successful crypto for 2024, the EigenLayer laminitis was generous with his time, chatting much than an hr beyond our scheduled slot. I was amazed astatine his openness due to the fact that the past clip we spoke, a workfellow and I had conscionable published an probe into imaginable conflicts of involvement astatine his company, Eigen Labs, and successful the interim Kannan had disavowed our reporting point-by-point connected a Blockworks podcast.

This time, Kannan emerged successful a antithetic light. Whatever his misgivings astir CoinDesk’s past coverage, they didn’t look top-of-mind.

What emerged wasn’t the representation of a antiaircraft tech founder, but alternatively that of a driven, thoughtful academic-turned-entrepreneur inactive adjusting to a spotlight fewer successful this manufacture ever enjoy. Instead of bitterness oregon evasion, I recovered ambition, reflection and a quiescent benignant of excitement.

Kannan seemed arsenic astonished arsenic anyone by however swiftly EigenLayer had transformed from a conception into 1 of crypto’s astir talked-about experiments, telling CoinDesk that helium continued to presumption EigenLayer arsenic a “scrappy startup.”

Over the past 12 months, EigenLayer — which allows emerging blockchain applications to get Ethereum’s robust information — went from a comparative chartless to an manufacture heavyweight. The level raised much than $100 cardinal from task firms including Andreessen Horowitz and, earlier adjacent afloat launching, drew hundreds of millions of dollars successful deposits from crypto users seeking other yield. Many were incentivized by a viral points programme that investors hoped would construe into a lucrative aboriginal token airdrop.

EigenLayer’s occurrence during the carnivore marketplace was striking, and Kannan whitethorn person played a larger relation than immoderate different entrepreneur successful revitalizing decentralized concern connected Ethereum. But not everything went according to plan. Industry critics took contented with the EIGEN token organisation program — which locked up tokens for months and barred claimants from definite geographies — arsenic good arsenic the platform’s slower-than-expected diagnostic rollout and concerns astir “rehypothecation,” oregon the reuse of collateral for aggregate purposes. In August, the CoinDesk probe (that Kannan disputed successful the podcast) raised questions astir EigenLayer’s conflict-of-interest policies, which whitethorn person allowed employees preferential entree to tokens powered by its platform.

None of this seemed to derail Kannan’s intelligence ascent. Beyond moving Eigen Labs, helium inactive holds a presumption arsenic an affiliate prof of electrical and machine engineering astatine the University of Washington, and his mentation of “restaking” — letting radical reuse staked Ethereum assets to unafraid different networks — has sparked a question of innovation and copycats. He’s go a acquainted look connected the league circuit, wherever helium unpacks his imaginativeness of blockchains arsenic tools for solving humanity’s endless “coordination problems.”

Blockchains, Kannan says, “are the biggest upgrade to quality civilization since the U.S. Constitution.”

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