DeFi

OP Labs debuted a privacy offering on Tuesday that’s aimed at bringing more enterprises to Ethereum’s ecosystem, starting with the OP Mainnet, the layer-2 scaling network it created. The network formerly called Optimism now supports “Privacy Boost,” OP Labs said in an announcement, describing the product as technology that enables private transfers and discreet interactions with decentralized finance applications—while supporting regulatory needs. Privacy Boost functions as a software developme...

Business

OP Labs, the core development team behind Ethereum layer-2 network Optimism, is laying off 20 employees as the firm seeks to make quicker decisions and reduce overhead.  The decision “reflects a narrowing focus” and was not made due to financial constraints, according to an internal note shared publicly by OP Labs co-founder and CEO, Jing Wang.  “This is not about finances. OP Labs is well capitalized with years of runway,” Wang said in a Slack message to the company that she published on X. “T...

Opinion

Morning Minute is a daily newsletter written by Tyler Warner. The analysis and opinions expressed are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Decrypt. Subscribe to the Morning Minute on Substack. GM! Today’s top news: Crypto majors rebounded 1-3%, with SOL leading; BTC at $67.4k CME to offer 24/7 crypto futures & options trading starting May 29 The 3rd White House meeting on stablecoin yield shows little progress Federal judge in Tennessee blocks state-level enforcement against Kalshi P...

Markets

Optimism's OP token has plunged by more than 20% over the past 24 hours, coinciding with the announcement that Base, a popular layer 2 solution, is transitioning from the OP Stack to a unified, self-operated tech stack. OP is currently trading at $0.1436, down 23.4% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. Base's plan to disconnect from Optimism will sever a three-year dependency that had tightly linked the two projects' fortunes. Base said in a Tuesday announcement that it will mov...

The Projects

Farcaster is a decentralized social media protocol designed to separate social identity from a single platform. Rather than operating as a standalone app, the protocol allows multiple applications to access the same network of who follows whom, so users can move between apps without losing their identity or audience. Its design addresses limitations found in traditional social media platforms, where a single company controls networks, user accounts, audiences, and content. Farcaster treats socia...

Markets

BNB set a new all-time high on Monday as it surged 7% on the day to a peak of $858, securing its place as the fifth largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization. The cryptocurrency has since retreated to $851, up 6.6% over the past 24 hours, according to CoinGecko data. It follows the announcement that a drug company is set to buy up $700 million worth of BNB, as the latest in the corporate crypto treasury trend. Alongside BNB's all-time high, other altcoins have jumped in value. Leading the...

Gaming

League of Kingdoms, a long-running blockchain massively multiplayer online real-time strategy game, or MMORTS, is expanding into a multi-game ecosystem called Arena-Z. With that, a pair of additional games are launching soon, along with fresh tokens and a fund to encourage additional community development. The Arena-Z ecosystem will welcome two additional games by the end of the quarter: League of Kingdoms Chronicle, a dungeon-crawling role-playing game (RPG) that supports the original game’s NF...

Gaming

Legendary game developer CCP Games this week lifted the lid on Eve Frontier, a space survival game set in the Eve Online universe that features blockchain integration.  Initially referred to as Project Awakening, Eve Frontier appears to have a lot of similarities to the massive Eve Online game, but with more of a survival focus—and the ability to use crypto tokens and blockchain code to impact and reshape the game in new ways. With such a prestigious development studio behind it, hopes are high...

Technology

Layer-2 (L2) networks are coalescing around dominant tech stacks rather than working toward universal standards, research from onchain explorer Blockscout reveals. Speaking with Decrypt in a video interview, Ulyana Skladchikova, head of product; and Kirill Fedoseev, head of research at the open-source explorer, revealed how a shift toward technical "clustering" is happening, despite overall transaction growth. "We see chains kind of get together around some big players and establish interop with...

Technology Guides

Blockchain infrastructure has evolved to encompass an ecosystem of layer-1 and layer-2 networks. In this article we’ll explore the difference between the two, and how layer-2 networks and other scaling methods like sidechains attempt to address the scalability challenges of layer-1 blockchains. What are layer-2 networks? Simply put, layer-2 networks are blockchain networks that live atop a layer-1 network such as Ethereum, with the layer-1 network providing the base layer of infrastructure and s...

DeFi

Cryptocurrency exchange Kraken has unveiled Ink, an Ethereum-based layer-2 blockchain powered by Optimism's OP Stack.  Ink will offer on-chain wealth management tools for seasoned digital asset traders and crypto-curious clients, Kraken said Thursday in a joint statement with the Optimism Collective. The network, which rolls out on testnet in November, will be interoperable with Optimism's Superchain, a network of layer-2s that share security and infrastructure. “As part of the Superchain, Ink i...

Technology

Worldcoin, newly rebranded World—the crypto-fueled, eyeball-scanning identity platform co-founded by OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—launched the mainnet for its own Ethereum layer-2 network called World Chain on Thursday. World Chain is rolling out with the goal of bringing millions of verifiable human users onto the blockchain, in addition to promoting the development of digital identity tools and applications that promote financial freedom, its core team told Decrypt. Many blockchains are dominated by...

Gaming

Eve Online creator CCP Games announced Thursday that its upcoming survival-centric blockchain game, previously referred to as Project Awakening, will launch as Eve Frontier instead—and that it’s being built within the Ethereum ecosystem. Eve Frontier, as it has been rebranded, is an on-chain space simulation game that players will be able to mold and expand as they see fit—and they must collaborate or face certain doom, CCP Games founder and CEO Hilmar Veigar Pétursson told Decrypt’s GG earlier...

Technology

Sony Group has finally pulled back the curtain on Soneium, an Ethereum layer-2 blockchain developed in partnership with Web3 infrastructure provider Startale. Driven by a joint venture between Sony and Startale—known as Sony Block Solutions Labs—Soneium marks the company's initial steps towards developing a fully realized blockchain. The network, planned for launch in the coming weeks, will initially operate on a testnet in collaboration with Astar Network, a blockchain platform known for its mu...

Markets

Rumors of a potential approval of Ethereum spot ETFs have fueled a full day of gains for the Ethereum ecosystem, with the price of ETH skyrocketing 20% intraday to just shy of $3,700—trading at $3,687 at time of writing—and sister tokens Arbitrum (ARB) and Optimism (OP) both notching gains of 18% on Monday. The optimistic mood had already spread to other cryptocurrencies, including Solana (SOL) and Avalanche (AVAX), which are peaking above $40 and $188 respectively, as of this writing, represent...

Gaming

Redstone, a new Ethereum scaling network designed for fully on-chain games and “autonomous worlds,” launched its mainnet today—with a number of early games already available for play. Developed by Ethereum startup Lattice, Redstone was built via Optimism’s OP Stack scaling tech. But it’s much more than a rebranded riff on the layer-2 tech that also powers networks like Base and Zora—Redstone has been significantly retooled for the needs and demands of video games, particularly those that use blo...

DeFi

The on-chain competition is always watching, but sometimes it will be compelled to help. Offchain Labs, the core team behind the Ethereum layer-2 scaling network Arbitrum, recently uncovered several security issues in a testnet version of Optimism, a separate Ethereum layer-2 scaling network created by OP Labs. After fixes were implemented, the issues were detailed Friday in a blog post published by Offchain Labs co-founder Ed Felton. As the potential vulnerability was found in Optimism’s system...

Technology

Heralded by Ethereum developers as the technical milestone they’d been “dreaming of,” last week’s Dencun upgrade was supposed to forever alter the Ethereum ecosystem—by making transactions on its layer-2 networks exponentially cheaper and thus more accessible.  One week later, how do things stand?  On the whole, Dencun has delivered exactly as promised. Across layer-2 networks that have already integrated the software update, gas fees have plummeted to unprecedented lows, in most cases by over 9...

Markets

Just hours to go until the Dencun upgrade goes live on Ethereum mainnet, the tokens of layer-2 scaling solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, and Polygon have all seen hefty gains. Arbitrum is the only one to have seen double-digital gains as the Ethereum community counts down the minutes to Dencun. Its ARB token has risen 11% in the past day and 7.5% compared to this time last week. ARB rose as high as $2.25 early Wednesday morning, but has since settled to $2.20 at the time of writing. Arbitrum is...

Technology

It’s been a wild 10 days for decentralized social media startup Farcaster, which catapulted from relative obscurity to crypto industry darling last week after debuting a novel feature for independent developers.  Overnight, activity on the network increased exponentially, dramatically broadening its reach. That growth caught many in the industry by surprise—including Farcaster’s leadership.  (Video by Rug Radio Creator Benjamin White.) “We thought it was going to be popular,” Farcaster co-found...