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Welcome to Modular Media, a weekly newsletter covering news, updates, educational content, and more within the modular ecosystem. You can check out our previous newsletter issue below: This week's newsletter was made possible by Celestia, the first modular blockchain network. Celestia is a data availability solution that is in charge of receiving, ordering, and storing transaction data.
This past Friday, zkSync announced the official launch of their zkEVM on mainnet. zkEVM’s have been viewed as the holy grail for Ethereum scaling for quite some time now, and although we have several projects working on their own version of a zkEVM today (Polygon, Scroll, Taiko, etc.), it wasn’t until zkSync that we finally see one hit mainnet.
How we got here
You may have heard of two different versions of zkSync - Lite and Era.
zkSync Lite was the first zk-rollup that was launched by the team back in December 2020, but was only meant for simple payments. Two years later they announced their plan to launch their own zkEVM, in what was eventually dubbed as zkSync Era.
The existing mainnet smart contract for this zkEVM (Era), was first deployed about six months ago (we should note Era was launched on testnet for about a year prior to this first mainnet contract launch). This was an internal launch (team only) that was meant to stress test the network while audits for the code base were also being done. Then, on February 16th 2022, zkSync launched the first onboarding phase for Era, where registered projects had the chance to start building and deploying on the network. This means that up until today, Era was completely closed off from users and unregistered projects, however, starting today Era will be completely permissionless and open to anyone, whether you’re a team looking to deploy your project, or a regular user that just wants to start interacting with the dapps on the ecosystem.
What is a zkEVM why should I care?
A zkEVM is essentially a zk-rollup that supports “zero knowledge” proofs while also being compatible with the Ethereum virtual machine (EVM).
Up until this launch, we’ve only been accustomed to seeing EVM-based “optimistic rollups” (Arbitrum, Optimism, etc.), which use “fraud proofs” as opposed to “zk-proofs”. While optimistic rollups bring us sufficient scalability for today’s landscape, they have one main drawback - finality times.
When you submit your transaction on an optimistic rollup, that transaction is considered, well, optimistic. This means that your transaction is considered valid unless another user proves otherwise (via a fraud-proof) within a seven-day “challenge period”. Only after your transaction goes through this challenge period is it considered final. While third-party solutions can be built to reduce this finality time, at the end of the day it’ll require the addition of an extra trusted party.
zk-rollups on the other hand don’t have this long finality time drawback. Transactions under a zk-rollup can only be considered valid if they are accompanied by a zk-proof. What this all means is that we don’t have to wait seven days to withdraw our funds from the rollup (without introducing a third-party). Because there is no challenge period for zk-rollups, there is also no need to post all transaction data on-chain, which is another advantage of zk-rollups.
That being said, the initial launch of zkSync Era has a 24-hour withdrawal period, as they look to make sure everything runs smoothly before ultimately getting rid of this withdrawal period altogether.
What’s the difference between Era & other zkEVM’s?
According to the team, other zkEVMs focused on maximum Ethereum compatibility, whereas zkSync focused more on optimal performance. Some of the features this allowed zkSync to add include:
Native Account Abstraction: zkSync began developing their zkEVM with native account abstraction in mind, rather than other zkEVM solutions today that will be implementing this feature through EIP-4337.
Data Compression, & more
You can learn more about these differences here if you’re interested.
How to get started using Era
To start playing around with the network as a user, simply:
add the zkSync Era network to your wallet
bridge funds from Ethereum mainnet to zkSync Era
start interacting with zkSync’s ecosystem of dapps
Of course, keep in mind that this is an alpha version still, so use with caution and do not bridge your entire funds yet.
For any developers looking to get started with building on the network, feel free to check out the docs.
If you want to learn more about zkSync Era and what it has to offer, you can check out the complete article here, or listen to the Twitter Space the team held following the launch.
@0xPolygon 
As you may have already heard, this year's Game Developers Conference took place this past week, from the 20th - 24th. On the first day of the event, two of the biggest crypto gaming powerhouses in the space, Immutable & Polygon, announced a joint partnership to launch Immutable zkEVM.
What is Immutable zkEVM
Immutable zkEVM is “a new EVM-compatible ZK-rollup powered by Polygon technology”.
As you may have heard, Polygon will be launching its official zkEVM mainnet on the 27th. Immutable will essentially have its own zkEVM for its own ecosystem, dedicated solely to its gaming ecosystem. This zkEVM will be MATIC staked, with the validators on Polygon earning gas fees as a reward for their service. This gas fee on the Immutable zkEVM by the way, will be paid with the IMX token, adding an extra source of utility for Immutable’s token. We should also mention that they’ll be announcing three new additional token utility functions over the next couple of weeks, so keep an eye out for that.
The really cool thing about all of this however, is the fact that other games won’t be deploying directly on Immutable’s zkEVM itself, but rather, each game will be able to deploy its own, entirely separate zkEVM (their own L3 under the Immutable zkEVM). So for example, rather than Activision, Yuga, and Gods Unchained deploying beside one another on the same rollup, each one will instead have its own dedicated zk-rollup. This provides extreme scalability, which is ultimately what games need.
We can refer to these specific game zkEVMs as L3s, which are connected to the Immutable zkEVM. Projects that deploy their own zkEVM on top of Immutable are interoperable with one another and can be custom-built for each specific game, such as using your own network’s gas token.
Ultimately, Immutable zkEVM settles back to Ethereum L1, not Polygon PoS, while the other projects that deploy on top of Immutable zkEVM (the L3s) settle on Immutable’s zkEVM.
Two web3 gaming powerhouses join forces
Immutable and Polygon are probably the biggest crypto-gaming companies in the space. In the case of Polygon, the network is home to the most amount of gaming companies (Atari, Sandbox, etc.), while Immutable is the biggest game-centered company in the space, as shown by their top-tier crypto games (Illuvium) and strong IP partnerships (Tik-Tok, GameStop, etc.). In fact, you may have seen this chart circulating around, showing how both of these companies combined form the majority of all web3 gaming funding:
As we can see from the chart, Polygon and Immutable are by far, investing the most amount of funds in the space.
How is Immutable zkEVM different than Immutable X?
As you may already know, Immutable currently has its own chain, Immutable X, on top of StarkEx (built by StarkWare).
The main difference between the two is that Immutable X is built on an “app-specific” rollup, meaning it is bound to the certain set of features StarkEx provides. Specifically, this StarkEx chain is specialized for NFT minting, so although users get massive scale with zero fees, the dapps themselves lack smart contract flexibility.
With Immutable zkEVM, Immutable games will now be able to add their own unique smart contact functions, beyond what was originally available.
What is Immutable?
Immutable is a platform for building web3 games on Ethereum. Although they were originally deployed on StarkEx, this new partnership with Polygon now introduces the platform to an entirely new ecosystem of web3 games.
Immutable can be viewed as a middleware service for web3 games. They provide a wide set of features and services for developers, including:
To learn more about this new partnership, you can check out the complete article here.
It’s been a busy couple of weeks for the Eclipse community, as they just announced their partnership with both Nautilus Chain and the Hyperlane Protocol.
As a reminder, Eclipse is a rollup service provider, enabling developers to build and deploy their own customized, dedicated rollup (execution environment). Nautilus chain will be its own rollup deployed within the Eclipse ecosystem, while the Hyperlane Protocol will be used to enable interoperability for this rollup ecosystem.
On Monday, the Nautilus team announced that they were going to leverage Eclipse’s technology in order to build their own dedicated EVM rollup to power its entire ecosystem moving forward.
The Nautilus rollup will initially be deployed as an optimistic rollup, however, in the future, it will transition to a zk-rollup thanks to the help of RISC Zero.
Because it’s EVM-based, developers will be able to deploy their existing Solidity contract (dapp) on top of the Nautilus rollup with relative ease. Plus, users and developers alike will be able to benefit from using the existing Ethereum tools and resources they’re used to today. That being said, although the Nautilus rollup will be EVM-based, it will still get to benefit from the high throughput capabilities provided by Solana’s virtual machine (Sealevel), as is the case with all Eclipse-powered rollups.
Overall, the Nautilus rollup will be built to support a variety of dapps, “from consumer to defi”. Dapps that have already confirmed their future launch on the network include names like: Zebec (payments streaming platform), Poseidon Swap (DEX), Questbook (decentralized University), and 80+ more, according to the team.
Aside from the increased throughput capabilities provided by the Solana virtual machine, Eclipse also allows the Nautilus team to add their own set of unique blockchain features. One of these added customizations included the addition of ZBC (Zebec’s native token) as the native gas token for the rollup.
As far as data availability goes, Nautilus rollup will be using Celestia. Of course, the beauty behind the modular design is that each execution environment can switch features, including its DA layer solution, over time.
Here’s how you can connect to the network today, but keep in mind that the Nautilus rollup is currently in testnet mode. To learn more about this partnership you can check out the official article.
On Thursday, Eclipse announced its integration of the Hyperlane protocol, enabling permissionless interoperability between rollups and other ecosystems.
This has been a continuous endeavor for the past several months now, as this partnership also marked the first time we see the Hyperlane Protocol extend to Solana’s virtual machine.
According to the team, there are several benefits that come from this partnership, including:
Enabling Eclipse rollups to communicate with other rollups and ecosystems
“Providing a fast finality interoperability protocol for Eclipse rollups”. Finality will ultimately depend on the finality of the individual rollups involved in the communication.
“Establishing a mechanism for a token bridge”. Meaning tokens can be bridged to other environments to be used across different dapps.
Prior to this partnership, Eclipse only offered interoperability with other IBC-enabled blockchains, but now Hyperlane introduces Eclipse’s rollups to the world extending beyond the IBC ecosystem. Hyperlane’s integration will allow Eclipse rollups to extend their interoperability beyond just IBC-enabled blockchains, which as of today, is centered around the Cosmos ecosystem.
Something else Hyperlane introduces is the idea of “modular security”. Essentially, each rollup will be able to set its own security standards when it comes to interoperability with other networks. For example, rollups can add additional message validators to add extra assurances that messages are not being compromised.
For anyone interested, you can dive into the details of the partnership here.
In alpha-2 testnet, validity proofs are partially integrated and provers can join permissionlessly for real rewards.
It was a week full of zkEVM updates, as we also had Taiko announce the launch of its second zkEVM testnet, dubbed as Askja (named after Icelandic volcano).
This second testnet iteration introduced several new updates compared to its previous version (Alpha-1 Testnet), as we can see from Taiko’s roadmap image below.
Above, we can see the different features that are included with each specific roadmap phase (each column).
As we can see, Taiko’s first zkEVM testnet launched in December 2022 (“Alpha-1 Testnet”). Alpha-2 Tetsnet introduced a couple of new changes, including:
Partial integration of validity proofs
Proposers are permissioned (permissionless during Alpha-1): before blocks can be proven, they must go through internal validity tests. Only by passing these internal tests can the block be proposed for proving. In this latest testnet version, proposers are controlled by the team, but of course will transition to permissioneless in future iterations.
Provers are permissionless (permissioned during Alpha-1): Once a block is proposed, it can be proven. “Currently, any prover can create proofs for proposed blocks”.
Protocol economics are enabled: to reward provers for their computing resources expended during proof generation, Taiko Labs is creating a reward campaign worth up to 50,000 USDC
Alpha-2 is now connected to Ethereum testnet, Sepolia
How to get started with the network
Taiko will continue to be open to any user or developer that wants to start experimenting with the network. If you’re a user, simply:
Add Taiko network to your wallet
Use the faucet to request sample tokens to use on the testnet
Interact and swap on the Uniswap v2 fork deployed on Taiko
View your transaction on the testnet explorer
Use the bridge to bridge between the L2 and Sepolia testnet
What is Taiko
Taiko is developing an Ethereum-equivalent zk-rollup (zkEVM), meaning existing Ethereum contracts won’t have to change a line of code to deploy on Taiko. If you recall, zkSync went for different performance features, as opposed to full Ethereum equivilance. Although most of the zkEVM attention has been centered around zkSync and Polygon, Taiko is a project that every Ethereum fanatic should keep an eye on, especially as they look to launch a fully permissionless zkEVM in early 2024. We’ll go over Taiko in greater detail at a later date, but for now, you can learn more about the network here.
The new beta-3 testnet brings P2P networking, introducing the ability to run synchronizing full nodes on Fuel.
On March 20th, Fuel announced its third testnet launch, as the network inches its way closer towards mainnet.
Fuel’s second testnet launched last November, settling over 900K transactions altogether and growing an ecosystem that now extends about 25 projects deep.
According to the team, this third testnet (beta-3) expands on the features its previous iteration (beta-2), “introducing P2P networking and the ability to run synchronizing full nodes”.
That said, there are several other features that were added to this latest testnet version, including:
Compiler enhancements
Client updates
New developer tooling
Rust SDK updates
New Fuel Wallet enhancements on the front-end
Most of these updates were very technical and too far out of scope for this newsletter to go into detail, but thankfully the Fuel team wrote this detailed article going over each new update on a deeper level.
How to get started with the network
Download and install the Fuel wallet
Use the faucet to request some testnet tokens
Explore and interact with any of the 25+ live dapps
What is Fuel
Fuel is a modular execution layer that uses its own virtual machine (FuelVM), and programming language (Sway), both of which were developed to extend on the capabilities of the EVM. The Fuel stack has the capability to function as a monolithic chain, however, Fuel v2 specifically will be built as a fraud-provable modular execution layer. The first iteration of Fuel v2 will launch as a rollup that settles on Ethereum, however, other settlement layers will be added over time (thanks to the power of modularity!). We’ll go over Fuel in greater detail at a later date, but for now, you can learn more about the network here.
Last week, Dymension published a new paper, introducing eIBC (escrow IBC), “a novel IBC-based protocol for fast and trust-minimized bridging between Optimistic Rollups”.
Teams can start registering for the DAO Global Hackathon 2023 event, featuring over $120K in bounties. The event will take place from April 10 - May 7 and feature several project sponsors, including Mantle Network, Uniswap, and others.
Here’s the latest weekly Scroll recap thread. This week featured the unanimous passing of a proposal to launch Hop protocol on the network.
AltLayer is among one of the 16 teams chosen (out of 400+) to join the UC Berkely Blockchain Xcelerator program this year
Check out the new Osmosis frontend, now introducing native EVM assets to the platform, including ETH, BNB, MATIC, and more.
As you may recall, Arbitrum recently launched its native token, ARB. As part of the distribution phase, several Arbitrum native DAOs received their own allocation of ARB tokens. Here you can see a list of how many tokens some of these DAOs received from this.
Now that you have your ARB tokens, you can start participating in Arbitrum governance through the Tally platform.
Arkham integrates the Arbitrum network into its data intelligence platform, allowing users to start accessing network data
Here are the “recent happenings and upcoming milestones” regarding Optimism governance.
Covalent, a web3 data provider, announced their integration with Mantle Network, allowing developers to access the network’s testnet data “to leverage in research, dapp development, and analysis”.
Stables announces a partnership with Mastercard & CIrcle, allowing users to spend USDC “anywhere Mastercard is accepted”
Reports came out that Microsoft started testing an Ethereum wallet integration into the Edge browser.
Have you checked out this new human-readable interface for Ethereum transactions made by the Zapper team (view NFT mints, token swaps, etc. from a mobile app)
New Starknet version makes its way to testnet, kicking off Cairo1.0 and bringing a a 5x reduction in costs. The Starknet community can now vote for this new update to make its way to mainnet launch.
Last week, StarkNet announced the appointment of the five committee, “each entrusted with a specific mandate that aligns with Starknet’s mission and priorities” - Provisions Committee, Early Adopter Grants Committee, Developer Partnerships Committee, Governance Committee, Ecosystem Onboarding Committee
The StarkNet foundation announces Round 1 of its “Early Adopters Grant” (EAG). StarkNet builders can start applying for a grant today.
zkMeta “is creating a dedicated gaming rollup on Polygon. Era7 will be their first game launch, with at least four more title releases expected over the following months”.
Aavegotchi announces that they’ll be launching their own Polygon Supernet, GotchiChain, providing a dedicated chain for the Aavegotchi ecosystem and community, while also adding a new use case for GHST, as it’ll start being used for gas on the supernet.
0vix announces that they will be deploying on Polygon zkEVM, as they look to become the network’s native lending protocol
OP Labs is offering $160K as part of their audit contest for the latest updates they’ve made to the Bedrock codebase
ETHGlobal and Jon Charbonneau host “MEVconomics”, seven hours of presentations and discussions about (you guessed it) MEV and economics with your favorite giga-brains ⚡🧠
It is well worth watching the event, but in case you don’t have the full afternoon free, here are our favorite summaries and related resources:
Logan Jastremski from Frictionless Capital suggests that over the long-term, base layer differentiation will come down to three things:
Throughput
Latency
Full node count
He’s a big monolithic blockchain fan, yet he’s referencing Vitalik’s post - so let’s explore this 🤔
Vitalik’s post explains, as the title suggests, that the endgame for blockchain scalability is “centralized block production and decentralized block validation”. To use specific examples, he is saying both (a) Solana and (b) Ethereum + rollups end up looking similar in the end. He does a good job illustrating his thought process in the post, and it’s a pretty easy read, so we won’t attempt to summarize more here.
This brings up a natural question - if chains all take this same shape, how will they differentiate?
While Logan’s perspective has merit, we’d argue it’s missing important nuances unarticulated in Vitalik’s post:
Verification features: Not all verification is equal. There is value in trust-minimized light nodes that can verify state in real-time, and it will likely be harder for big blockchains to accomplish this (e.g. diet clients won’t let you verify state in real-time).
Anti-censorship features: This design space is bigger than many people think. Ethereum, for example, is likely years ahead in anti-censorship features. Think about all the optimizations (e.g. PBS, crLists, based rollups, etc.) being implemented. And if you follow MEV and rollup research, it’s clear we are just scratching the surface.
Let’s also assess his argument head on, where monolithic and modular base layers are directly competing on throughput and latency. Modular chains have a lead in full node count, but we’ll put that aside for now.
Good enough performance: Modular architecture enables many performance workarounds, and there’s a decent chance the workarounds are good enough for many applications. One example that addresses throughput is the validium design, where rollup transaction data is stored off-chain. Logan seems to ignore the security properties and value of validiums altogether. Another example that addresses latency is rollup soft finality, which you can read more about here.
Configurable performance: Modular base layers can treat throughput as a governance parameter and scale up when it makes sense. Mustafa makes it clear that Celestia can match Solana throughput, and it’s likely that other base layers can too (since they lean on the same cryptographic techniques).
On the topic of base layer comparisons, Alex Beckett from Celestia wrote a great forum post comparing DA layers across key metrics.
Rollups emerged as a solution to scale layer 1s. As it turns out, rollups also need some help with scaling. In particular, rollups can gain higher throughput capacity with access to more data...
@0xJim breaks down the rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) landscape in depth, covering ~27 projects
Electric Capital releases their annual crypto developer report for 2022, analyzing 200+ million code commits & 11k+ developer profiles 📊 (full report here)
@0xRainandCoffee writes an article “Modular MEV Part 2”, covering all things MEV as a follow-on to “Modular MEV Part 1”
@jon_charb summarizes last week’s mega-post on all things rollups
@sreeram_kannan explains why shared sequencing will return more MEV to rollups (vs. isolated sequencing)
Celestia writes an article discussing the “Misconceptions of sovereign rollups”, including how sovereign rollups inherit security from and bridge to the DA layer
@expctchaos and @Louround_ break down Polygon zkEVM in depth, covering everything from their architecture and proving system to their tokenomics and treasury
@ShivanshuMadan walks through the rollup-as-a-service landscape, including RaaS 101 and key players
@DavideCrapis writes an article on “MEV Resilient Ethereum”, defining an an MEV resiliency framework and analyzing the MEV landscape
Celestia releases an episode discussing MEV in the modular stack with builders from Skip Protocol, Duality and Astria
Bankless releases an episode discussing zkSync Era mainnet with Alex and Anthony from Matter Labs
Mantle writes an article discussing the differences between ZK and Optimistic rollups and tying in their recent forum post
@ether_fi hosts a Twitter Space discussing the Shanghai upgrade, DVT, liquid staking and restaking with builders from EigenLayer and Obol Labs
Polygon writes an article describing the two-stage approach to security for their zkEVM Mainnet Beta
@LoganJastremski releases an episode discussing all things ZKPs, including their history and scaling applications with Tom from Aztec Network and Geometry
@colludingnode suggests a scheme for very fast decentralized sequencing with bonded soft confirmations
Bitfrost hosts a Twitter Space discussing blockspace markets, share security and scalability with Sreeram from EigenLayer, Rob from Polkadot and Leo from Alkimiya
@jermywkh explains what Argent and Account Abstraction are, highlighting noteworthy features and educational resources
Big Brain Holdings hosts a Twitter Space deep dive discussion with the Dymension team
@kelvinfichter explains that there’s a difference between rollup ordering and data availability
@PhABCD summarizes “EIP-4844 Fee Market Analysis” (post by @DavideCrapis) on ETH Research
@bkiepuszewski highlights key risk areas of Arbitrum One’s current implementation
@kobigurk creates an OpenAI-powered bot that answers questions related to the Zero Knowledge podcast - pretty cool! 🤯
Babylon walks through use cases and benefits of shared Bitcoin security
@terpayyo explains ProtoRev, an arbitrage module that redistributes MEV to the Osmosis community
Messari breaks down Fuel Network and the Fuel ecosystem, summarizing @eshita’s full report
That's all for this week! Thanks for reading 🧱🎬
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Excited to share another week of updates from the modular blockchain ecosystem!
For the week ending March 24th
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