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- This Week in Web3 | 1.16.23
This Week in Web3 | 1.16.23
Sarah from Layer3
January 16, 2023
The most secure bridge design is the one that is the most trust-minimized, which is a fancy way of saying that the bridge inherits the security properties of the two chains it’s connecting.
GM all! Welcome back to This Week in Web3.
Here's what we'll cover:
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana surge over the weekend
A comprehensive guide to bridges and interoperability, by 0xJim
Product updates from our CEO & Co-Founder, Dariya
What we got done in 2022
WEB3 DIGEST
Weekend Rally
Woah, are we back?
Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Solana saw significant gains over the weekend, with BTC pushing past $19k, Ethereum rising by 21.5%, and Solana by over 65%. Without getting too much into the technical details, what can we learn about the causes.
The biggest reason may be the overall macro environment and non-crypto related gains. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics released released data over the weekend that inflation had slowed to 6.5% for December, compared to 7.1% in the previous month. Moreover, the S&P 500 and NASDAQ have had their best weekly performances since November, with bullish responses on stocks across the board.
Aside from general price performance, liquid staking derivatives such as Lido and Rocket Pool have also fared similarly well, with Lido Finance up by 50.3% and Rocket Pool up by 23.3%. This followed anticipation of the upcoming Shanghai upgrade, which will make it easier for stakers to withdraw their staked ETH.
Lido also recently dethroned MakerDAO in total value locked (TVL) — a first for any liquid staking protocol! Personally, I'm excited to see if any competitors will come after Lido's now-ginormous market share.
INFORMATION DIET
Sarah's Recommended Reads
Welcome to Sarah's Recommended Reads! Here, I'll be summarizing well-written articles or threads by web3 thinkers and builders that you should know about.
1/ Over the past 2 months, I fell in love with the interoperability problem. I spoke to nearly every project in the space, and decided to summarize my 200+ hours of research into an article.
Here’s what I learned.
— 0xjim.eth (@0xJim)
Jan 11, 2023
This week, we're summarizing this article on Bridges and interoperability by 0xJim. The research took over 200h+ of reading and compiling, so we thought it'd be a good one to dig into! After all, bridges are probably one of the most important facets of a multi-chain future, as Jim elaborates on in his article.
Here, Jim discusses what makes a bridge ideal, and raises the primary issue of a "Faustian Bargain." To put it simply, bridges have to verify the consensus of the origin chain through a on-chain light client of the origin chain, through a merkle root. This means that bridges need to check whether the specified tx has indeed been signed by the origin chain's active validator set.
Except this isn't so easy: On-chain light clients are complicated and very computationally intensive, so the tradeoff is whether you can make a bridge completely trustless or not (aka, verified completely on-chain, or externally and off-chain). Only IBC on Cosmos has managed to do so the former (but not completely) at scale via light clients and relays, whereas externally verified bridges like Binance Bridge and Polygon's POS bridge all require off-chain, external verification.
As a result? The optimal bridge is probably not straightforward, and requires a lot of thinking about scaling, tradeoffs in trustlessness, and hybrid approaches. Want to see what bridges may succeed? Read Jim's article here.
Quick Hits
Magic Eden to refund users after fake NFTs sold due to exploit – link
Mango Markets exploiter Avraham Eisenberg ordered into detention pending trial – link
StarkNet overhauls Cairo programming language to drive developer adoption – link
Alex Mashinsky sued by NY AG for allegedly hiding Celsius’ ‘dire financial condition’ – link
Product Updates from Dariya
We’re always on the hunt for ways to improve user experience on Layer3 – contact me directly @dariyaxyz with any feedback. Listening to you over the past few weeks, we’ve identified several ways to improve our product (shoutout to everyone in Discord and on Twitter who’ve been willing to jam with us!). Things like improved new user onboarding, better quest organization, higher quality quests, a referral system, and more are all things you can expect us to improve over the next few weeks.
Right now when a user logs onto Layer3 for the first time, they’re thrown into the product without much guidance. What are Quests? What’s this GM button? What are achievements? These are all questions that users have after signing in for the first time. That’s changing this week. We’re introducing a small (but powerful) onboarding flow to ensure that users know exactly how to get the most out of Layer3. This is our new product designer Greg's first feature, so show him some love! Thank you to all the users who suggested this – you helped make Layer3 better.
Remember, we love meeting our users. Shoot me a DM @dariyaxyz with feedback, to say hi, or to tell me about yourself!
— Dariya, Co-Founder and CEO
Community Call
Join us tomorrow for our monthly community call! We'll be chatting recent developments in our roadmap and what we've got planned for 2023. This time, we'll also record the community call and translate for our regional community members.
RSVP to the event on Discord here:
As always, thank you for reading!
Join our Telegram, Discord, and Twitter to stay up-to-date on the latest Quests, communities, and more. Until next week, frens.
Cheers,
Sarah from Layer3
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