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Welcome back to 0xResearch. Here's what we’ve got for you today:
The return of ZKsync?
Chart: Ethereum DEX private order-flow up
Degen corner: Ethena’s eUSD is live
Is ZKsync making a comeback?
A critical juncture of any crypto project typically comes on the day of its first airdrop. On that eventful day, the real go-to-market race begins.
The Ethereum L2 ZKsync launched its ZK token and like most other token drops, reduced onchain usage immediately followed.
Since the date of its airdrop (June 17), TVL has slid from $150 million to $94 million, daily active addresses saw about a 69% drop, and daily transaction count is down from 770k to 226k. Meanwhile, the ZK token price has fallen 38%, from $0.21 to $0.13.
The good news for ZKsync is that a series of high-profile partnerships may be putting it back on the map.
ZKsync recently secured an Aave launch, along with the Aave-affiliated Lens Protocol. Of the two, the Lens migration from Polygon is the more surprising move, since Aave has deployed widely on most EVM-based chains.
When I asked Aave founder Stani Kulechov about the choice of ZKsync, he described Lens’ need for validium technology, a zero-knowledge hybrid scaling model where only transaction hashes are submitted to Ethereum mainnet.
Compared to Polygon, “the cost savings are at least 30-50 times lower,” Kulechov said.
ZKsync also officially secured Arbitrum’s gaming powerhouse Treasure DAO on Monday, making it just one of a dozen upcoming L2 chains that are planning to launch within the ZKsync Elastic Chain ecosystem.
Treasure DAO co-founder Karel Vuong acknowledged on The Rollup podcast there was a grant component involved in the move from Arbitrum to ZKsync, but the choice was fundamentally about picking “the right partner” for scalability.
Finally, ZKsync has hired Solana Foundation’s vp of marketing as its new chief marketing officer, Coinbase is listing ZK today, and ZKsync DAO recently took its tripartite governance system live.
If “ZK is the endgame,” it may be a sign of things to come.
— Donovan Choy (X: @donovanchoy | Farcaster: @donovan)
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Ethereum DEX private order-flow up:
At least 77% of DEX trades on Ethereum have gone through private mempools in the last week, marking about a 100% increase since April 2024.
Ethereum’s public mempool, also known as the “dark forest,” is a breeding ground for MEV arbitrage bots to commit frontrunning and sandwich attacks against ordinary blockchain transaction flow.
Private mempool services offered by MEV-focused firms like Flashbots and Blocknative, or dapps like Uniswap and CoW Swap, and wallet providers like MetaMask have allowed users to conceal transaction flow from such attacks.
— Donovan Choy
Ethena’s eUSD is live
After its announcement earlier this month, Ethena’s liquid restaking token eUSD has finally gone live.
Using EigenLayer as the base restaking layer and ether.fi as the liquid restaking layer, Ethena’s eUSD is the first dollar-denominated asset on EigenLayer to secure AVSs. The move is a departure from the ETH or staked ETH derivative tokens that EigenLayer has traditionally accepted.
To swap to eUSD, users can stake USDC, USDT, DAI or Ethena’s synthetic dollar USDe on ether.fi.
It’s not clear what the average yield is yet, but stakers will be able to earn EigenLayer points at a 1x rate, Ethena points/sats at a 20x multiplier, ether.fi points at a 3x multiplier and Veda points at a 3x multiplier.
— Donovan Choy
SKALE is a modular network of EVM-compatible chains with pooled security. As the pioneer of the chain subscription model, its main value proposition is offering a gas-free blockchain experience for end users. SKALE chain growth will be a key metric to follow as the network’s economic sustainability depends on new chains joining the network and paying a monthly subscription fee.
Sanko Game Corp (DMT) is a crypto-native gaming and social media studio building a suite of products ranging from Animal Crossing-style games to an onchain Twitch competitor. They raised funds publicly, have high float and could pose as an antithesis to low-float, high-FDV crypto gaming infrastructure projects with less organic activity if they are able to deliver on their next suite of upgrades, new games and expansions.
SKALE is a network of EVM-compatible chains with pooled security. SKALE stands out by offering a gas-free blockchain experience for end-users. It is able to do this by shifting validator compensation to developers. This business model has allowed SKALE to find traction in the gaming sector, demonstrated by the activity in the Nebula and Calypso hubs. As the network matures, SKALE chain growth will be a key metric to follow as the network’s economic sustainability depends on new chains joining the network and paying their monthly subscription fee.
Is AI x crypto overhyped? Permissionless is bringing you the highest signal conversations at the nexus of these two nascent technology sectors.
Plus, is crypto cleaning up its act?
The proposed amendment takes aim at Solana’s “compute budget” program, which was put in as a safeguard against computational waste.
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The insights, views and outlooks presented in the report are not to be taken as financial advice. Blockworks Research analysts are not registered broker/dealers or financial advisors. Blockworks Research analysts may hold assets mentioned in this report, further outlined in the Firm’s Financial Disclosures.