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Dino coins pumped first, and now it’s time for our overpriced JPEGs to shine. There is absolutely zero uncertainty that we are now so back in the bull. Meanwhile, Bitcoin L2s are leveraging zk tech — the so-called “holy grail” of blockchain scalability — but the truth is they just aren’t as trustless as Ethereum zk rollups.

NFTs are back:

NFTs are making a bit of a comeback. In the last seven days, Ethereum NFT trading volumes have seen an average of $23.3 million, and the total NFT market cap is up 13.5% across all chains in the last week.

For the last month, the floor prices of CryptoPunks are up 33.9%, Pudgy Penguins and Lil Pudgys are up 180% and 235%, Azukis are up 92%, while Bored Ape Yacht Club and Mutant Ape Yacht Club are up 71% and 77%, respectively.

— Donovan Choy (X: @donovanchoy | Farcaster: @donovan)

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With a $6M seed round, 12 IRL showcases, and the recent sell-out of 30K Genesis E-liquid Pods, Puffpaw is transforming the space as the only presence intersecting four trending narratives: consumer applications, DePIN, DeSci and Berachain.

Bitcoin doesn’t have ZK rollups…yet

Bitcoin enthusiasts often hear terms like “zk rollups” thrown around, but the reality is more nuanced. While Ethereum’s zk rollups rely on zero-knowledge proofs for trustless verification, Bitcoin’s architectural constraints make implementing true zk rollups a distant goal.

Misleading claims around Bitcoin’s layer-2 capabilities and trust assumptions threaten to confuse users, and the Bitcoin builder community is working to clarify these issues.

Ethereum zk rollups leverage the Ethereum mainnet (layer-1) to verify cryptographic proofs directly onchain. Bitcoin, with its 4MB block size and limited scripting capabilities, can’t accommodate these computationally intensive verifiers. As Alexei Zamyatin, a core contributor to BitVM, explains, a zk rollup verifier “simply won’t fit into a block."

Projects like BitVM take a different approach, combining SNARK-based compression with optimistic verification. Rather than verifying proofs onchain, BitVM splits a program into smaller chunks, each verifiable sequentially. This method mirrors optimistic rollups like Arbitrum rather than Ethereum’s zk rollups.

“The zk part stops at the compression stage,” Alexei notes. “Everything else is an optimistic fraud-proof system.”

The broader discussion about Bitcoin L2s goes beyond just rollups. In a recent thread, Janusz Grzegorz, founder of Bitcoin Layers, reflected on the evolving definition of Bitcoin L2s. Initially, Bitcoin layers evaluated projects based on their claim of being a “Bitcoin L2,” but this approach excluded meaningful activity like BTC-backed tokens on Ethereum L2s.

Janusz advocates for a shift in focus to trust assumptions instead of semantics. He proposes evaluating the bridges that underpin these systems regardless of whether they market themselves as an L2. These include protocols like Rootstock, tBTC on Arbitrum and others.

Grzegorz, known online simply as “Janusz,” also has flagged projects like Merlin and BitcoinOS as having contributed to the confusion. Such projects often market themselves as zk rollups on Bitcoin, despite lacking the infrastructure to deliver security guarantees on par with how the term “rollups” is typically used. He cautions users to scrutinize projects for real progress, such as distributed or optimistic bridges, rather than relying on buzzwords.

For Zamyatin, education and transparency are key. By focusing on trust assumptions, clear definitions and robust analyses, the Bitcoin community can better understand what’s feasible — and what’s not. For now, zk rollups on Bitcoin remain a misnomer, but innovations like BitVM demonstrate how Bitcoin can scale within its unique constraints.

To achieve true zk rollups, Bitcoin will require a soft fork to enable building a native zk verifier. Several new opcodes are currently under consideration amid a recent push to clarify Bitcoin’s future roadmap.

An open Wiki-style forum lets interested stakeholders express their preferences and justify their views. Zamyatin’s team at Build on Bitcoin (BOB) has yet to weigh in, but expects to soon.

“What’s great about this effort is that it collects rationales in one place — instead of fighting on Twitter or scattered threads, you can see the reasoning for each individual’s stance,” Zamyatin said. “It makes it easier to evaluate proposals, summarize pros and cons, and have meaningful discussions.”

— Macauley Peterson (X: @yeluacaM | Farcaster: @Macauley)

Stablecoin synergy

Stablecoins are a good candidate for “crypto’s killer app.” sUSDe by Ethena Labs has seen over 100% supply growth since October, driven by demand for its >27% APY returns.

As Blockworks Research’s stablecoin dashboard shows, Pendle holds 48% of sUSDe supply (1.8b), with 750m in a market maturing soon. Aave holds 1b sUSDe (26% of supply), with caps filling rapidly.

Aave governance is exploring Pendle PT tokens for fixed-yield borrowing — an option already possible in smaller DeFi protocols, such as Dolomite. This synergy showcases growing composability across Ethena, Pendle and Aave.

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Emerging technologies including AI and blockchain are set to transform society, but they often involve sensitive information. For these technologies to realize their full potential, private data sharing and privacy-preserving computation are essential prerequisites.

In the latest report from Blockworks Research, analyst Daniel Shapiro breaks down how emerging Privacy-Enhancing Technologies (PETs) could enable secure collaboration without compromising privacy, making it possible for individuals and organizations to leverage data across partners, users, and systems.

• Polygon-backed Plonky3 has been benchmarked as the fastest zk proving system, achieving over 2 million hashes per second on an M3 Max. “Plonky3 is not a single instantiation of a proving system,” Polygon’s Brendan Farmer explained to Blockworks. “It’s more like a development kit to build proving systems or zkVMs.”

• The Celestine Sloth Society faced backlash after creator Zaki Manian announced a "Lazy Expansion" NFT collection without community input. The move sparked dilution concerns, followed by accusations of autocracy against Manian. Tensions escalated as members criticized the concept amid the collection’s crash in price, which has shed 50% since Nov. 28. The expansion was soundly rejected by a community poll, highlighting friction between Manian’s vision and the community's collaborative expectations.