Decentralization is on the clock. A new policy framework by the Decentralization Research Center cuts through the noise: Decentralization should be judged by control. As rollups like Scroll hit key milestones, the question is whether real trust minimization is really happening, or if it’s just theater.

In other news…are you coming to Permissionless IV Brooklyn in June? Tickets are $399 (for now!), but you can get one for half price with a unique 50% off discount code if you successfully refer 5 new subscribers to the 0xResearch newsletter. Scroll down for details.

The state of Polymarket:

Polymarket was all the rage last year, when weekly trading volume highs reached $139m in early November. Many thought the prediction market platform would suffer a slow post-election death.

That hasn’t panned out to be true. Polymarket is still chugging along, with about $20m to $30m in weekly trading volumes over the last month.

Polymarket’s platform has sustained usage in sports- and politics-related bets. At present, the largest markets by open interest are bets surrounding the Canadian elections and whether Trump will create a bitcoin reserve in his first 100 days of presidency. Both of these markets are ending today. What’s the next move for Polymarket?

Looking at active wallets suggests that broader mainstream usage is still relatively strong. March saw about 1.6m active wallets, just 20% down from the highs of 2m active wallets in January.

— Donovan Choy

Before the stage, There’s the sprint.

The Permissionless IV Hackathon kicks off before the first mic check. No distractions. Just 36 hours to ship something — onchain, open source, in the wild.

The right people are watching. The capital is real. Launch something that speaks for itself.

We’ll cover:

• Food, caffeine, WiFi, vibes

• Technical mentorship, workshops

• A free ticket to Permissionless IV

• Eyes from top investors and protocols

📅 June 22–23 | Brooklyn, NY | Register now!

Decentralization on a deadline

Forget the vague platitudes. No endless debates about “degrees” of decentralization. A new report out today from the Decentralization Research Center argues that decentralization should be judged by one thing only: control.

Can any person or group unilaterally control the network? If yes, it’s centralized. If no, it's decentralized. Simple. Actionable.

This framing matters because, as the DRC points out, the next two years will shape whether blockchain tech fulfills its original promise, or just recreates Silicon Valley’s closed gardens onchain. Without clear regulatory incentives for real decentralization, the default path will be centralization: cheaper, easier, but more extractive.

The report lays out seven “control principles” to lock in decentralization through law: Networks should be open source, permissionless, autonomous, credibly neutral, noncustodial, economically independent and broadly distributed. The report may serve as a blueprint regulators could actually use — without crushing innovation.

But the DRC’s smartest move might be what it doesn’t demand: purity at all costs.

It explicitly carves out room for practical realities like "security councils" that can step in during emergencies.

Take Arbitrum, for example. After the network’s early governance missteps, the DAO has has mixed results. One thing it’s done well is to provide for a decently large and transparently selected security council with 12 members. This structure doesn’t break decentralization, the DRC argues, if it’s properly constrained, disclosed and accountable.

This carve-out matters because it signals that serious decentralization isn't about eliminating all forms of human intervention but rather just limiting unchecked control. Autonomy plus resilience, not code worship.

Rollups are growing up

Last week, Scroll became the latest Ethereum layer-2 rollup — and the first using zk/validity proofs — to achieve “Stage 1” status on L2BEAT.

Scroll’s Euclid upgrade included two new mechanisms for sequencer accountability:

• Enforced transaction inclusion

• Permissionless batch submission

These two core liveness and censorship resistance protections are what filled the pie slice to reach Stage 1. Add in the recent move to echo Arbitrum’s 9-of-12 security council multisig (from Scroll Foundation and community members), and Scroll has clearly invested in stronger trust minimization.

But it may be short lived. Both Scroll and OP Mainnet are at risk of downgrade in 90 days unless key guarantees around an exit window to Ethereum mainnet are put in place.

Per L2BEAT: "Compromising ≥75% of the Security Council should be the only way (other than bugs) for a rollup to indefinitely block an L2→L1 message or push an invalid L2→L1 message."

L2BEAT wants to see users’ exit window to be functional and credibly ungoverned (i.e., not overrideable by a core team with instant upgrade authority). Arbitrum ensures a 10-day exit period, so remains qualified.

The DRC’s work ties into real policy momentum, including elements from last year’s FIT21 Act and ongoing SEC safe harbor discussions. If adopted more widely, the DRC framework could tackle one of crypto’s biggest regulatory bottlenecks: separating real decentralized infrastructure projects from those that slap a “DAO” label on centralized tech stacks. It gives both builders and policymakers a shared language — one rooted in control dynamics, not vibes.

If crypto is going to survive as something more than Wall Street with a dark mode, serious decentralization tests should be fought for — not just in code, but in law.

— Macauley Peterson

Bitcoin’s macro status, Ethereum’s cultural reset and Solana’s growth risk

Should VCs benchmark against BTC?

Jon Charbonneau: I don’t think it makes sense. VCs are seeking exposure to a different market and thesis. The bitcoin thesis is digital gold. The right benchmark is probably a basket of altcoins, like a weighted-average benchmark of ETH, SOL and BNB. That’s what I think you’re actually trying to get exposure with venture investments.

What’s Solana's outlook?

Jon Charbonneau: Solana is the current leader in a decentralized execution environment, but it’s difficult to underwrite. No one knows what the cash flows will look like at the end of the day. SOL is priced now on an aggressive but defensible multiple. REV is ~$80 billion. But these revenues will compress, they may not be sustainable. So a bet on SOL is a bet on the overall market growing ~100x in the next few years.

Dan Smith: I agree. It ties into the sustainability of priority fees for an L1. Apps will want to absorb more of those fees for themselves. So Solana has to go from a 1000 to 100K TPS to survive off purely base fees, which needs a lot of tech improvements to get there. I think priority fees will last longer than markets want to give it credit for but I acknowledge that priority fees are probably not how Solana wants to be generating most REV. 

Does the L1 valuation premium still exist?

Jon Charbonneau: I think it does but it’s not big. It’s hard to put exact valuation multiples on chains. REV multiples between L1s and L2s are generally in the same ballpark. A lot of this is due to path dependence of being early. L2s “should” trade a discount to L1s if they’re trying to be extensions of the L1. But now we’re seeing L2s like Base moving in the direction of onboarding new users and owning the network effects directly. In this new world, the L1 vs L2 valuation difference should diminish — the L2’s relationship to Ethereum is merely a service provider relationship in the background.