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Initia L1 launches its mainnet today. Is Initia the last shot at the modularity thesis? Today’s 0xResearch newsletter unpacks everything about the up and coming L1.

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 10 new subscribers to the 0xResearch newsletter. Scroll down for details.

Bitcoin reclaims critical level:

Back on Feb. 26, I wrote about the $91k level marked on my BTC chart with the note: “1D close below here = end of bull market.” Shortly thereafter, I added the caveat: “unless reclaimed.” Now, two daily closes above that level suggest BTC may be doing exactly that.

Price is consolidating above the 200-day SMA. And while macro conditions remain murky, the trend looks primed to resume — if it doesn’t break down soon.

BTC has been buoyed by tariff backpedaling, soft inflation prints and a return of ETF inflows. Throw in a few hundred million of short liquidations, and you have a recipe for a very nice pop.

Meanwhile, exchange inflows are at three-year lows, signaling sellers are exhausted. As MEXC’s Tracy Jin puts it, “this is the start of a structural shift…[bitcoin] might finally step into the role many assigned to it years ago — not just digital gold, but an independent asset class."

Personally, I think the “decoupling” talk is premature, but it’s certainly part of the conversation.

— Macauley Peterson

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Initia launches mainnet

Here’s a common paradox L1s face today:

L1s want to enable application-specific L2 chains because every app cannot coexist in the same blockchain environment. Builders want freedom to customize. 

But when every appchain is making their own independent design decisions, you have fragmentation. Then they leave your L1.

Ethereum, Cosmos, Avalanche and Polkadot have all suffered from similar problems.

Initia’s architecture

Initia, which is launching its mainnet today, is determined to run back the same appchain vision while avoiding the pitfalls of fragmentation.

Appchains that choose to build on Initia benefit from a tightly integrated and opinionated tech stack — what Initia calls the “Interwoven Stack.”

All Initia appchains are built with the same stack and standards. They share a canonical bridge (LayerZero), cross-chain messaging (Cosmos IBC), underlying framework (Cosmos SDK) and standardized gas token (native USDC via Noble is the default though chains can change it) across chains, as well as and data availability layer (Celestia).

Appchains can run on whichever execution environment they prefer. Of the 18 announced teams building on the Interwoven Stack, they are generally evenly split between the EVM, MoveVM and WasmVM, Initia’s co-founder Zon told me.

They can also leverage common MEV infrastructure like POB (Protocol Owned Builder) and Protorev to capture non-toxic MEV, use a common enshrined oracle (Connect), a common multisig (Initia Multisig), block explorer (Initiascan) and domain name service (Initia Username).

You get the idea — it’s every essential public good possible to allow an ecosystem of differently-minded builders to run on common standards without suffering fragmentation.

OK, well what about the L1? 

The Initia L1 runs on the MoveVM and CometBFT consensus with single slot finality and a 500 ms blocktime. 

The L1 is meant to act as a liquidity hub, very much like what Cosmos Hub aspired to be. 

What keeps liquidity on the L1? INIT token holders can stake INIT on the L1 to earn inflationary staking rewards, as well as trading fees on Minitswap, the L1’s native DEX. 

There is no fee charged to pass through the hub right now, though that may be integrated down the road, the Initia team said.

This is referred to as “enshrined liquidity,” which effectively enables INIT tokenholders to benefit from both staking rewards as well as act as a liquidity provider — a restaking of sorts.

What would deter successful Initia appchains from leaving Initia to create their own chains?

For one, appchains already have full customization over their environment and are able to internalize their own MEV.

Secondly, Initia appchains are not the same as general-purpose L2 rollup chains, so their native tokens will likely exist on the L1 where the most liquidity is. 

“They're not going to launch a DEX on their chain because that's not what their appchain is for,” Initia co-founder Stan said.

Finally, Initia explicitly rewards appchains with INIT rewards based on TVL and governance metrics as part of its Vested Interest Program (VIP). Users earn INIT based on criteria set by L2s.

The VIP program is what Initia hopes will stave off the lack of value accrual that ATOM suffered from.

“The greatest downfall for ATOM was the fact that Cosmos users did not care for the token itself. Cosmos appchains did not have a strong reason to integrate ATOM.”

To be fair, these aren’t particularly original mechanics. Initia’s VIP rewards have striking similarities to Berachain’s “proof-of-liquidity” or Blast’s “Gold” campaign. MEV capture is being pursued by many other ecosystems/apps. Arbitrum announced custom gas tokens today. 

What is perhaps original is the holistic combination of all of these design choices from day one to avoid the many problems of value accrual that have plagued ATOM or ETH.

Initia launch

Initia has raised $25m in total through three private rounds and a $2.5m Echo round in September 2024.

According to Initia’s press release, there are at least 18 teams that are building on its Interwoven Stack. These teams have collectively raised $28m, notably more than Initia's own raise. I noticed a similar pattern with MegaETH. Is the fat protocol thesis dead?

Anyway, INIT goes live today. Here are its tokenomics.

— Donovan Choy

On today’s ACD #210 call, the last before the Pectra fork on May 7, Ethereum core developers debated the long-term execution roadmap prompted by Vitalik Buterin’s proposal to eventually replace the EVM with RISC-V or some other general-purpose instruction set gaining traction in zk circles.

While the short-term focus remains the rollout of EOF and PeerDAS, Vitalik argued that shifting to RISC-V could bring performance gains and broader tooling benefits, noting it may also help Ethereum ossify at the VM layer.

The appearance by the Ethereum co-founder added ammunition to the anti-EOF brigade. Geth developer Lightclients warned that introducing EOF now, only to deprecate it within years, burdens developers with short-lived infrastructure.

Guillaume Ballet, who has been skeptical of EOF in the past, pushed back — noting that speculation on distant architectures shouldn’t stall today’s improvements.

“Let’s not abandon what we can do now for a shiny maybe,” Ballet said. Others echoed this, citing E-WASM’s failure as a cautionary tale.

Consensus appears to be to ship a scoped-down EOF — potentially Option D — to reduce risk to PeerDAS. “The North Star is PeerDAS,” said Reth’s Dan Cline.

Risc-V remains a distant vision, but its reintroduction rekindled existential questions: How will Ethereum evolve, and how much future-proofing needs to be baked into today’s roadmap? A final decision on EOF scope is expected after next Monday’s testing call.

— Macauley Peterson

Build Fast. Ship Loud. Before the Crowd Shows Up.

36 hours. $100K+ on the line.

Before Permissionless kicks off, builders will be deep in the code.
Push something onchain, on mainnet, in front of the right people.

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