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DeFi Dev News 4/22-4/28: Starknet Propulsion Program Offers up to 1M, Taiko Launches Final Testnet Hekla, Pike Finance Suffered $299K Exploit

Taiko Launches Final Testnet Hekla

Grants & Accelerators

  • Starknet Foundation launches the Propulsion Pilot Program, an experimental pilot program aimed at accelerating the growth of Starknet games and gaming studios with grants of 1M for each game.
  • Aspecta introduces Scroll Builder Matrix, a multi-stage co-building campaign encouraging innovative builders and community backers with a $10,000 Grant Prize Pool.
  • Covalent introduces the Covalent Grants Program to support projects that access on-chain data through Covalent’s toolkits with grants of up to $25,000 in credits per project.

Hackathons & Events 🧑‍💻

  • Sui Overflow, Sui’s first global virtual hackathon, announces that the funding pool has been doubled to 1M USD.

Research 🧑‍🔬

  • Julian published a research paper on Uncrowdable Inclusion Lists, discussing the tension between chain neutrality, preconfirmations, and proposer commitments.
  • ZKV shares the top ZK research papers from Q1 2024.

Tooling 🛠

Ethereum

  • banteg launches dpack-py, the Python implementation of dpack. dpack is an EVM packaging format that allows sharing the entire deployment with all contract types and addresses.
  • Alchemy introduces Pipelines, a data streaming solution with real-time blockchain data ingestion, automatic re-org handling, and ABI decoding.
  • OpenZeppelin Contracts for Cairo v0.12.0 is out featuring ERC20VotesComponent, ERC20 hooks, upgradeable preset contracts, and importable test utilities.
  • Tenderly introduces Tenderly Virtual TestNets, a web3 development infrastructure that features real-time mainnet data, zero-setup environments, and unlimited faucets.

L2s

  • o1Labs announces the v1.0 release of o1js, which is a TypeScript framework for zk-SNARKs and zkApps.

Solana

  • Joey launches Dreamcast, an NPM library for fetching and integrating with Anchor IDLs. Developers can set up Anchor in a frontend project and interact with custom programs through Dreamcast all with minimal steps.

Education/Mechanism 🧑‍🏫

  • Jean Cavallera announces The All About Solidity Book is out on Leanpub. All About Solidity is a guide for smart contract development on EVM Blockchains and web3 for new protocols and dApps.
  • Marc Garreau shares a brief intro to bloom filters, logsBloom, and using python to find event logs.
  • ddimitrov22 shares the underflow and overflow issues when using Uniswap v3 function getFeeGrowthInside to calculate fees accumulated between two ticks.
  • Hardhat shares a guide to verify deployment on Etherscan with Hardhat Ignition.
  • HackQuest partners with Arbitrum to launch Arbitrum Learning Track, a beginner-friendly course to learn to build DApps with Stylus Rust SDK.
  • Helius shares a guide for developers to deal with blockhash errors on Solana.
  • Jtriley shares how to use type aliasing, type composition, and function call syntax to create clean, efficient, and idiomatic Solidity smart contracts.

Infrastructure 🏗

Ethereum

  • Reth alpha.23 and beta.6 are out. This is a mandatory update as it fixes critical bugs which would lead to a corrupt trie state.
  • Geth v1.14 is out featuring some new features and breaking changes, including Pathdb by default, live tracing, beacon light client, etc.
  • GatlingX announces GPU-EVM, a highly performant parallel EVM. Gatling claims it is 100x faster and RL-based AI agents can be trained on top of it.
  • Scroll introduces REVM(Rust Ethereum virtual machine), an EVM written in Rust that focuses on speed and simplicity.
  • Teko v24.4.0 is out. This version has a breaking change removing Goerli Network support.
  • Nethermind client v1.26 is out featuring snap server support and HalfPath state database upgrade, resulting in faster block processing and other performance enhancements.
  • Automata Network announces Multi-Prover AVS is live on EigenLayer mainnet. Stakers and operators can delegate or run Multi-Prover AVS with EigenLayer on mainnet.

L2s

  • Starknet Tokenbound V2, the latest implementation of ERC6551 on Starknet, is out. dApps can integrate the connectkit to let users connect to Starknet dApps with their tokenbound accounts in a few lines of code.
  • Gelato introduces Gelato Node-as-a-Service (NaaS), allowing Gelato Rollups to create token utility by enabling token holders to operate Verifier Nodes powered by Gelato Node-as-a-Service (NaaS).
  • Conduit completed a Multi-Chain Prep (MCP) upgrade for Metal, Mode, and Zora. The testnets and mainnets of these chains have been upgraded with Extended Pause and MCP L1.
  • Taiko announces Hekla, the final testnet before mainnet. Hekla features EIP-4844 blobs for DA with compression enabled and the same Based Contestable Rollup (BCR) mechanism as Katla.
  • Avail announces that Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, Starkware, and zkSync will integrate with Avail DA layer after Avail’s upcoming mainnet launch.

Solana

  • Anza introduces the SVM(Solana Virtual Machine) Interface on the pull request of Agave’s GitHub repo. They are also defining an SVM Specification.

GameFi

  • Treasure Chain Testnet is live with the launch of Treasure Ruby. Treasure also announces partnerships with EigenLayer, LayerZero, Caldera, and Thirdweb.

Security 👾

  • Dimitar Tsvetanov shares “Solana smart contract security best practices”, a GitHub repo curated by SlowMist, for developers and auditors to learn Solana common vulnerabilities.
  • ChainLight releases a report on “Security risks in AI Blockchains”.
  • Pike Finance suffered a hacker attack on its Pike Beta’s USDC pool, resulting in the theft of 299,127 USDC. The root cause of the incident was a forged CCTP message that caused USDC on Ethereum, Arbitrum, and Optimism chains to be depleted.

Bug Bounties 🐞

  • Polymarket, a decentralized prediction market platform, launches a bug bounty program on Immunefi with bounties of up to 200,000 USDC.

Product Launches 🚀

  • Ankr, a web3 infrastructure platform, has launched the public testnet for its AI-focused L1 blockchain Neura. Ankr’s ANKR token will act as Neura’s native token, and the team will incorporate a rewards system for ANKR holders with special benefits granted when the Mainnet is released later in the year.
  • DODOchain testnet is live. Built by the team of DODO DEX, DODOchain is an omnichain trading layer 3 aiming to connect liquidity across L2s and is powered by Arbitrum Orbit, EigenLayer, and AltLayer.
  • Curvance, an omnichain money market for yield-bearing assets, launched a private testnet for whitelisted addresses. The testnet period will last six weeks, allowing eligible users to complete tasks and earn Bytes as part of Curvance’s Community Incentive Program.
  • TreasureDAO launched Ruby Testnet, Treasure Portal, “Shards” point system, and major partnerships with EigenLayer, LayerZero, Caldera, and thirdweb.

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Published by:

Andy Lin