The Rollup Coaster is a newsletter diving into Ethereum’s dynamic ecosystem, focusing on rollups, zero-knowledge proofs, based sequencing/preconfirmations, TEEs, MEV/PBS, and more.

This edition is crafted by Taiko’s Community Success Manager Oleh.

Hold on tight! 🎢

Disclaimer: This newsletter is not financial advice nor a reflection of Taiko’s official stance. Conduct your own research.

Highlights 🎢

• Vitalik Buterin released a series of six comprehensive articles outlining Ethereum’s roadmap:

  • The Merge — Shift from PoW to the more sustainable PoS

  • The Surge — Scaling through sharding and rollups

  • The Scourge — MEV minimization and transparency

  • The Verge — Verkle trees to reduce data storage

  • The Purge — Reducing historical data load

  • The Splurge — Final tweaks for Ethereum optimization

ZK and Rollup Research 🧙

• Polynya’s article explores Ethereum L1 scaling roadmap.

• Fede Intern’s discusses building a fully decentralized zk-rollup, reclaiming crypto’s original values.

• 0xBreadguy explores finality in zk-rollups, discussing how zk-rollups can achieve faster and more secure transaction finalization.

• Vacp2p delves into testing six promising zkVMs to identify the best fit for their Nescience zkVM architecture.

• 2077 Research examines Ethereum’s rollup-centric scaling approach, highlighting the need for better integration between Layer 1 and Layer 2 solutions.

• Pod Network has posted a research introducing a blockless, leaderless auction system for fast, fair, and censorship-resistant auctions in decentralized environments.

ZK and Rollup Updates 🗞️

• Fuel Network launches Mainnet with Fuel Ignition.

• Uniswap introduces UniChain — a new Layer 2 for DeFi.

• Scroll ZKP takes its first step toward decentralization with the launch of the token.

• zkSync announces its first governance proposal.

• 0xCygaar highlights a new EIP proposal to boost Ethereum’s throughput by 50%.

• Milkroad reports a new all-time high as Ethereum Layer 2s surpass 32M active addresses in September.

• Astria announces that its mainnet is now live, introducing the Decentralized Sequencing Layer.

• Kraken announces Ink, a new Layer 2 solution launching in 2025.

Based Sequencing and Preconfirmations 😎

• Gwyneth from Taiko explains preconfirmation for rollups.

• Risc Zero has achieved 25 MHz in e2e performance with Taiko.

• Lemniscap publishes “Make Ethereum Whole Again”, a report on based rollups, preconfirmations, and their potential to solve key challenges in Ethereum's future.

• FabricCrypto announces that Boundless will be accelerated with the Verifiable Processing Unit (VPU), a new class of processor designed specially for cryptography.

• Risc Zero introduces Steel 1.0 - a production-ready smart contract prover bringing boundless runtime to EVM apps.

TEEs (Trusted Execution Environments) 🫣

• Fleek explains Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) and why projects leverage them.

• Polygon Ventures explores the role of Trusted Execution Environments (TEEs) in the rise of appchains.

MEV/PBS 🔍

• Kakia1989 presents a new paper examining the impact of the TimeBoost policy on arbitrageurs and MEV.

• Nethermind’s preconfirming solution integrates the existing Ethereum PBS pipeline into based rollup block building.

Join us 💗

Explore open positions on our job board.

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.