To say zkSync is growing would be an understatement. Currently, our Discord is at 250,000 members, and we are well on our way to 300,000 and beyond! Thanks to all of our community members for supporting zkSync.
Current state of zkSync and what’s ahead!
We are still in the Baby Alpha phase and once this phase has been completed, we will carefully execute a Fair Onboarding process which means protocols will be invited to deploy on the zkSync 2.0 Alpha Mainnet. Read more about what is ahead on our blog.
$458M in mission-driven funding
Matter Labs has now raised a total of $458M consisting of the new $200M Series C round co-led by Blockchain Capital and Dragonfly, $200M in our previously announced ecosystem fund, $50M Series B led by a16z and $8M in Series A and Seed. Details on the Series C round can be found here.
Aave joins the mission
Our proposal for Aave to launch on zkSync has passed with more than 560,000 votes in favor! We are extremely happy about Aave joining our mission. Aave is a fully decentralized and community-governed protocol with 126,093 unique token holders. This aligns with our ethos hence why we are so excited to have them aboard.
“Deploying Aave V3 on zkSync is essential to ensuring the safety and scalability of DeFi protocols, which will result in long-term industry adoption. zkSync will further Aave’s expansion cross-chain, reinforcing Aave’s place as the top liquidity market. We are excited to see the community grow and the innovation that comes with this deployment.” Stani Kulechov, Founder and CEO, Aave Companies.
Read more about this exciting upcoming launch on our blog.
1inch coming soon to zkSync 2.0
We’re excited to announce that 1inch will soon be integrating with zkSync 2.0 Alpha Mainnet. 1inch is an exchange aggregator with more than 3.7 million unique wallets and $254 billion in total transaction volume to date. 1inch allows users to optimize their trades across multiple of DEXs, resulting in the best rates for the users.
“zkSNARKs are one of the most promising scalability solutions in the market, and we are thrilled to be integrating with zkSync in the near future. Moreover, it’s always a pleasure to join forces with such like-minded enthusiasts as the Matter Labs team so we can together bring more tech innovations to the crypto industry and for the people.” Anton Bukov, Co-Founder of the 1inch Network.
Open source is on the horizon
It’s time: we’re going full MIT-licensed open source (freedom to view, change, fork) FOR ALL CODE at our Fair Onboarding Alpha milestone. We believe that anything other than full open source is a form of censorship of code, of ideas & of innovation.
Visit our blog to learn why open source matters.
OpenZeppelin partnership and first zkSync 2.0 mainnet audit
This month we announced the first of several security partnerships with OpenZeppelin. They were tasked with conducting a full security audit for zkSync as we prepare for Fair Onboarding Alpha and Fair Launch Alpha. We’re proud to share that OpenZeppelin’s first security audit for zkSync 2.0 Alpha mainnet found that the code’s design is sound, with no critical security issues identified.
We have a zero-compromise approach to security as it is our highest priority. Security audits are an important part of securing zkSync 2.0, but we’re not stopping there. We have additional security measures planned over the next several months, including bug bounties, contests, and hackathons.
Ecosystem
RNS Global is integrating with zkSync 2.0
The world’s first sovereignty-backed digital ID platform from RNS global is integrating with zkSync 2.0 for on-chain KYC.
“Collaborating with zkSync raises awareness of the most promising Digital ID platform — the sovereignty backed RNS.ID. Its on-chain KYC privacy engine on the secure zkSync infrastructure constitutes another milestone in the crypto industry” Bril Wang, CEO at Cryptic Labs.
You can read more about the RNS Global integration here.
#Jointhemission Series
In August, we kicked off a Twitter series called #jointhemission to highlight the ecosystem on a weekly basis. You can catch up with November’s featured projects through the links below.
Developers
zkSync 2.0 Block Explorer updates
Thanks to the feedback we’ve received from our community, we’ve made some UX improvements to the zkSync 2.0 Block Explorer. We greatly appreciate anyone taking the time to give us valuable feedback. Read about the changes we made here.
SDKs in Java, Python and Go
In order to make zkSync 2.0’s exclusive features more easily accessible to developers, we’ve released new SDKs in Java, Python and Go.
Paymasters on zkSync 2.0
This month we have highlighted our Paymaster feature. Learn more about Paymaster here and how it can improve user experience.
#1000truedevs
We continued our #1000truedevs posts on Twitter so developers can vote for their must-have tools, integrations, and provide feedback. We appreciate all of your input and will use it to help amplify the developer experience on zkSync.
#1000truedevs 9 – What security measures would you like to see zkSync take?
#1000truedevs 10 – Matter University Bootcamps for devs. Share your input and reach out if you want to contribute!
#1000truedevs 11 – “Free open source = owned by community” – Alex Gluchowski.
#1000truedevs 12 – Zero-compromise approach to security.
Community
As the community grows, Matter Labs does too. This month we welcome Ankur Rakshit as Matter Labs new Chief Financial Officer. Ankur is a seasoned corporate finance professional with over fifteen years of demonstrated track record in successfully driving financial, business and strategic planning for some of the world’s largest Fortune 500 companies. From his previous role as Head of FP&A at Kraken, to his time spent at Fidelity Investments, American Express, Citigroup and MUFG, Ankur brings a wealth of financial prowess and strategic vision to Matter Labs.
We currently have more than 250.000 community members in our Discord, 515.000 Twitter followers and almost 3000 Reddit members! Thank you to all of our community members for being a part of zkSync and supporting the mission.
We’ll be changing up how we have done zkStars on Discord and focus on the contributions and support in the Discord server. We greatly appreciate all that the community does and will be working on another way that we can recognize those who are contributing to the community outside of the Discord server.
FRIENDLY REMINDER*:* The Crew3 quests are a fun way to engage the community and provide ways for the community to get more involved. The quests and XP do not represent any type of future reward from zkSync. We love how active you all have been with Crew3 and expect more quests to help you learn more about zkSync.
Join our Discord if you haven’t already. While you’re at it, drop us a follow on our Twitter page so you never miss out on any news from us!
zkSync Weekly Rollups
This month on the zkSync Weekly Rollups we welcomed Antonio Ufano (@uF4No) and ‘buidlvibes’ (@BUIDLVIBES) as guests. Antonio is one of our developer relations engineers for zkSync and buidlvibes is lead of our events team.
You can find the recordings on our YouTube channel or down below.
zkSync weekly rollup takes place on Fridays, so make sure to tune in! We will be introducing people from Matter Labs, summarize the events of the past week, and offer the community the opportunity to ask questions.
Events & Talks
Steve Newcomb joined Bankless to discuss the $458M raise, Baby Alpha, open-sourcing and much more (YouTube).
Steve Newcomb (Chief Product Officer) joined Ramp for a virtual panel (YouTube).
Steve Newcomb and Ramon Canales went live on Twitter Spaces for an AMA focused on questions from the community.
ETH Lisbon hackathon winners
The winners of the ETH Lisbon hackathon which took place October 28-30 were announced. A huge congratulations to the winning projects:
1. Testamint
2. zkSync Patron
3. Session Wallet
Remember: There is no token.
Scams are on the rise! We’ve banned thousands of bots and scammers thanks to our community moderators and attentive Discord members. Be careful of scammers that will try to rush you into believing things. We will never direct message (DM) you first, and our official announcements are posted on our Twitter.
And that’s it for this time!
If our mission resonates with you, here’s how to get involved:
Register your project on zkSync 2.0
Join the conversation in Discord
Check out our open job positions
Do you have any questions, suggestions, feedback or do you simply want to hang out with other community members and have fun? Then our Discord is the place to be and we look forward to seeing you there.
Best regards
2Cu4 – Community Moderator
