Quick Take

• Ethena plans Synthetix integration.
• Lyra announces V2 upgrade.
• Gitcoin introduces Allo V2.
• Ethereum turns 8.

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Optimism Highlights 🔴✨

Lyra Announces V2 Upgrade
Lyra Finance co-founder Nick Forster announced Lyra V2, an upgrade to the Lyra options protocol that will introduce a new OP Stack rollup called Lyra Chain. Fees generated from the sequencer and from trading will be allocated to the Lyra DAO and governed by LYRA token holders. A portion of trading fees will be used for an insurance fund. The platform will also feature support for portfolio margin, cross-margin, and multi-asset collateral. The new features enable the creation of automated strategies and vaults, including covered call selling vaults and a delta-neutral perp yield harvesting strategy. Lyra V2 will also offer smart contract wallets and gasless transactions.

Ethena Perps Integration On Synthetix

Stablecoin protocol Ethena announced plans to build a perpetual DEX integration on Synthetix. Ethena intends to be a liquidity provider on Synthetix, offer USDe as a margin instrument, and add USDe as a new collateral type for minting sUSD. Ethena seeks to access Synthetix's deep on-chain liquidity on Ethereum L1 for its stablecoin. USDe is Ethena’s overcollateralized yield-bearing stablecoin that will be backed by stETH and delta-neutral positions on derivatives markets. Ethena refers to its stablecoin as an “Internet Bond” as it aims to mirror U.S. treasury bonds in TradFi but for DeFi. Ethena plans to release its delta-neutral USDe stablecoin in Q4 2023. Synthetix recently announced support for seven new perpetual futures markets, including XMR, ETC, COMP, MAV, YFI, MKR, and RPL. Users can leverage trade the new markets on any Synthetix Perps front end such as Kwenta and Polynomial. Synthetix Perps use off-chain oracles by Pyth Network to settle orders.

Gitcoin Introduces Allo V2

Gitcoin introduced Allo V2, an upgrade to its open-source protocol for community-run pooled capital allocation. Allo V2 features three main components, including an allocation strategy, a pool manager, and a project registry. The allocation strategy allows communities to customize the mechanism for fund distribution. Communities can set lump sum, milestone-based, or streamed payouts. The pool manager handles contract interactions with matching pools. The project registry assigns identities with a unique address for attaching profile information and building trust. Allo plans to deploy V2 on testnet in early August, followed by a mainnet release in September. Allo is the protocol that powers the Gitcoin Grants Stack.

8 Years Since Ethereum Launched

This weekend marks 8 years since the launch of the Ethereum blockchain. On July 30, 2015, the Ethereum genesis block was mined into existence, referred to as the Frontier launch. Frontier, the first mainnet release of Ethereum, provided miners with a block reward of 5 ETH per block. Ethereum was the first smart contract blockchain.