Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta Launch

Monday, March 27, 2023

Quick Take

  • Polygon launches its zkEVM Mainnet Beta.
  • The CFTC sues Binance over crypto derivative offerings.
  • Euler exploiter returns over $50 million in stolen funds.
  • Ethereum clients release Shapella-ready versions.


Polygon zkEVM Mainnet Beta Launch

Polygon deployed its zkEVM to mainnet beta, allowing anyone to bridge to and use the rollup. Polygon zkEVM is an EVM-equivalent zk-Rollup that offers low fees, high throughput, and compatibility with existing Ethereum tooling. Developers can deploy existing Ethereum smart contracts without having to make code adjustments.

Polygon zkEVM is also open-source under an AGPL v3 license, with the exception of the Polygon zkEVM prover. The initial release is upgradeable by a dedicated Security Council. Vitalik Buterin also executed a transaction on the network with a message stating “A few million constraints for man, unconstrained scalability for mankind.”

CFTC Sues Binance Over Crypto Derivatives

The CFTC filed an enforcement action against Binance and its founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ). The complaint alleges that Binance offered and executed commodity derivatives transactions to and for US persons and failed to implement adequate compliance procedures to prevent and detect money laundering and terrorist financing.

The CFTC seeks to ban Binance from offering trading services to US persons. The enforcement action also charges former Binance chief compliance officer Samuel Lim with aiding and abetting Binance’s violations. Binance issued a statement disputing the allegations, adding that it has cooperated with the CFTC.

Euler Exploiter Returns $53 Million In Stolen Funds

Earlier today, the Euler Finance exploiter returned over 23,000 ether and 13.7 million DAI back to the DeFi protocol. The exploiter sent three identical transactions of 7,738.05 ether back to the Euler deployer. The exploiter previously returned 58,000 ether, bringing the total amount of recovered funds to just over $150 million.

$196 million worth of assets were drained from the Euler deployer contract on March 13th. Roughly 75% of stolen funds have been returned to the DeFi protocol. The outstanding funds include 17 million DAI held in a fresh wallet and 1,100 ether deposited into Tornado Cash, among other assets.

Shapella-Ready Client Releases

Prysm released v4.0.0 of its consensus layer client ahead of the upcoming Shapella upgrade planned for April 12th. Ethereum nodes and validators are required to update their clients to the latest version prior to the upgrade. Nodes that fail to upgrade will run on a forked chain and will be penalized for being offline.

Teku v23.3.1 and Nimbus v23.3.2 are also Shapella-ready. Lighthouse and Lodestar are the only consensus clients yet to release a Shapella-ready version. All four execution layer clients (Nethermind, Geth, Erigon, and Besu) have released Shapella-ready versions. Nodes are encouraged to update their execution layer client first.

Beaconcha.in Releases Broadcast Tool

Beaconcha.in released its Broadcast Tool on Ethereum Mainnet. The tool allows validators to change their BLS credentials once the Shapella upgrade goes live.  Roughly 12% of validators currently have BLS-based 0x00 withdrawal credentials and will need to change to 0x01 smart contract-based credentials for proper staking withdrawals. Beaconcha.in will also add support for broadcasting voluntary validator exits.