Weekly Recommendations | Detailed Analysis of Paradigm's Difficulties and Situation; Vitalik Calls for Avoiding Consensus Overload on Ethereum

Organizer: Biscuit, ChainCatcher

1. "Vitalik: Keep Blockchain Minimalistic, Don't Overload Ethereum's Consensus"

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin reminds developers in his latest article not to overload Ethereum's consensus. He states that over the years, many developers and projects have attempted to use Ethereum's consensus for other purposes, such as ultimate oracles, re-staking, and L1-driven L2 project recovery.

This article will explain in detail why Vitalik Buterin believes that some of these technologies pose a high systemic risk to the ecosystem and should be stopped and resisted.

2. "Defection from the Web3 Revolution? Paradigm's Difficulties and Circumstances"

Paradigm has changed its website description since the beginning of this month, altering the statement from "Paradigm supports disruptive crypto/Web3 companies and protocols with funding ranging from $1 million to over $100 million" to "Paradigm is a research-oriented technology investment firm." To be fair, is the criticism of "Paradigm's defection from the Web3 revolution" an overreaction? This article will analyze why Paradigm needs to reposition itself from a realistic perspective and existing portfolio.

3. "a16z Crypto CTO: Protocol Design is More Important than Token Economic Design"

a16z has established an important position in guiding industry development in the crypto space with its in-depth articles, providing the insights and shifts needed for cognitive enhancement. Recently, a16z has focused on topics beyond token economics. First, there was a talk on "Token Design," followed by the publication of "Tokenology: Beyond Token Economics," and now they have launched a highly anticipated course on "Protocol Design."

4. "Interview with Arbitrum Founder: 3 People, 9 Years, $2 Billion Market Cap"

As a dark horse in the Ethereum scaling race, where does the team behind Arbitrum come from? How do they view the competition between Optimistic and ZK scaling? What is the story behind the "DAO funding gate," and what new narrative does Stylus bring? This article features an interview with Arbitrum founder Ed Felten addressing these questions.

5. "Summary of Vitalik Buterin's Speech at the Ethereum Black Mountain Conference and Key Project Review"

At the EDCON 2023 conference, Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin was one of the main highlights, delivering a speech on "Ethereum's Three Technical Challenges: Scalability, Privacy, and User Security," which garnered significant attention. During the conference, Vitalik frequently mentioned topics such as account abstraction, stealth addresses, and ZK-SNARKs, revealing Ethereum's development plans and future industry trends.

6. "Dialogue with MetaMask Founder: MetaMask Will Become the Web3 Google"

Dan Finlay is the co-founder of MetaMask, which is one of the main wallets people use to interact with Web3. In a conversation with Camila Russo, we will gain insights into Dan's background before becoming a co-founder of MetaMask, his vision for MetaMask's development in the coming years, their privacy policy, the potential MASK token, Dan's expectations for the next bull market, and more. First, Dan will share the origin story of MetaMask.

7. "Is Cosmos Summer Coming? An Overview of Recent Important Upgrades and Ecological Progress in Cosmos"

Since the beginning of 2023, the Cosmos ecosystem has performed well overall, with voices in the market proclaiming "Cosmos Summer is coming" and "the flywheel effect is in motion." This article analyzes the important developments following the release of the Cosmos 2.0 white paper, as well as the dynamics and hot ecological projects in Cosmos for the second half of the year.

8. "Will Liquidity Venture Capital Shape a More Efficient Crypto Market?"

Crypto assets are still in their early stages, and there is currently no recognized valuation framework for investors to reference. The crypto market is filled with price speculation and hype, with little attention paid to fundamentals—an example being meme coins with zero utility achieving billion-dollar market caps in a short time. Unlike traditional markets, early projects/protocols are akin to startups still in seed or Series A rounds, often launching tokens on public markets. Additionally, injecting liquidity into newly created cryptocurrencies on decentralized exchanges is relatively easy, making the crypto market one of the most vibrant yet challenging investment markets today.

9. "Two Months After the Launch of the Zksync Mainnet, a Report on Ecological Development"

zkSync is an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution based on ZK Rollups architecture, which launched its mainnet Fair Onboarding Alpha on February 16, 2023, allowing only registered projects to test without opening to end users. On March 24, 2023, the zkSync Era mainnet was opened to everyone, renaming zkSync 2.0 to zkSync Era and zkSync 1.0 to zkSync Lite. Now that zkSync has been live for two months, how is the development of its network ecosystem? Let's take a look.

10. "Way Network: The Next Generation Cross-Chain Protocol zkOmnichain Supports One-Click Full-Chain DApp Construction"

According to official plans, the Way Network testnet is expected to debut in June, allowing end users to experience how zkBridge facilitates cross-chain token transfers through Send Finance. Developers can try deploying full-chain DApps using this cross-chain infrastructure, and users can also explore new cross-chain experiences.

11. "Reviewing the 26 Projects Selected for the a16z Crypto Accelerator Program: Why They Outperformed Over 8,000 Projects"

After three years, a16z Crypto has relaunched the Crypto Startup School (CSS) and expanded it into a comprehensive accelerator program aimed at nurturing and supporting the next generation of Web3 projects. This is highly attractive for startups, as they not only receive funding support but also guidance from top crypto venture capitalists.

12. "Neon EVM Launches Public Sale; Can the Compatible Layer Save the Declining Solana?"

CoinList will open the token sale for Solana's EVM-compatible solution Neon EVM (NEON) on June 9 at 1:00 AM Beijing time, with a total sale volume of 50,000,000 NEON, accounting for 5% of the total circulation, priced at $0.10. Amid the significant shrinkage of the Solana ecosystem, the emergence of Neon EVM brings new opportunities for Solana. How is the development of this upcoming public offering project?