sharding

According to the official announcement from NEAR Chain Status, the NEAR mainnet version 2.13.0 has been released, introducing post-quantum transaction signature schemes and dynamic sharding features.Voting will begin at 8:00 AM Beijing time on July 20. Former NEAR core developer Vadim introduced that this upgrade includes features that would typically require a ten-year roadmap for most blockchains: the post-quantum signature ML-DSA-65 becomes the third key type in the protocol after ed25519 and secp256k1, allowing accounts to hold keys that cannot be forged by quantum computers, with only a 32-byte hash recorded on-chain; dynamic sharding enables the chain to automatically monitor the status and size of each shard and to split and re-shard at epoch boundaries without the need for protocol upgrades or manual intervention; Gas Keys provide critical functionality for the proxy economy, allowing a single account to run a batch of proxies to send transactions simultaneously without nonce conflicts.

Vitalik Buterin posted to celebrate the successful upgrade of Ethereum Fusaka, stating that the PeerDAS implementation in the Fusaka upgrade has achieved sharding and data availability sampling: this has been Ethereum's long-standing dream.While a secondary increase in transaction scale has been achieved on Layer 2 by increasing blob capacity—according to recent analysis, L2 fees may decrease by 40-60%—Layer 1 remains constrained until zero-knowledge EVM matures, while also requiring distributed block construction and sharded memory pools. This marks a critical evolution in blockchain scalability, filling a decade-long roadmap gap since Ethereum's sharding vision in 2015, with the next two years focused on optimizing the stability of PeerDAS and expanding to L1 gas limits for broader throughput.

ChainCatcher news, StarkWare collaborates with Cartridg to launch a new scaling framework ZKThreads based on ZK execution sharding.It aims to address the fragmentation issue by providing a standardized development environment that supports verifiable applications. ZKThreads will be particularly beneficial for high-performance DApps, such as blockchain games and DEXs on Starknet.

ChainCatcher message, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin stated that Layer 2 and sharding are often described as two opposing strategies for blockchain scalability in public discussions. However, when you delve into the underlying technology, a puzzle emerges: the actual scaling methods are completely the same. Both have some form of data sharding, both have fraud proofs or ZK-SNARK proofs, and both have methods to solve cross {rollup, shard} communication. The main difference lies in who is responsible for building and updating these components, and how much autonomy they possess.A Layer 2-centric ecosystem technically realizes sharding very effectively, but it is a sharding that can create its own rules. This is very powerful and can inspire a great deal of creativity and independent innovation. However, it also presents key challenges, especially in terms of coordination. For a Layer 2-centric ecosystem like Ethereum to succeed, it needs to understand these challenges and address them head-on to gain as many advantages as possible from a Layer 1-centric ecosystem while getting as close as possible to having the best features of both.

ChainCatcher news, the official NEAR Chinese account stated that in 2024, the team will launch the second phase of sharding, introducing stateless validation and expanding the original Nightshade design to avoid fraud proofs. The state of each shard will be completely moved to memory, thereby increasing the performance of each shard (currently 4, soon to be 5) by over 10 times.The next step will be to add zkWASM on the existing foundation, which will compress execution proofs, enabling greater decentralization for validators. In addition, the NEAR ecosystem will make greater strides in the field of artificial intelligence.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, the Layer 1 blockchain Zilliqa has opened voting on two proposals to "temporarily suspend sharding and the active reward mechanism," aimed at improving network efficiency and managing $ZIL inflation.It is reported that the first proposal aims to temporarily suspend sharding until a more efficient sharding infrastructure is launched, while improving cost-effectiveness; the second proposal introduces an active reward mechanism.

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, the DeFi infrastructure platform Qredo has optimized its self-custody wallet platform. The new platform, New Qredo, uses multi-party computation (MPC) smart key sharding technology to improve control over team permissions and approval processes.According to the crypto data platform RootData, last February, Qredo announced the completion of an $80 million Series A funding round at a valuation of $460 million. This round was led by 10T Holdings, with participation from Coinbase Ventures, Kingsway Capital, HOF Capital, Raptor Group, and GoldenTree Asset Management. (Source link)

ChainCatcher news, at the main venue of the "2023 Hong Kong Web3 Carnival" under the theme of "Web3 Infrastructure," Aptos co-founder and CTO Avery Ching stated, "Future plans include support for multiple sharding solutions, with an upgrade to version 1.4 scheduled for release between April and May 2023. Some upcoming upgrades cover blockchain logic, Move, and smart contract frameworks, including APS 10 & 11, lower transaction fees, Quorum Store, developer tools, and sharding development. The Aptos ecosystem already has over 100 projects, with more than 200 projects currently under development and over 500 developers." (source link)

ChainCatcher news, Hedera co-founder and CEO Mance Harmon revealed the Hedera 2023 roadmap in a YouTube interview, where he plans to add community-run nodes outside of the council member-operated nodes to expand the blockchain's performance. The next step is to add additional shards, which will help the overall network's throughput.According to rootdata data, the Hedera public chain completed a $100 million financing in August 2018, with participation from BlockTower Capital. (source link)

ChainCatcher news, NEAR ecosystem blockchain infrastructure company Calimero Network has completed a $8.5 million seed round financing, led by Khosla Ventures, Lyrik Ventures, and NEAR Foundation. This round of financing ended in December 2022, with participation from companies such as GSR, FJ Labs, and Warburg Serres.It is reported that Calimero Network is a private sharding service platform based on NEAR, enabling companies to store information on private shards while also allowing them to interact with public blockchains. Calimero's founders Sandi Fatic and Mario Halambek are among the first infrastructure engineers of the NEAR protocol. (Source link)

ChainCatcher news, NEAR releases the protocol roadmap for 2023 to 2024. In the next two years, NEAR will launch two phases of sharding and some important features. Phase 2 is planned for release in 2023, and Phase 3 sharding will be delivered in 2024. Some of the features mentioned in the roadmap include meta-transactions, zero-balance accounts, Secp256r1 keys, global storage, and running wasm within wasm, etc.

ChainCatcher news, Sharding Capital founder Belinda Zhou tweeted that there is currently no publicly transparent APT token economic data available for investors to DYOR, but what she knows as a VC is that APT has a 7-year lock-up period.It is reported that the 7-year lock-up specifically consists of a 3-year cliff (pure lock-up) and a 4-year linear unlock. According to unofficial sources, the initial circulating supply should be around 0.47%. Since Aptos's last round of financing was valued at $4.5 billion, the initial market cap of APT should be around $20 million. (source link)