Hi Alters!
This New Year marks a new era for AltLayer. Our closest and dearest Alters will already know that January marked the launch of the ALT token — a native utility token that will help power and grow our ecosystem. ALT comes on the heels of a critical and novel infrastructure unveiled with our partner EigenLayer in Q4 2023: restaked rollups. This will be an important time in our history as we build up the landscape and infrastructure worthy of hundreds of thousands of value-driven rollups.
We are immensely grateful to our incredible partners — each of whom contributes to layering the modular stack with meaningful innovations, tools or strategies that raise the quality, benchmark, functionality, and maturity of the entire industry. A special thanks to our early backers — who saw the strength in our vision, and patiently cheered us through conceptualization, building, and growth over the last two years.
Now, let’s recap!
🎁Airdrop Season One: Key Links & Reminders
Our global community has been at the heart of what we’ve done and accomplished. Thank you for cheering us on, spreading the word on what we do, and showing up for us digitally and at our global events!
And so, as ALT goes live, we will be airdropping ALT tokens to eligible Alters including OG Badge and Oh Ottie NFT holders, Altitude participants, EigenLayer restakers, and Celestia stakers.
Take a look at our profile and tokenomics on Binance Research: here
🏗️🔨Technical Updates
MACH: We have conducted multiple end-to-end tests of our MACH AVS and are making preparations for a public testnet. Additionally, we have finished the first PoC version for MACH Babylon, and will also prepare to deploy this on the Babylon public testnet soon.
VITAL: We have finished most of the verification logic for VITAL on the Ethereum chain and Optimism stack. The next step is to support compilation as ZK Circom and integrate into MACH.
RaaS: The focus for this month has been supporting multiple data availability integrations on the Arbitrum Orbit and Optimism rollup stacks, such as EigenDA, Celestia, and Avail. Additionally, we continue to update our Orbit, Optimism, and Polygon CDK rollup stack setups as new releases from the development teams come in (e.g., Orbit L2 support).
To better understand Restaked Rollups/AVS, and our latest milestones, tune into this recent AMA to hear great explainers straight from our COO! A closer look at Actively Validated Services by Swell Network.
🤝🆕 Key Partnerships
AltLayer is working with Babylon Chain to bring Bitcoin’s security to thousands of rollups! We are powering a decentralized verification layer that leverages Bitcoin staking for security. It’s like EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism — but with BTC! With the onset of numerous rollups in the market — many of which lack the adequate verification mechanisms — there is a need for a decentralized network of verifiers that can detect and challenge a rollup’s state. Babylon allows users to stake BTC on the Bitcoin network to secure external networks like a PoS chain. This stake can be slashed remotely if malicious behavior is detected. AltLayer came in to build on its restaked rollups expertise. We are recreating this framework with BTC staking by leveraging Bitcoin.
Intrigued? Get the research details here. More on testnet soon.
We are also working with B² Network to help launch their rollup with our customizable, secure RaaS infrastructure. This, along with their innovative $BTC settlement is set to create a strong Bitcoin Layer2 product. More on this soon!
⭕Ecosystem Updates
We are now hosting Nitrogen, a publicArbitrum Orbit testnet which uses Celestia’s DA layer.
Nitrogen is secured by working Arbitrum Nitro fraud proofs and integrates with Celestia Blobstream on Arbitrum Sepolia. And with Celestia, devs can deploy Orbit chains like smart contracts, with minimal setup time or overhead. If you’d like to try it, here is the tutorial.
📰Headlines
“AltLayer Airdrop Puts $100 Million Into the Wallets of Ethereum Users” (Decrypt)
“AltLayer and Babylon Revolutionize Rollups with BTC-Staked Decentralized Verification” (Blockchain Reporter)
“AltLayer opens airdrop claims, token trades at $2.9 billion fully diluted valuation” (Block)
“Nitrogen, a public Arbitrum Orbit testnet using Celestia is Live” (CryptoNewsz)
“AltLayer’s ALT Tokens Climb to $360M Market Cap After Launch” (The DeFiant)
“AltLayer Launches Airdrop as Token Hits $2.9 Billion Valuation” (Blockster)
“AltLayer Releases Airdrop Allocations” (The DeFiant)
“Airdrop season? Protocols offer $700M in token airdrops over a week” (CoinTelegraph)
🔜What’s Next?
We’ll be having some brilliant guests to help us delve further into the world of restaked rollups. Watch out for the announcement this month on our official X page.
We will also announce integration with other stacks to increase the usage and interoperability of rollup ecosystems.
Watch out for Cometh’s exciting new game Cosmik Battle, running on their Muster Network, and powered by AltLayer’s RaaS — this February!
Stay updated on all AltLayer news via:
X: https://twitter.com/alt_layer
$Discord: https://discord.gg/altlayer
Telegram: https://t.me/altlayer
Medium: https://blog.altlayer.io/
Website: https://altlayer.io/
