Road to Mainnet: April 2024

Introduction

We’re putting the final pieces in place as we gear up for Mainnet. April brought the Avail Unification Drop, our third Hot Takes Series at Token2049, and an expansion of our ecosystem. Let’s get to it!

Highlights

Launched Avail’s Unification Drop
Blockworks released Avail: A Unification of Crypto Infrastructure.
Announced partnerships with Avail Space, NIM Network, Polygon, Optimism, Arbitrum, StarkWare and zkSync, and Playnation

Technical Update

The team has been focused on finishing the releases, testing, and any necessary last updates for the final versions of the Avail DA network components.
The team ran the Light Client Challenge, which was overwhelming in terms of interest and the number of light clients. It was amazing to see the network run with hundreds of thousands of clients.
The last audits have been ongoing throughout April.

Avail Unification Drop

The Unification Drop is a unifying force bringing different communities together, rewarding developers, governance contributors, technical educators, rollup users, stakers and other valuable contributors from across multiple blockchain communities.

A reminder to claim before May 4th. Clash of Nodes contributors can expect expanded rewards coming soon. We’ll share full details after the claim period ends.

Avail Ecosystem

The Avail ecosystem is expanding everyday. From chains, supporting L2s, infrastructure & RaaS providers. Our partners play a vital part in the upcoming mainnet.

Events

Our team was across a number of events this past month, including AppchainDay Hong Kong where Anurag talked about the importance of Data Availability layers in the modular landscape; Ethereum Zuri.ch with Jakub Cech, Head of Engineering; and zkSummit in Athens with explorations engineer Vibhu Rajeev.

Scaling Ethereum, one of the best async hackathons by EthGlobal, ran from April 5th to April 26th.Congratulations to all the hackathon winners!

Here are the winning projects that used Avail:

1. Best appchain/rollup/project built with Avail DA:

2. Best dApps deployed on Avail-powered rollup:

The storms during Token2049 in Dubai didn’t stop our third Hot Take Series: The Fragmentation Dilemma from happening, albeit from a different venue than originally planned. We welcomed over 150 guests aboard the S.S Unification for a day of fireside chats, lively panel discussions, networking, and sunny weather. ICYMI: see all the photos from the day here and our playlist on Youtube.

Guests enjoying the views and conversation.

Aggregation and Building Unified Experiences Panel with Anurag Arjun (Co-Founder, Avail), Sandeep Nailwal (Co-Founder, Polygon Labs), and Altan Tutar (Senior Technical BD, NEAR Foundation).

Bitcoin L2s: The Untapped Potential Panel with JJ Thomspon (BD, dWallet Network), Orkun Mahir Kılıç (Co-Creator, Citrea), Ethan Francis (Developer Relations, Particle Network), and James Parillo (Figment Capital),

While we were rained out the first few days of the week, our team was out at our booth during L3 Summit; Anurag and Kyle participated in panels at the Sunset Hangout, co-hosted by Avail, Gelato, and Polygon; Anurag was on the main stage at Token2049, and Prabal participated in the Stackr Whiteboard session.

Hot Tweets

Next stop: Avail DA Mainnet

If you’re new here, let’s catch you up on what Avail DA is all about. A great starting point is the report on Avail from @Blockworks_, which just came out.

Here are the top 5 takeaways 👇 pic.twitter.com/0nd6YIjyg3
— Avail (@AvailProject) April 22, 2024

Bitcoin halving is here!!! But what does it have to do with Avail?

Here’s what ⬇️

With less BTC going into circulation, the ‘Gold Standard’ in crypto-economic security is only getting stronger.

High crypto-economic security enables you to do lots of things. One of those is… pic.twitter.com/N2uMwASLN4
— Avail (@AvailProject) April 20, 2024

Before data availability was the hot topic that it is now, @anuragarjun and others built a Plasma chain to help scale Ethereum. This plasma chain kick-started Polygon’s run to $19B, but it turned out not to be the Ethereum scaling solution they hoped it would be. pic.twitter.com/fYKZen4UPF
— Avail (@AvailProject) April 26, 2024

Next Month

ETHGlobal Sydney gathers leading minds and specialists in the Ethereum Ecosystem, convening in Sydney from May 3rd to 5th. We empower teams to create remarkable projects within just 36 hours, offering a wealth of web3 resources including mentors, partners, and software. Sleep is optional, but embracing innovation is mandatory! Avail dev Rachit Srivastava will be on hand to help teams building on Avail, including leading a workshop on May 4th at 4:30pm AEST.

ZK Hack Krakow is an in-person hackathon where you can meet the teams working on zk, learn new skills, find collaborators & friends, and hack on zk-tools & zk-DSLs. Avail is sponsoring prizes up to 5000 USD for pushing the boundaries of what’s possible on Avail with the help of ZK. Register for ZK Hack Krakow here.

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