Quick Take

• Optimism teases a potential governance launch.

• The Ethereum Foundation publishes a financial report.

• Truffle releases an extension for Microsoft VS Code.

• The Sandbox is looking to raise a $400 million funding round.

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Optimism Teases Governance Launch

Optimism published a blog post that teases a new chapter driven by “community ownership and governance.” A path to decentralization has long been part of the project’s vision, which means the launch of a DAO and governance token is inevitable. Optimism’s EVM compatible release has been live on mainnet since October 2021. 

The chain’s accomplishments include $17 billion in transaction volume, $900 million in bridged ether, and 300k unique addresses. The team is currently working on the next iteration of the protocol called Optimism Bedrock. It will introduce an EVM equivalent fault proof called Cannon. Bedrock is expected to reduce Optimism’s codebase down to ~300 lines.

Ethereum Foundation Financial Report

The Ethereum Foundation published a report outlining its spending and current holdings, marking the first time a financial report is released by the organization. As of March 31, 2022, the EF held approximately $1.6 billion worth of assets in its treasury. Rroughly 80% of its assets are held in ETH, worth about $1.3 billion. It also holds $300 million in non-crypto investments and assets. 

In 2021, the EF spent a total of $48 million, split between spending across L1, L2, applied ZK, developer platforms, community development, and operations. The EF allocated $20 million in external spending for grants, delegated domain allocators, and third party funding. The foundation was initially funded via the Ethereum ICO in 2014, in which it had received 9.9% of etherem’s supply to kick-start development.

EF Backs $350k ETH Staking Fund

The Ethereum Foundation also partnered with ETHStaker to back a $350k quadratic funding round for public goods in the ethereum staking community. Quadratic funding is a mechanism that rewards projects weighted by the number of contributions over contribution value. The round is being run on clr.fund, marking the largest initial matching pool for a quadratic funding round using the CLR protocol.

The round will be done exclusively on Arbitrum’s L2 network. Free and open source projects related to ethereum staking can apply by visiting qf.ethstaker.cc to register. Supporters can make contributions in the form of DAI starting May 6th.

Truffle for VS Code Extension

Ethereum development tooling platform Truffle announced the release of an extension for Visual Studio (VS) Code. Microsoft VS Code users can now build, debug, and deploy smart contracts to Infura using Truffle suite. The extension removes the need to switch to command line and users can instead use the native VS Code debugger to debug transactions.

VS Code is a free source code editor by Microsoft available on all major operating systems. The Truffle for VS Code extension was initially started by Microsoft as the Blockchain Development Kit for Ethereum, in which management of the extension was later transitioned to the Truffle team. It’s currently available as a download on the VS Code marketplace.

Sandbox Reportedly Raising $400M Series C

The Sandbox is looking to raise $400 million at a valuation of more than $4 billion, according to Bloomberg. Last November, The Sandbox raised a $93 million Series B funding round led by SoftBank. The Sandbox is a metaverse built on Ethereum that allows users to buy, sell, trade and own digital assets in the form of NFTs. Notably, Adidas, Warner Music Group Corp, and HSBC are among the companies that have purchased plots of land on the platform.