Solana Foundation Introduces ‘Actions’ and ‘Blinks’ as Developer Tools

June 25: The Solana Foundation announced the launch of Solana Actions and blockchain links (“Blinks”) to its suite of developer tools. According to the team: “These tools offer way to integrate blockchain transactions into any platform, creating a seamless and intuitive Web3 experience for users. Multiple Solana ecosystem projects will be using Solana Actions and Blinks at launch, including Cubik, Sanctum, Tensor, Realms, Access, Jupiter, Helium, Truffle, Phantom and Backpack.” (SOL)

June 25: Acre introduced “simple BTC yield” on Mezo, a Bitcoin economic layer, thanks to our liquid staked Bitcoin, stBTC. According to the team: “Acre strips away the complexity of Bitcoin yield, giving a simple Bitcoin in, Bitcoin out process for depositors. In the background, Acre converts BTC to tBTC, and deploys it into various yield-generating strategies across crypto.”

June 25: ENSO, an intent engine for chain abstraction, has closed a $4.2 million funding round with Ideo Ventures, Hypersphere and more than 60 angel investors, according to the team: “The funds will support the launch of their L1 Cosmos-based blockchain this year and continued product development.”

June 25: Matter Labs, the main development firm behind the layer-2 network ZKsync, has introduced a new roadmap called ZKsync 3.0, aimed at making the ecosystem more interconnected – including a new “Elastic Chain” that somewhat resembles rival Polygon’s AggLayer, released earlier this year. At the core of ZKsync “3.0” is the v24 upgrade, released June 7, turning “ZKsync from a single ZK chain into an Elastic Chain,” the Matter Labs team wrote in a blog post shared with CoinDesk.

June 25: Portal to Bitcoin, the bridgeless interoperability protocol on Bitcoin formerly known as Portal that raised $34 million in a seed round in March, has hired 18 people, according to the team. They include Dan Edlebeck, former head of ecosystem at Sei Labs, to be chief marketing officer.

June 25: Crypto exchange Bitget announced a $20 million TON Ecosystem Fund in alliance with Singapore-based investment firm Foresight Ventures, “aiming to support early-stage projects building on The Open Network (TON),” according to the team: “This strategic initiative highlights the duo’s commitment to fostering innovation and development within the TON ecosystem.”

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June 24: Metis, an Ethereum layer-2 network, planned to announce the opening of a community selection process for its first batch of external sequencer node operators, “becoming the first L2 to enable shared ownership and control of a critical piece of infrastructure,” according to the team: “By operating these nodes, entities become network owners. As owners, entities gain substantial influence and governance rights over the network’s strategic direction, and a share in the revenue involving sequencing rewards and fees. Distributed ownership creates robust decentralization, bringing stronger reliability to Metis and enhancing liveness and economic security.” The voting process will be live from Monday through June 28.

June 24: Gitcoin, a project for providing funding for Ethereum development, released what it says is a free tool, “Grants Program Canvas,” to “launch and grow a high-impact grants program,” with downloadable templates, worksheets and step-by-step walk-thrus, according to the team: “Packed with years of expertise and industry insights, Grants Program Design is a detailed playbook designed to support growth leads with a structured, visual approach to grants program design.”

June 23: Artela, a blockchain designed to extend the functionality of other blockchains, released its latest whitepaper, “Artela Scalability: Parallel Execution Stack and Elastic Blockspace.” According to a blog post, the whitepaper “introduces a brand new parallelized blockchain architecture: not only achieving parallel execution but also supporting parallel storage. On top of all this parallelization, we will further realize nodes that support elastic computing, achieving elastic node block space and bringing predictable performance to dApps.”