February 05, 2025 | Read Online

Brought to you by:

Hyperweb looks to kickstart Web3 development by re-engineering JavaScript and TypeScript smart contracts, and adding a new virtual machine to streamline cross-chain execution. Backed by $5 million in funding and building on a mature Cosmos tooling portfolio, Hyperweb might be the missing link to bring Web2 devs to Web3.

Ultrasound money no more:

Source: ultrasound.money

The total circulating supply of ETH has returned back to its pre-Merge levels of 120.5 million. For a time between February 2023 to April 2024, ETH's supply was deflationary thanks to the EIP-1559 burn mechanism, reaching a low of 120 million in April 2024.

ETH has not been deflationary for a time. This was largely due to declining network usage on the L1 as execution activity shifted to L2s, as well as increased competition from competing L1s like Solana. As a result, the ETH burn rate has slowed significantly.

Though some on Twitter are deriding ETH for "round-tripping" its burns, it's worth noting that in the absence of EIP-1559, ETH's supply would've been significantly higher at 130 million. It's still inflating at a far lower rate than bitcoin.

Source: ultrasound.money

— Donovan Choy

Brought to you by:

SKALE, the gas-free invisible blockchain, is "Built Different" for mass adoption: high-throughput, scalable, and fair. As a network of interoperable EVM-compatible L1s, SKALE's user experience focus has accelerated a strong ecosystem across gaming, AI, and more. Due to SKALE's gas-free nature, blockchain can be integrated invisibly, creating accessible Web2-like experiences for users and developers.

SKALE has:

Over 50M UAWs
9 Games on the Epic Games Store
Saved Users over $9.5B on Gas Fees

Dive in to learn more.

Explore SKALE Research Hub

Hyperweb for Web3 devs

Crypto is largely an attention game, with projects racing to attract new and talented developers as well as users. Cosmos-based Hyperweb is betting big on JavaScript as the key to unlocking mainstream adoption, and released its white paper today.

Hyperweb aims to create a universal JavaScript virtual machine (HVM) that enables seamless cross-chain smart contract execution.

The idea itself is of course nothing new, and even among Javascript proponents, chains like Agoric have pioneered the concept of "orchestrating" actions across chains.

Agoric, a Cosmos OG project, developed "hardened JavaScript" which has been used in production, for instance, in MetaMask Snaps.

Unlike Agoric, which also leverages JavaScript with additional abstraction layers, Hyperweb aims to be a pure TypeScript ecosystem. Co-founder Dan Lynch describes the difference by way of analogy to modern vs. medieval spoken language.

"Agoric is kind of like old English — like the Shakespearean 'where art thou' — so it's definitely something that we can decipher, but it's not the way that we speak [today]," Lynch told Blockworks.

A fragmented Web3 developer experience

A niggling problem in crypto is that there just aren't enough qualified Web3 developers! This dilemma has driven efforts to bring Web2 devs into Web3 from the much larger Javascript and Python communities.

Hyperweb's HVM (Hyperweb Virtual Machine) is a JavaScript-native execution environment that allows developers to write smart contracts in TypeScript, doing an end-run around the learning curve of building in Solidity, Rust or Move.

HVM will also be its own sovereign chain. Pitched as the Interchain JavaScript Hub, it will provide interpreters that tailor the same JavaScript code to different blockchain runtimes (EVM, CosmWasm, Solana VM, etc.). This makes it easier to deploy applications across chains without major rewrites, Lynch argues.

The project's team was previously supported by a grant from the Interchain Foundation, but is on its own following the ICF acquisition of Skip to form Interchain Inc.

Tokenomics and incentives

Unlike most proof-of-stake Cosmos chains, Hyperweb is exploring a proof-of-authority (PoA) model, like stablecoin distributor Noble. It uses a smaller set of validators to reduce staking inflation and sell pressure.

"Cosmos chain tokenomics are broken," Lynch said, positing that the predominant security model of staking inflation "is unsustainable."

Fees on the Hyperchain will be denominated in Noble USDC, and the native token will function instead as a revenue-sharing mechanism to limit reliance on inflationary rewards.

Long term, Hyperweb aims to integrate Ethereum, Solana and other non-Cosmos chains, enabling truly universal smart contract execution. But that's a ways off.

For now, if you're looking to get in early on Hyperweb, the project has already launched a local net that allows developers to start experimenting with JavaScript-based smart contracts. A public testnet is coming soon, with opportunities for builders to be rewarded for their contributions — potentially in a way similar to Tea Protocol's retrospective incentives for GitHub activity.

Details on the Hyperweb token are still under wraps, but as is often the case in crypto, it pays to be early.

The vision for Hyperweb is ambitious — a unified, developer-friendly blockchain ecosystem that eliminates the siloes between old and new.

As Lynch puts it: "Let's end the war between Web2 and Web3. It's all the web."

— Macauley Peterson

Story Protocol brings music onchain

Bringing IP Onchain with Story Protocol | 0xResearch podcast

What are the primary use cases of Story Protocol?

Jason Zhao: Story is similar to Stripe, it works as a blockchain in the backend. On the frontend, we have a set of APIs and SDKs that apps can use to plug into Story Protocol to supply "intellectual property" into our peer-to-peer system. Creators can register their [intellectual property] on Story so they can monetize it across other applications. On the demand side, a comic creation tool or scientific research platform could pull interesting [intellectual property] from Story for its own users.

Last week, the "Peaches" song by Justin Bieber was on-ramped to Story as a real-world asset, which means all the yields and rights are onchain. It was created by a project called Aria which raised a $7 million vault in nine minutes, a sign of how excited people are to access the song as an asset class.

Permissionless IV is where the next wave of onchain innovation comes to life. Whether you're coding through a high-energy hackathon, exploring the latest dev tools, or meeting the minds shaping the space — this is where your dream ideas turn into reality.

Best of all, developers participating in the hackathon attend for free.

Brooklyn in the summer, an over $100k prize pool, and a room full of builders. You in?

📅 June 22–26 | Brooklyn, NY

Buy tickets

Shaw (wartime arc) @shawmakesmagic

I would advise you to think twice about launching a fair launch coin if you intend on using it to fund a long-duration project.

Teams need resources to build. Generally, when a team raises a Series A from VCs, they give away 10-20% and keep 80-90% of the initial capital. If the… x.com/i/web/status/1…

5:30 PM • Feb 4, 2025

2.14K Likes 331 Retweets

379 Replies

Justin.eth Drake @drakefjustin

My bat signal 🦇🔊 will return when ETH is ultra sound again, soon enough™.

ETH supply currently grows 0.5%/year. That's 1%/year of issuance minus 0.5%/year of burn. To become ultra sound again, either issuance has to decrease or the burn has to increase. I believe both will… x.com/i/web/status/1…