Last week, there were 12 developments and news in public chain infrastructure | Public Chain Weekly

According to incomplete statistics from ChainCatcher, between March 1 and March 7, there were 12 major news events related to public chain infrastructure, involving public chains such as Ethereum, Cardano, Conflux, Cosmos, and Taraxa.
1. The public chain project ICON will allocate 1 million ICX tokens
On March 1, The Fintech Times reported that the public chain project ICON will allocate 1 million ICX tokens (approximately $1.3 million) to support innovative blockchain projects on its network. The funds will be distributed through ICON's new decentralized autonomous grant program, which is a completely open-source system managed by consensus and governance block validators on the ICON network.

2. ZK Rollup scaling team Matter Labs completes Series A financing, led by USV
On March 1, Ethereum's ZK Rollup scaling solution Matter Labs announced the completion of its Series A financing, with Union Square Ventures (USV) leading the round. Previous investors Placeholder, 1kx, and Dragonfly continued to participate, along with zkSync's ecosystem partners, including Aave, Balancer, 1inch, Curve, Binance, Coinbase Ventures, Huobi, Loopring, Argent, MYKEY, imToken, Flexa, MoonPay, ripio, ZKValidator, and CoinGecko, but specific financing amounts have not yet been disclosed.

3. Cardano mainnet completes Mary protocol upgrade, introducing native token functionality and multi-asset support
On March 2, Cardano's development team IOHK announced that it has completed the Mary protocol upgrade and successfully applied it to the mainnet. The Mary upgrade introduced core features of Goguen, including native token functionality and multi-asset support.
According to the Cardano roadmap, Cardano will transition from the Shelly era to the Goguen era through the Allegra hard fork (activated on December 16, 2020) and the Mary hard fork. The development phases of the Cardano network include Byron (foundation), Shelly (decentralization), Goguen (smart contracts), Basho (scalability), and Voltaire (governance).

4. Layer 2 scaling solution Hermez launches public testnet, mainnet expected to go live in the coming days
On March 2, Ethereum's ZK Rollup scaling solution Hermez Network announced the launch of its public testnet, which will support the final round of private testing, with the mainnet expected to go live in the coming days. Currently, the testnet features include a mobile and web wallet that can interact with Hermez ZK Rollup user accounts, developer SDK and API integration, and a Hermez Layer 2 batch processing explorer.
Hermez was launched by the Ethereum scaling solution tech team iden3. According to the white paper, Hermez allows for scaling payments and token transfers on top of the Ethereum public blockchain. Hermez improves blockchain scalability by compressing each transaction to about 10 bytes, estimating a potential increase to 2,000 transactions per second.

5. Conflux will achieve bidirectional interoperability with BSC, OKExChain, and Heco in 2021
On March 2, according to the 2021 technical roadmap released by the public chain project Conflux, upgrades will be made in 2021, including modifying the Conflux external address format (starting with 0x) to distinguish it from Ethereum addresses; achieving bidirectional interoperability with other ecosystems such as Binance Smart Chain (BSC), OKExChain, and Huobi Eco Chain (Heco); expanding the application scenarios of Conflux tokens on Ethereum through applications like ShuttleFlow and Uniswap; supporting on-chain randomness; supporting more cryptographic and signature methods; upgrading consensus to "PoW + Finality" to eliminate the risk of 51% hash power attacks in extreme cases; improving online DAO governance functions; and enhancing the efficiency of zero-knowledge proof-related operations.

6. BSN International will integrate public chains like Near, Casper, and Findora by April 30
On March 2, the Blockchain Service Network (BSN), led by the National Information Center, announced a major update scheduled for April 30 to improve the BSN infrastructure and ecosystem, specifically including BSN International and BSN China. BSN International will launch BSN IDE services to support Hyperledger Fabric, FISCO BCOS, Ethereum, Nervos, and Algorand; integrate public chains Near, Casper, and Findora; and optimize and improve the BSN inter-chain communication center.
BSN China will launch BSN IDE services to support Hyperledger Fabric and FISCO BCOS; optimize dedicated node services for permissioned blockchains, and launch dedicated node services for Fabric and Chain33; and integrate more open permissioned blockchains.

7. Proposal to add liquidity module to Cosmos Hub to build AMM has been published
On March 2, Cosmos information provider and node validator B-Harvest submitted a proposal (Cosmos Prop 38) regarding the adoption of a liquidity module in the Cosmos Hub, aimed at assessing community support for adding a liquidity module during the next upgrade. If Cosmos Prop 38 is approved, B-Harvest plans to submit a second proposal in mid-March 2021, suggesting a reward for a trading competition in the incentivized testnet, with rewards in ATOM from community funds, expected to take place in April. Once all testing and security audits are completed, B-Harvest will submit a third governance proposal to initiate a chain upgrade of the Cosmos Hub, including the liquidity module.

8. NEAR Protocol releases Ethereum Rainbow Bridge upgrade and governance plan, proposing gradual decentralization in 4 phases
On March 4, the open network platform NEAR Protocol released the Ethereum Rainbow Bridge upgrade and governance plan, planning to conclude discussions by March 16 to form a final decision on the upgrade plan. The NEAR team suggests using a phased approach for the upgradeability of the Ethereum Rainbow Bridge contract: the early stage will have a simple upgradeability model, with a more centralized governance model, which will later evolve into a more decentralized approach, progressing through a total of 4 phases.

9. Ethereum scaling project Arbitrum abandons patent, mainnet launch imminent
On March 4, Ethereum scaling project Arbitrum stated that considering the project's entry into a mature community phase, it will abandon its patent and is currently awaiting consent from Princeton University. Additionally, Arbitrum's mainnet is about to go live. Arbitrum was initially an academic project at Princeton University, which previously disclosed intentions to commercialize the technology and later obtained a patent with the support of Princeton University.

10. BM: ETH, ADA, IOTA, etc. are all technological dead ends
On March 4, EOS founder BM tweeted that ETH, ADA, IOTA, BTC, etc. are all technological dead ends. Like GameStop, they have a story that invites speculation. However, their prices are completely disconnected from the long-term viability of the technology that can help them achieve their original purposes.

11. The public chain project Taraxa has opened public fundraising KYC, investors can subscribe on March 12
On March 5, according to official news, the public chain project Taraxa has officially opened public fundraising KYC on the Tokensoft platform. Investors must complete KYC by 10:00 AM on March 11, 2021, and can subscribe to Taraxa tokens (TARA) on the Tokensoft platform at 10:00 AM on March 12. Public fundraising KYC link: https://sale.taraxa.io/
The total supply of Taraxa tokens is 1 billion TARA, and this public fundraising will issue 375 million TARA tokens, with a minimum investment amount of $1,000, and acceptable investment currencies are ETH and USDT.

12. Lightweight blockchain protocol Mina Protocol plans to release mainnet candidate version on March 16
On March 7, lightweight blockchain protocol Mina Protocol stated that the mainnet candidate version (RC) is planned to be released on March 16. If all goes well, the RC will become Mina's mainnet, at which point all block rewards, SNARK fees, account balances, transactions, and other activities will become part of the RC mainnet.