ChainCatcher news, according to the Wall Street Journal, Friedrich Merz, who was leading in the polls before the German elections on February 23, warned in an interview that Musk would face consequences for supporting the far-right Alternative for Germany party through his social media platform "X." Merz stated, "What happens in this campaign cannot go unchallenged."Musk has previously called on Germans to vote for the Alternative for Germany party in the upcoming elections, claiming it could save the country. He engaged in an open dialogue with the party's candidate Alice Weidel on the platform and later delivered a live video speech at a campaign rally. Merz (regarding the consequences Musk may face) said, "This could be a political response. It could also be a legal response. I hope to calmly analyze this issue after the campaign."

ChainCatcher news, according to CoinDesk, Base team member Kabir.base.eth denied rumors that Base has been transferring its sequencer fee revenue to Coinbase for sale.Kabir explained that Base uses off-chain custody to ensure security and audit transparency, so funds are transferred to Coinbase. Additionally, Base primarily settles in ETH and uses it for Ethereum L1 fee payments and ecosystem support.Previously, anonymous analyst Santisa questioned whether Base was transferring all sequencer fees to Coinbase, which may have been sold. Sonic Labs founder Andre Cronje also pointed out that the centralized operation model of L2 sequencers could affect the deflationary effect of ETH, causing Ethereum to re-enter an inflationary state.

ChainCatcher message, Metis posted on X that there have been intermittent outages on the Metis network in the past few hours. The issue is caused by the high transaction volume on the mainnet leading to L1DTL congestion. To address this problem, the sequencer is upgrading the L1DTL memory. The fix is currently in progress.

ChainCatcher news, Metis officially announced the launch of the DSEQ Restart Plan, which is an important upgrade for the Metis ecosystem aimed at providing stronger support and more opportunities for users and project parties. The core of this plan is to promote close interaction among ecosystem participants, drive the joint development of technology and community, and create a sustainable, decentralized prosperous network.This restart focuses on "innovation and optimization," further incentivizing active participation from the community and ecological partners through a brand new performance-based reward mechanism. The DSEQ Restart Plan will offer multiple rewards, including node rewards (up to 5,000 METIS per month), node and LST protocol rewards (an additional up to 10,000 METIS per month), as well as special rewards in the form of tokens from ecological cooperation projects. At the same time, Metis will also support project growth and deepen collaboration with the ecosystem through technical support, marketing subsidies, and resource integration.

ChainCatcher news, according to Jinshi reports, Trump will appoint Musk (along with Ramaswamy) to lead the new Office of Government Efficiency. Musk announced during the campaign that he would cut U.S. federal spending by $2 trillion (nearly one-third). Ulrich Leuchtmann, head of foreign exchange and commodity research at Deutsche Bank, pointed out that this would have catastrophic consequences for the U.S. economy: "Musk does not believe in gradual and cautious approaches. I do not believe he can take a wise step.Some may say that their suggestions would only be suggestions, with the president and Congress in front during actual implementation. But if the suggestions are not going to be implemented, then why establish such an agency? The president would appear indecisive, which is exactly what Trump does not want to see.Using a radical austerity plan to create a bullish argument for the dollar is very clever, as it will significantly reduce the capital needs of the U.S. Treasury, thereby lowering the capital needs of the entire economy. U.S. government bonds will become scarce and expensive again. However, I believe that the dollar may initially be influenced by the inevitable expansionary monetary policy response."

ChainCatcher news, according to The Block, a new paper by economists at the European Central Bank titled "The Distributional Consequences of Bitcoin" points out that even in the case of a sustained increase in Bitcoin prices, early adopters will be the only beneficiaries, while latecomers and non-holders will suffer severe consequences, even in the absence of a "bubble burst."The economists argue that Satoshi Nakamoto's original vision of Bitcoin as a global payment system has largely failed, and people's perceptions are shifting towards viewing Bitcoin as a continually appreciating investment asset. Economists Ulrich Bindseil and Jürgen Schaaf believe that Bitcoin "......does not generate any cash flows (like real estate), interest (like bonds), or dividends (like stocks), nor can it be used for production (like commodities). Therefore, "...most established methods for calculating or estimating the fair value of assets fail when applied to Bitcoin."The paper states: "The new Lamborghinis, Rolexes, villas, and stock portfolios of early Bitcoin investors do not stem from an increase in economic production potential; rather, they are funded by the consumption and wealth reduction of those who initially did not hold Bitcoin." "Thus, 'missing out' on Bitcoin is not just about losing the opportunity to accumulate wealth, but it also signifies real poverty compared to a world without Bitcoin. This redistribution of wealth and purchasing power is unlikely to occur without adverse effects on society." These harmful consequences include "......the corresponding poverty of other parts of society, jeopardizing cohesion, stability, and ultimately threatening democracy."

ChainCatcher news, according to Venturebeat, the Arbitrum Foundation and Sequence are collaborating with Ubisoft Labs to develop the Web3 game "Captain Laserhawk: the G.A.M.E."According to the plan, this game will be built on Arbitrum, while Sequence will provide key blockchain tools to enhance the scalability and speed needed for the growing and active community.

ChainCatcher news, according to Coindesk, the independent financial think tank OMFIF stated that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris cannot afford the consequences of "handing cryptocurrency over to Trump," as the support and donations from cryptocurrency voters could have an impact in key swing states.Trump attracted cryptocurrency supporters at the Bitcoin Nashville conference and promised to create a strategic Bitcoin reserve if elected. Lewis McLellan, editor of the OMFIF Digital Currency Institute, pointed out that Trump has identified a group of disgruntled voters, or potential donors, with his typical opportunistic approach. Purchasing 200,000 Bitcoins annually over five years would give the U.S. a significant share of the total 21 million Bitcoins, and this measure alone could be enough to attract campaign funding donations from those holding large amounts of Bitcoin.Harris has not yet made an official stance on cryptocurrency, but her camp recently engaged with cryptocurrency representatives, showing "new signals of openness." OMFIF commented that Harris must develop her own agenda for crypto assets, or she risks completely conceding to the Republicans. While few would abandon the Democratic Party for supporting the development of the cryptocurrency industry, attracting votes and donations from cryptocurrency supporters away from the Republican camp could have an impact in key swing states.

ChainCatcher news, according to official sources, Metis has announced the first batch of 6 independent sequencer node operators, namely HashKey Cloud, OKX, SNZPool, A41, Nodes, and TEB.It is reported that future voting rounds will allow new decentralized sequencer node operators and Liquid Staking Token (LST) protocols to join the Metis ecosystem.

ChainCatcher news, Solana shared sequencer Rome has completed a $9 million funding round, with participation from Hack VC, Polygon Ventures, HashKey, Portal Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot VC, LBank, Anagram, TRGC, Perridon Ventures, and notable angel investors including Anatoly Yakovenko, Nick White, Santiago Santos, Comfy Capital, Austin Federa, and Jason Yanowitz.Rome was founded by Anil Kumar and Sattvik Kansal, aiming to establish Solana as a foundational network for shared sequencing and data availability (DA).According to RootData, Rome Protocol is building a shared sequencer network utilizing Solana. The throughput of Solana enables Rome to provide a high-performance shared sorter. Rollups do not have to worry about outsourcing their block production affecting user experience.

ChainCatcher news, according to ACCESSWIRE, the Ethereum Layer2 network Metis plans to launch a community selection process for its first batch of external sequencer node operators, initiating governance roles for distributed network ownership and partial withdrawals for sequencer node operators.Metis introduces a decentralized sequencer node pool, allowing anyone to join and have governance rights over the network. Node operators will also receive a share of the revenue, involving the sorting of rewards and fees. For the first batch of external sequencer node operators, the community can start voting from June 24 to June 28.

According to ChainCatcher news, The Block reported that a representative from the Arbitrum ecosystem, Frission, has proposed a governance proposal suggesting that 50% of the excess sequencer fees in the future be used to reward holders of ARB tokens who stake and actively delegate.The proposal addresses the growing treasury security concerns of the Arbitrum DAO, which currently holds over $50 million in excess fees. The proposal points out that only 10% of ARB is actively used for governance, and the voting participation rate is declining, making the treasury a potential target for governance attacks. Frission's proposal aims to incentivize governance participation, enhance the economic security of the DAO, and reduce the risk of the treasury being attacked.

ChainCatcher message, XAI announced on social platforms that it has partnered with Horizon and Sequence to launch an integrated L3 developer control platform Xai Builder for AAA game development.

ChainCatcher news, Omni Network stated on social media that its open-source Octane framework will provide decentralized sequencers for Polygon CDK, allowing developers to utilize a decentralized sequencer set and immediately launch fully decentralized Rollup or Validium architectures.

ChainCatcher news, Layer 2 scaling solution Metis announced that the second phase of its decentralized sequencer upgrade has officially gone live through a hard fork at block height 16500000. This upgrade mainly introduces new features such as multiple transactions within a block, a transaction pool, and sequencer mining.In this upgrade, Metis has increased the number of transactions that a single block can contain from 1 to multiple, and has fixed the transaction confirmation time to 2 seconds. A transaction pool has also been introduced to cache pending transactions. These two improvements will significantly enhance network throughput and reduce block production costs.Additionally, this upgrade introduces a sequencer mining mechanism aimed at better coordinating the incentives of all participants in the network. Sequencer nodes will receive METIS token rewards for sorting, packaging, and submitting transactions to the Ethereum mainnet. Users can stake METIS tokens to receive liquid staking tokens as a receipt, which can be used in other DeFi protocols.Currently, the Metis community has selected Artemis Finance and Enki Protocol as the two liquid staking service providers for the Alpha phase through the CEG mechanism. Users can now participate in staking mining through Artemis, and Enki will also launch on the mainnet soon.In the coming year, sequencer nodes will receive 20% of the mining rewards, and related DeFi products such as DEX liquidity pools and lending pools are expected to provide deeper use cases for METIS staking token holders. Metis will also establish strategic partnerships with several crypto institutions to ensure the full decentralization and high participation of its decentralized sequencer.

ChainCatcher message, Polygon posted on social media that the Beta version of the Polygon zkEVM mainnet is experiencing sorter issues due to L1 reorganization. The team is currently working to resolve this issue and will subsequently release a detailed post-mortem report. This only affects Polygon zkEVM and does not impact Polygon PoS, Polygon CDK, or any chains deployed using Polygon CDK.The second generation zkEVM will be released in the coming weeks.

ChainCatcher news, according to data disclosed by L2BEAT researcher donnoh.eth, before using Blobs, the cost of calldata for the zkSync Era sequencer was around 0.115 ETH; after using Blobs, the cost dropped to about 0.013 ETH, a decrease of approximately 88%.Currently, zkSync Era is the first L2 to use Blobs, and Starknet has also supported it. More projects will follow in the coming days.It is reported that as Ethereum completes the Dencun upgrade, various L2 networks will update their versions to support EIP-4844, transitioning from the expensive "calldata" method of sending data to Ethereum to the more cost-effective "blobs" transaction type, significantly reducing fees.

ChainCatcher news, according to official information, Metis plans to carry out an important upgrade on March 14th, Beijing time, to decentralize its sequencer. The upgrade process will require a suspension of network operations starting from 10 AM tomorrow, and the network will resume operation immediately after the upgrade is completed.

ChainCatcher message, Metis tweeted that MetisEDF will provide 4.6 million METIS ecosystem development funds to lay the foundation for ten years of innovation. Of this, 65.4% will be used for Sequencer mining incentives, and the remaining 34.6% will inject more funds into the Metis ecosystem grants.