Welcome to The Protocol, CoinDesk's weekly wrap-up of the most important stories in cryptocurrency tech development.
This week's issue of The Protocol features stories on Movement Labs rolling out its devnet, Cardano's hard fork to decentralized governance, SSV DAO 2.0, Elon Musk pushing blockchain in his new department and more.
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MOVEMENT LABS ROLLS OUT DEVNET: Movement Labs has deployed a developer mainnet to advance its goal of bringing Facebook's (META) Move Virtual Machine (MoveVM) to Ethereum. The devnet rollout will begin the deployment of Movement's core infrastructure and allow selected partners to start implementing DeFi protocols, according to an emailed announcement on Tuesday. The release follows the initial mainnet launch of Movement in December and precedes the planned public mainnet beta release next month. Move was developed as a part of Facebook's ill-fated digital currency project Diem, which was shelved at the start of 2022. The technology was also used to create the Sui and Aptos layer-1 networks. Movement Labs, with the help of a $38 million Series A funding round led by Polychain Capital, is extending the programming language to an Ethereum layer 2 for the first batch. Coinciding with the public mainnet's deployment, Movement will also unveil a multi-asset liquidity program to provide the foundation for decentralized finance applications.
CARDANO HARD FORKS TO DECENTRALIZATION: Proof-of-stake blockchain Cardano is set to switch to decentralized governance on Jan. 29 as the Plomin hard fork takes effect, according to an announcement by the Cardano Foundation, a non-profit organization backing the project. "The Plomin hard fork takes effect, marking the transition to full decentralized governance," the foundation said in a statement on Friday. "ADA holders gain real voting power – on parameter changes, treasury withdrawals, hard forks, and the blockchain’s future. A milestone in blockchain governance." Cardano's ADA token changed hands at 93 cents at press time, up 1.4% on the day, according to data from CoinDesk and TradingView. A hard fork is a non-backwards compatible change to the blockchain's programming. The Plomin hard fork needs Stake Pool Operators to upgrade their nodes and approve the upgrade with a 51% vote. As of last week, nearly 80% of nodes had elevated to the new version.
SSV DAO 2.0: The SSV DAO, the decentralized autonomous organization behind the decentralized staking protocol SSV Network, has unveiled a new framework, called “SSV 2.0,” that will allow applications to make use of “based” technology by leveraging Ethereum validators. According to a press release shared with CoinDesk, SSV 2.0 will be the most ambitious project for the SSV Network, which will bring “based” applications (bApps) to Ethereum. “Based” applications, especially “based rollups,” are a new type of technology that has gained the attention of Ethereum developers because it allows for better interoperability while improving the security of networks on top of Ethereum. Based rollups specifically can be seen as a solution to the many layer-2 networks on Ethereum today, which have caused much fragmentation across the space. By leveraging “based” technology, those protocols or applications can “base” their security and execution operations off of Ethereum’s layer-1 validator set. Currently, layer-2 networks use “sequencers” to order transactions and post those back to Ethereum. Sequencers are criticized for being single points of failure. By using layer-1 validators to do the execution and security work, networks can avoid the downfalls of using centralized sequencers. Ethereum developers agree that based rollups allow for better interoperability in the network. Members of the Ethereum ecosystem have gathered over the last few weeks to find ways to solve this issue, and based rollups are seen as a major breakthrough for that. Now the SSV Network will also tackle these issues by bringing applications with based technology to Ethereum.
MUSK PUSHES BLOCKCHAIN: Elon Musk, in his role leading the new Department for Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.), has suggested that using a digital ledger would be a cost-efficient way to track federal spending, secure data, make payments and manage buildings, according to people familiar with the matter. Several representatives of public blockchains have met with affiliates of D.O.G.E., the people said. The department was created in response to the federal government’s spending of $6.7 trillion in fiscal 2024, which Musk in October called “wasted” money. He promised the department — whose acronym is a nod to Musk’s favorite cryptocurrency, dogecoin (DOGE) — would slash the figure to at most $2 trillion. Given the department's name and Trump's determination to establish crypto-friendly policies in the U.S., Musk's plan to incorporate blockchain technology doesn't come as a surprise. In addition to creating
