In August this year, the Japanese electronics giant Sony officially announced the release of its own Ethereum Layer 2 expansion, Soneium.
Four months later, the German banking giant Deutsche Bank also officially announced the release of its own Ethereum Layer 2 expansion.
For detailed information on this news, please refer to the article on PANews in the link below.
This news was announced by the Head of Application Innovation for Deutsche Bank's Asia-Pacific region. The project is called Project Dama 2, and its beta version was launched as early as November, with the official version expected to be released next year after regulatory approval.
The Layer 2 expansion launched by Deutsche Bank is built on the zkSync Stack architecture, and two of its main features are particularly interesting:
One is the use of Soulbound Tokens to establish digital identity.
The other is the use of Paymaster to allow users to pay network fees.
Soulbound Tokens was a fairly popular technology a couple of years ago.
I remember when this technology was first introduced, the projects and users in the ecosystem mainly used it to issue various honor tokens, such as rewards for participating in certain activities.
At the time, people's imagination about it was rather narrow, so the hype didn't last long, let alone the launch of any large-scale applications based on this technology.
Now, this project is using it to establish users' digital identity, which feels very similar to using Soulbound Tokens to represent traditional bank customers' personal information.
This perspective is quite different from the previous one. Although it is purely a centralized application, it has nonetheless enabled this technology to serve a purpose that was not previously imagined.
Paymaster is a tool that I really like. I just mentioned it in a recent article. Its biggest feature is that it allows users to pay fees using other tokens (non-mainnet tokens).
The scenario where I use this tool most frequently is in the Layer 2 expansions of zkSync. In these Layer 2 expansions, when I need to pay fees for swapping various tokens on a DEX, I generally don't choose ETH, but rather some small, fragmented tokens.
This tool provides great convenience for users and also empowers the tokens.
It can be imagined that if this tool is used in Deutsche Bank's Layer 2 expansion, users can completely use the various stablecoins supported by Deutsche Bank to pay fees, without the need to use Ethereum.
For ordinary users, they may not even feel the existence of Ethereum or even blockchain. They will only see the various stablecoins on the chain: such as USD stablecoins, EUR stablecoins, and so on.
Compared to Sony using the OP Stack technology to build its own Layer 2 expansion, Deutsche Bank chose zkSync. I think the main reason here is probably still due to security considerations.
The Layer 2 expansion based on zkSync technology does not require a 7-day waiting period, and each transaction can be confirmed in a timely manner, which is much better in terms of security, but still lacks efficiency. It trades efficiency for security priority.
I remember a reader left a message at the end of a recent article, asking if it is still worth holding the tokens of Starknet.
Initially, I was more optimistic about zkSync's prospects than OP's. But later, the development of the two ecosystems showed obvious differences, with zkSync clearly lagging behind OP, so I also began to doubt whether zkSync still has a chance to catch up in the future.
Now, if more financial institutions, especially those similar to banks, follow Deutsche Bank's example and enter Ethereum's Layer 2 expansions, they will most likely choose zkSync based on security considerations. If this trend continues, the opportunity for zkSync is still quite large, although it may take some time.
I still hold all the tokens related to the zkSync Layer 2 expansion and have not sold any.
I look forward to the resurgence of zkSync technology.
Our Twitter account was recently banned again, which is the second time we have been banned.
We are quite helpless and puzzled about this: we have never posted any inappropriate comments on Twitter, rarely interacted with other accounts, and have no commercial activities at all, so we don't understand which rule we have violated?
But we have registered a new Twitter account again, purely to provide a backup for our articles and to leave an open space for free communication with our readers.
Our new Twitter account is @Dao_Views
This Saturday (January 4, 2025), we will hold our first online exchange on this new Twitter account, and you can post your questions in the link below.
https://x.com/Dao_Views/status/1873556087359836200
