Once upon a time, in a small village nestled between the towering mountains and a vast lake, lived a humble shoemaker named Elias. Elias was known throughout the village for his exceptional shoes. They were not only sturdy and comfortable but also had a unique charm that made everyone feel special when they wore them.

However, Elias was not always successful. In his early days, he struggled to make ends meet. His shoes were not selling, and he was on the verge of giving up his craft. One day, as he sat pondering his fate, an old man passed by his shop. Seeing Elias’s despair, the old man stopped and asked him what was wrong.

Elias shared his woes with the old man, who listened attentively. After a moment of silence, the old man spoke, “Elias, the shoes you make are not just a pair of objects. They carry the person’s hopes and dreams, their journeys and adventures. Put your heart and soul into them, and they will surely touch the hearts of those who wear them.”

Inspired by the old man’s words, Elias started working with renewed vigor. He began to pour all his love and passion into each pair of shoes he crafted. Word spread about the shoemaker who put his heart and soul into his work, and soon people from far and wide started coming to Elias for their footwear.

Elias’s shoes touched the lives of many people - they danced at weddings, ran in marathons, climbed mountains, and walked down countless paths. Each pair carried a piece of Elias’s spirit, supporting those who wore them in their life’s journey.

Elias’s story is a reminder that success often comes to those who put their heart and soul into their work. It teaches us that our work is not just about making a living but also about touching lives and making a difference.

EigenLayer is a platform that provides shared security to hyperscale Ethereum. It allows users to restake their ETH across multiple protocols at once, enabling staked ETH to be used as cryptoeconomic security for protocols other than Ethereum, in exchange for protocol fees and rewards. Restaking is available for both natively staked ETH and liquid staked tokens like stETH, rETH, cbETH, and LsETH1.

The EigenLayer ecosystem consists of restakers, operators, and developers. Restakers can stake their ETH across multiple protocols at once, while operators provide the infrastructure for the EigenLayer network. Developers can build on EigenLayer to access the Ethereum staked capital base and decentralized validator set1.

EigenLayer offers a variety of features and use cases, including:

Data Availability: Restaking can enable a hyperscale Data Availability (DA) layer, with a high DA rate and low cost. EigenLabs is building the first DA layer on EigenLayer, called EigenDA1.Decentralized Sequencers: ETH restakers can form a single decentralized sequencer quorum that serves many rollups, enabling MEV management and censorship resistance1.Light Node Bridges: Restakers can verify off-chain whether bridge inputs are correct, and if a strong quorum signs off, then the inputs are accepted. If someone challenges, then the input can be verified and EigenLayer operators can be slashed in the slow mode1.Fast-Mode Bridges: Restakers can participate in ZK proof verification off-chain, and certify that proofs are correct on-chain. If incorrect, they can be slashed in slow mode. For optimistic rollups, EigenLayer enables a larger collateral pool to certify stateroots1.Oracles: Oracles that enshrine price feeds into Ethereum can be built via EigenLayer if they require majority trust on restaked ETH, and are opt-in layers1.Opt-In Event-Driven Activation: In EigenLayer, Ethereum validators who are block proposers and opted in to restaking can provide strong guarantees on inclusion of event-driven actions, at the risk of getting slashed1.MEV Management: A variety of MEV management methods are feasible under EigenLayer, including PBS, MEV smoothing, and threshold encryption for transaction inclusion1.Low-Latency Settlement Chains: EigenLayer allows restaked sidechains where ETH restakers can participate in new consensus protocols which have low latency and high throughput1.Single-Slot Finality: Restaked nodes can attest they will not build on a chain that does not include a testified block, creating a finality pathway. Designing this to be opt-in and compatible with the consensus protocol is an important direction of research1.

EigenLayer also has a discussion forum where users can contribute their research and ideas to help build the future of blockchains together1. To learn more about the protocol, you can visit their website at app.eigenlayer.xyz or read their whitepaper2.

zkSync Era is a Layer-2 protocol that scales Ethereum with cutting-edge ZK technology. Its mission is not only to increase Ethereum’s throughput, but also to fully preserve its foundational values – freedom, self-sovereignty, decentralization – at scale1.

zkSync Era is designed to meet web3’s exponential demand by processing an unlimited number of transactions without a marginal impact on security or cost. This property is called hyperscalability, and it is the ultimate goal of Era’s design1.

ZK-rollups like Era are the only scaling solution that can inherit 100% of Ethereum’s security. zkSync is committed to going above and beyond to make Era the most secure L2 in practice. In fact, zkSync has spent 12 months on live testnet, processed 8.8M testnet transactions, and spent $3.8M on audits & bounties1.

zkSync Era also focuses on providing a delightful user experience. Self-custody combined with intuitive and security-fostering UX is critical to onboard the first billion users to web3. Era’s design started with the end-user in mind1.

Over 200+ projects — including Chainlink, SushiSwap, Uniswap, Aave, Argent, 1inch, Gnosis, and Curve — have registered their interest to deploy on zkSync Era1. The zkSync Wallet is a crypto wallet & gateway to layer-2 zkSync Rollup that allows users to connect their L1 ETH Wallet and start using zkSync for secure and scalable crypto payments2.

In summary, zkSync Era is a Layer-2 protocol that scales Ethereum with cutting-edge ZK technology while preserving its foundational values. It aims for hyperscalability and provides a delightful user experience with its focus on intuitive and security-fostering UX.