Welcome again to Chain Response.

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Final week we didn’t publish a Chain Response e-newsletter, due to Thanksgiving. However we’re again at it this week and saying goodbye to November after a protracted, eventful month crammed with lawsuits, value adjustments and the standard crypto chaos.

Let’s get into it.

What’s occurring in web3

Crypto enforcers wielded a heavy hand this year, but don’t expect it to get softer in 2024 (TC+)
Optimism execs are optimistic for Ethereum’s future amid its ongoing scaling battle (TC+)
Just how big of a recovery will it take to bring investors back to web3? (TC+)
Binance and CEO ‘CZ’ plead guilty to federal charges, agreed to pay $4.3B in fines
China’s tech giants dip their toes into web3, but prospects are limited so far

The most recent pod

For this week’s episode, Jacquelyn interviewed Optimism’s CEO and co-founder Jing Wang and chief development officer Ryan Wyatt.

Optimism is an Ethereum-focused layer-2 blockchain that focuses on scaling and pace, whereas additionally decreasing prices for customers. It helps customers work together with Ethereum for about 10x cheaper by way of its blockchain and supplies builders the flexibility to construct decentralized purposes (dApps) in a sooner, scalable manner.

Earlier than taking over this new position at Optimism, Ryan had slightly little bit of a break, however was the president of Polygon Labs (he came on the podcast originally of the 12 months to speak about it) and earlier than that, he was YouTube’s head of Gaming.

Jing co-founded Optimism in 2018. Earlier than that she based Plasma Group, a analysis agency targeted on addressing challenges associated to scaling Ethereum. She additionally beforehand managed blockchain tasks at firms like Zcash and Nasdaq.

We mentioned how layer-2 blockchains like Optimism try to resolve scalability points on Ethereum and the place Jing and Ryan see development alternatives proper now.

We additionally talked about:

Base constructing with Optimism’s tech
Competitors between Ethereum and different blockchains
Lengthy-term adoption
Web3 gaming

Subscribe to Chain Response on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or your favourite pod platform to maintain up with the newest episodes, and please go away us a evaluate should you like what you hear!

Observe the cash

Acctual raised $3.85 million to assist crypto firms higher handle their payments
Web3 schooling platform Open Campus acquired a $3.15 million funding from Binance Labs
Wind.app raised over $3 million to make DeFi accessible to common customers
Decentralized perpetual change MYX raised $5 million in a seed spherical at $50 million valuation
Blockchain-built health and wellness app Coral acquired a $3 million funding from TealLink

This checklist was compiled with info from Messari in addition to TechCrunch’s personal reporting.