A recent blog post reveals that on an Apple M3 Max Machine, Expander can demonstrate 4,500 Keccak-f permutations per second. Keccak-256, a cryptographic hash function endorsed by NIST in the secure hash algorithm 3 (SHA-3) and utilized by the Ethereum blockchain, is highlighted in the post. This new proof system is an extension of Polyhedra's Libra paper, spearheaded by Polyhedra co-founder and CTO Tiancheng Xie.

On May 2nd, Eclipse, an Ethereum layer-2 network fueled by Solana Virtual Machine (SVM), announced a significant milestone by becoming the first platform to surpass the EVM-SVM compatibility barrier with the deployment of Neon Stack. Developed by the core Neon EVM team, Neon Stack offers a standardized development environment that simplifies the process for SVM-based blockchain networks to attain EVM compatibility, a feature that Eclipse plans to leverage on its SVM L2.

Also on May 2nd, BOB (Build on Bitcoin), a hybrid layer-2 solution amalgamating Bitcoin and Ethereum functionalities, celebrated the launch of its mainnet. Backed by prominent crypto investors such as UTXO and CMS Holdings, BOB aims to enhance Bitcoin's role in the DeFi sector by enabling access to Bitcoin assets like Ordinals, Runes, and BRC20s for ETH and other Web3 users. Given the limited user experience for Bitcoin DeFi, BOB strives to become the premier platform for exploring Bitcoin L2 experimentation.