Monolithic blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum integrate all functions — execution, data availability, consensus, and settlement — within a single chain, which offers simplicity and security but struggles with scalability and flexibility. On the other hand, modular blockchains distribute these functions across multiple layers or components, allowing for a customizable and scalable system. This architectural evolution aims to balance security, scalability, and decentralization, offering solutions like Celestia for data availability and the Fuel Network for independent modular protocols, despite the complexity and potential interoperability issues that come with modular designs.

In a future where stablecoins and blockchain technology are ubiquitous, digital currencies have revolutionized global finance, fostering economic inclusivity and redefining value exchange. As AI, privacy-preserving technologies, and innovative regulation shape this new era, society must navigate the balance between the benefits of programmable money and the preservation of individual freedoms, while collectively striving towards a more equitable and sustainable economic future.

The revmc compiler integrates Reth and performs between 1.85x-19x on various EVM benchmarks. It does this by compiling EVM bytecode into optimized native machine code which drastically reduces the overhead associated with virtual machine layers. The full article covers how revmc works, how fast it is, and explains the future roadmap.

On September 21, 2024, at 15:14 UTC, Base Mainnet experienced a significant incident characterized by a 17-minute block building outage. This event, while disruptive, did not compromise the integrity of the blockchain, and all funds remained secure. The incident prompted Base to conduct a thorough retrospective to analyze the root cause, the impact of the outage, the mitigation steps taken, and future improvements. The outage was traced back to a misconfiguration within the sequencer cluster. When the active block producer became unhealthy, it failed to initiate block production on an alternative instance. The situation was resolved by manually restarting block production on a properly configured instance. During the outage, no blocks were produced, specifically from block numbers 20071146 to 20071691, which were generated only after block production resumed. Transaction processing continued through the `eth_sendRawTransaction` RPC call, which allows transactions to be submitted to Base and placed in the mempool. Despite the mempool functioning correctly, there was a noticeable decline in transaction submissions during the outage, likely due to applications being affected by the halt in block production. Following the resumption of block production, many transactions that had been submitted during the outage were included in the subsequent blocks. In the background, Base had been working on a system called op-conductor, designed to enhance the reliability of block production and achieve a target availability of 99.99%. Prior to implementing op-conductor, any failure of the sequencer would lead to an outage. The transition to the op-conductor cluster occurred on September 20, 2024, but the instances were misconfigured, preventing the op-node from submitting new unsafe block payloads to op-conductor. The trigger for the incident was a delay in block production experienced by the active sequencer. op-conductor detected this issue and attempted to transfer leadership to another instance. However, due to the misconfiguration, the new block producer could not start production, as it required an unsafe payload that had not been written by the previous leader. This miscommunication resulted in a state where no instance could act as an active block producer. To mitigate the incident, Base reverted to the single sequencer topology while addressing the configuration issues within the op-conductor cluster. Moving forward, Base plans to implement several improvements, including establishing a bidirectional handshake between op-node and op-conductor at startup to ensure proper communication and enhancing internal configuration management processes to prevent and detect future misconfigurations. This incident serves as a learning opportunity for Base, reinforcing its commitment to transparency and continuous improvement in its operations.