Pepe Unchained (PEPU) is developing a Layer-2 blockchain for meme coins. The project has raised over $2 million in its presale. PEPU aims to build on Ethereum. It promises faster transactions and lower fees. The team targets speeds 100 times faster than Ethereum. Two firms have audited PEPU's smart contracts. This shows a focus on security. The presale has attracted significant interest. It raised $2 million in 18 days, averaging $111,000 daily. Investors can buy PEPU tokens at $0.008226 each. A $1,000 investment yields 121,563 tokens. The presale has a limited window. Developers plan to list PEPU on exchanges after it ends. Ten percent of tokens are allocated for exchange liquidity. This should help with price stability. PEPU offers a "double staking" protocol. Early investors could see yields of 910% annually. Over 175 million PEPU tokens have been staked. This should be enough to indicate investor confidence in this meme coin. But the project is also gaining traction on social media. It has 4,700 Twitter followers and 2,600 Telegram members. Not so much, compared to some of the industry leaders, but impressive enough for a novice token. CoinSniper.net ranks PEPU as their number two project. YouTube influencer Austin Hilton called it "very cool". Layer-2 solutions are currently popular. The BLAST token recently reached a $489 million market cap. Pepe Unchained could capitalize on demand for scaling solutions. Its success will depend on balancing technical innovation with meme appeal.

Friend.tech has decided to remain on the Base Layer-2 network. This reversal comes just a month after announcing plans to launch its own chain. The decision has negatively impacted the FRIEND token price. It fell to a record low of $0.2973 on Thursday morning. FRIEND is now trading at $0.3557, down 25% from yesterday. This represents a more than 50% drop since June 10. Friend.tech launched in August 2023. It aimed to create a monetized social media network. The platform allows influencers to create "shares" of themselves. These were later renamed "keys" due to regulatory concerns. Interest in the project waned after its initial launch. It saw a resurgence in May 2024 with the announcement of an airdrop and version 2 launch. "$FRIEND was always meant to be a 100% community-controlled token," the team stated on Twitter. They emphasized that users can still access all features on Base. The project has also disabled protocol fees for BunnySwap, its native decentralized exchange. BunnySwap's total value locked has fallen from a peak of $53 million to $10.6 million. Crypto Quant analyst Bradley Park commented on the situation. "FT was originally one of the leading contributors to the Base boom," he told Decrypt. "However, overshadowed by growth of Farcaster, FT announced that it would move to another chain." Park noted that community sentiment has turned negative. Large wallet holders have been exiting their positions, contributing to the price drop.

Several layer-2 rollup teams claim full decentralization is imminent. This includes Linea, zkSync, Arbitrum, and Optimism. Ethereum layer 2s are scaling solutions. They compress and validate transactions on separate networks. "Stage 2 decentralization" is the final milestone. It would make censorship nearly impossible on these networks. Linea founder Nicolas Liochon expects most L2s to reach Stage 2 "within the next few years". His team plans a testnet with new decentralization features "in the coming months". Anthony Rose of Matter Labs predicts Stage 2 "over the next two to three years". He foresees consolidation in the space. Optimism co-founder Karl Floersch believes the move to Stage 2 will be "swift and decisive". He cites the open-source nature of blockchain development as a catalyst. Steven Goldfedder of Arbitrum claims they are "very, very close" to Stage 2. The final step requires community approval to remove certain emergency powers. Some experts are less optimistic. Metis co-founder Kevin Liu sees challenges in token-based governance systems. He believes "pure decentralization" is not achievable soon. Vince Yang of zkLink points to low user demand and financial disincentives as obstacles. His team plans to improve decentralization by using the Celestia network. The concept of decentralization stages comes from Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin. He outlined three stages in a 2022 post. L2Beat, a blockchain analytics platform, classifies L2 networks based on Buterin's criteria. Buterin argues rollups should reach Stage 1 by end of 2024. Recent controversy arose when Linea paused withdrawals and censored an attacker's address. This sparked debate about the pace of L2 decentralization.