In ZetaChain Core v8 we have adopted the standardization of our Hierarchical Deterministic (HD) wallet support to use coin type 60. To provide some clarity:

🪙 **Coin Type** is a parameter within the HD wallet path. While it's a mechanism for distinguishing various blockchains, many EVM-compatible chains (like Ethereum) adopt the same coin type 60.

🔐 **HD Wallets** (Hierarchical Deterministic Wallets) enable the derivation of multiple keys from a single master seed. This ensures that users only need to backup a single seed while being able to generate a near infinite number of addresses.

For those of you using ZetaChain Core versions earlier than v8, you might recall that when recovering a wallet, you were required to manually specify the HD path:
```
zetacored keys add key-name --keyring-backend test --recover --hd-path="m/44'/60'/0'/0/0"
```
With the rollout of v8 and subsequent versions, we've made coin type 60 the default in the CLI, meaning you no longer have to manually specify the coin type when recovering an HD wallet.

**For users with wallets created before v8:**

If you created your wallet before the introduction of v8, using the then default coin type (118), there's no need for concern. To recover your wallet, you'll simply have to provide the coin type manually as illustrated below:
```
zetacored keys add key-name --keyring-backend test --recover --hd-path="m/44'/118'/0'/0/0"
```

A new version of **ZetaChain toolkit** has been released 👷‍♂️ with two new features: you can now easily query cross-chain messaging (CCM) and omnichain contract fees and track cross-chain transactions (CCTX) in real-time.
```
yarn add --dev @zetachain/toolkit
```
**Querying Fees 💰**
With just a single command you can query for CCM and omnichain fees, which is incredibly useful when testing ZetaChain's cross-chain functionality. Fees are dynamic, so to ensure you're supplying the right amount of tokens, run the following command to get the latest fees:
```
npx hardhat fees
```
**Cross-chain Transaction Tracking 🔍**
With the updated CCTX tracking command you can track a transaction through the whole lifecycle: from being broadcasted on the source chain to a finalized transaction on the destination chain. To check it out just pass the inbound transaction hash to the `--tx` flag and see the CCTX progress in real-time:
```
npx hardhat cctx --tx 0xe6cac4dc7b978806bdd37262f3253289fb8a160a855275faf28a5196aa5ba4a9
```
<@&1106564891566944297>

The faucet has been upgraded with some more reliability fixes. Moving forward the faucet will only drip to Athens, and you can move ZETA to different chains as you need through the ZetaChain Connector.

Learn more about ZETA (and other tokens) tokens here, and how to send them between chains: https://www.zetachain.com/docs/developers/tokens/.

A new ZetaChain tutorial has been released! 🙌 The tutorial is called Staking, and it lets users transfer tokens (like ETH, MATIC, BNB and BTC) and stake them on ZetaChain. It features customizable beneficiary address, rewards, withdrawals and covers a wide range of topics on creating featureful omnichain contracts.

In this tutorial you learn how to:

- Create an omnichain contract capable of accepting deposits from and making withdrawals back to connected chains
- Make the contract compatible with both EVM-based chains as well as Bitcoin
- Implement the logic for staking deposited tokens on ZetaChain
- Execute different logic based on an action code encoded in the message

Check it out: https://www.zetachain.com/docs/developers/omnichain/tutorials/staking/

Sunsetting of Athens 2 ZetaChain Testnet! 🌆

We wish to inform you of an essential update regarding our testnet environment. As part of our ongoing commitment to enhance and streamline our network, the Athens 2 ZetaChain testnet will be officially sunsetted on September, 29th.

🚨 Immediate Action Required

Developers using the Athens 2 testnet should migrate their projects and applications to the Athens 3 testnet. Athens 3 is our long-running testnet, equipped with the latest features, enhanced security improvement, and optimizations.

Benefits of Migrating to Athens 3

- Advanced Features: Benefit from an array of advanced features designed to help developers create cutting-edge applications, including full Bitcoin compatibility and ERC-20 transfers for omnichain contracts.
- Enhanced Stability: With continuous updates and improvements, Athens 3 offers a more stable and reliable testing environment.
- Longevity: Athens 3 is our dedicated long-running testnet, ensuring that your projects have a consistent testing ground for the foreseeable future.
- Community Support: Join a vibrant community of developers already active on Athens 3, fostering collaboration and shared insights.

Please, refer to our docs on the up-to-date Athens 3 compatible example projects: https://www.zetachain.com/docs

The sunset of Athens 2 is a step forward in our continued efforts to provide the best development environment for our community. We appreciate your cooperation and understanding in this matter and look forward to seeing your innovative projects thrive on ZetaChain Athens 3.

If you're building omnichain contracts and you want to make them Bitcoin-compatible (why wouldn't you 😃), check out this short video on how to submit a Bitcoin's bech32 address in a message, read it and use it in the withdraw call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWgn0OUN6-Y

Expanding Our Omnichain Swap Tutorial!

We're thrilled to announce the next enhancement to our documentation: the updated 🔄 Swap Omnichain Tutorial. This tutorial has been a staple in our docs for quite some time, and it's not without good reason. It serves as a good showcase of how ZetaChain can be utilized to execute seamless cross-chain swaps.

Historically, this tutorial has been fully compatible with Ethereum, Polygon, and BSC—popular EVM chains connected to ZetaChain. Today, we're taking it further by adding Bitcoin compatibility.

https://www.zetachain.com/docs/developers/omnichain/tutorials/swap/

Check it out and you'll gain invaluable insights into seamlessly integrating your omnichain contract with Bitcoin, tapping into the immense potential of ZetaChain to facilitate cross-chain swaps.

Tomorrow ZetaChain is hosting a workshop at ETH Hong Kong. The topic is Building Omnichain Contracts with ZetaChain. If you're around 🇭🇰 feel free to join and say hi! 👋

https://www.ethhongkong.co/

The network issue is resolved, and Athens-3 is producing blocks again. The team will re-enable the faucet and your transactions/dApps should be functional now. As always, please report any issues you run into in the discussion channel on Discord.

Join ZetaChain for a workshop on building omnichain contracts on November, 14th, in Istanbul 🇹🇷 Turkey is quickly becoming the go to place for blockchain devs and we're happy to host a workshop to help devs get started building dapps on ZetaChain.

🗓️ https://lu.ma/8whammxf

Join us in Bangalore 🇮🇳 early next week for a series of talks, panels and workshops starting with FIL Bangalore event hosted on December 3-4th :raised_hands: If you're already in India, you probably don't want to miss that one 😎

More info: https://fil-bangalore.io/

A great community-created technical review of how cross-chain messaging (CCM) works on ZetaChain. Check it out If you want to learn more about the protocol contracts that facilitate CCM and see an example of how to deploy and call a CCM contract in Remix. Useful stuff! 🙌

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhhL0erDSMA

We're hosting our Dev Office Hours tomorrow, November 30th at 5 PM UTC, right here in our Discord server.

This session is a great chance for developers to ask questions, discuss, and share insights about building on ZetaChain. It's an opportunity for open conversation and learning from each other's experiences.

Looking forward to your participation and valuable discussions. See you there!

https://discord.com/events/858516330432299008/1179446284432715878

ZetaChain is hosting a hackathon in Bangaluru 🇮🇳 on December 8-10th during ETH India with a prize pool of $5000 ✨ @🖥⼁Developer

Tracks

🚀 Best Omnichain Contract ⸺ $2,000

ZetaChain is an EVM L1 that let's you build omnichain contracts. Users can deposit/withdraw value and call omnichain contracts from any connected chain. Create an awesome dapp that leverages ZetaChain's omnichain contracts capabilities.

🟠 Best Contract for Bitcoin ⸺ $2,000

ZetaChain offers an EVM platform for developers to build contracts that can be deposited value and called from Bitcoin. Come up with and implement the most interesting use case for an omnichain contract compatible with Bitcoin.

✉️ Best Use of Cross-Chain Messaging ⸺ $1,000

ZetaChain offers general pupose cross-chain messaging (CCM) between connected EVM chains. Messages can transfer value and contain arbitrary data as payload. Find the most creative use-case for this technology.

https://ethindia.co/