Polygon, the scalable Ethereum layer-2 solution, has announced its intent to optimize its zkEVM (Zero-Knowledge Ethereum Virtual Machine) in the coming weeks. These enhancements are predicted to decrease transaction fees by around 20%, according to the company’s official Twitter account. Interestingly, these improvements will be achieved without the need for any data compression techniques.
Transaction fees within the Polygon zkEVM serve to cover the costs associated with data availability and posting proof to the Ethereum network. Each transaction that gets processed requires the publication of state data. Additionally, fees cover the operational costs of running the servers that generate the proofs. Currently, around 80% of a transaction fee is dedicated to data availability, a resource that is not currently being compressed.
In a roadmap soon to be released, Polygon will detail upcoming upgrades on data compression, as well as the Ethereum Improvement Proposal (EIP) 4844. These developments are expected to improve the efficiency and cost-effectiveness of transactions on the platform.
The company also shared advice on how users can optimize fees in the current ecosystem. One major suggestion is to time on-network transactions to periods when Ethereum is the cheapest, thus minimizing the L1 interaction cost.
Interestingly, Polygon advises users to conduct transactions when network activity on zkEVM is high. This approach may seem counterintuitive, but due to the cost of proof generation being distributed across all transactions, fees on a rollup decrease as activity increases.
For users wishing to bridge assets from Ethereum, the fees can be notably high. However, alternatives do exist. Transak, for example, can transfer tokens directly to the layer-2 solution, bypassing Mainnet fees completely.
Moreover, users with assets on a different blockchain can utilize a third-party bridge instead of first bridging to the Mainnet. For PoS (Proof of Stake) to Polygon zkEVM, LayerSwap offers a solution. For other layer-2 solutions to Polygon zkEVM, users can consider options like Orbiter Finance and Multichain.
The forthcoming updates, along with the existing strategies for optimizing transaction fees, point towards Polygon’s ongoing commitment to enhancing user experience and making blockchain technology more accessible and cost-effective.
Ethereum layer 2 networks, including Optimism, Arbitrum, and Polygon, saw a surge in popularity in Q1 2023, according to a report from Web3 development platform Alchemy. The report, titled “Web3 Development Report,” cites data from Dune Analytics and shows that Ethereum users bridged over $635,000 worth of crypto assets to these networks from January to March, a significant increase of 44% over the fourth quarter of 2022 and 518% over the first quarter of 2022.
The growth in bridged assets may have been driven by successful airdrops from Optimism and Arbitrum in Q1 2023, as suggested by the Alchemy report. Additionally, layer 2s saw greater activity from developers, with the deployment of smart contracts related to layer 2s increasing by 160% compared to Q1 2022, despite a 30% decrease from Q4 2022.
Layer 2s have been offered as a solution to Ethereum’s scalability problem, which has been causing high gas fees since as early as 2020. By enabling more transactions to be processed off the main Ethereum network, layer 2s can significantly reduce the fees required to interact with the blockchain. As a result, users are increasingly turning to these new scalability solutions.
This trend is reflected in the broader Ethereum ecosystem, with increased developer interest observed in Q1 2023. According to the Alchemy report, Ethereum software development kits (SDKs) such as Ethers.js, Web3.js, Hardhat, and Web3.py were downloaded 1.9 million times in the first quarter of 2023, an 8% increase from Q1 2022. Downloads of the MetaMask SDK, a tool used to develop apps that can interact with Ethereum wallet MetaMask, also increased in each month of the first quarter.
The crypto industry is coming off the back of a steep downturn in trading volume and crypto prices during 2022, with scandals like the UST depegging and FTX collapse causing many investors to shy away. However, despite this negative sentiment, users still flocked to these new scalability solutions.
While layer 2s have proven to be a useful tool for improving Ethereum’s scalability, some experts have argued that sharding the Ethereum network will also help to cut down on gas fees. Sharding involves breaking up the Ethereum network into smaller, more manageable pieces, allowing for more parallel processing of transactions. Ultimately, a combination of solutions will likely be necessary to address Ethereum’s scalability challenges and keep up with growing demand.
After four years in development, the Ethereum layer 2 scaling network, zkSync Era, has opened to users in alpha, enabling faster and cheaper transactions. Between 32 to 50 projects, including some of the biggest names in decentralized finance such as Uniswap, Sushi, Maker, and Curve, are set to go live on March 24 or over the weekend.
ZkSync Era is the first Ethereum Virtual Machine compatible zk-Rollup to launch on mainnet, allowing most Ethereum DApps to simply port over with very few changes. The network can provide scaling “orders of magnitude” greater than Ethereum’s current 10 to 12 transactions per second (TPS), offering “tens of TPS” initially and scaling up as demand requires.
The project launched its “fair onboarding alpha” on Feb. 17, allowing projects to port over and test out security and optimizations. Matter Labs, the team behind zkSync Era, said it spent $3.8 million on security testing, seven independent security audits, and a bug bounty program to reduce the risk of any incidents.
Zk-Rollups, which include zkSync, Scroll, and solutions from Polygon, StarkWare, and Consensys, compute transactions away from the Ethereum blockchain while providing a tiny cryptographic proof that is written as a single transaction back on Ethereum showing that a bundle of other transactions has been carried out correctly. ZkSync also employs recursion, which generates a proof showing a batch of other proofs (each representing many transactions) have been carried out.
Zk-Rollups can enable virtually instant withdrawals, giving them an advantage over optimistic-rollup layer 2s such as Optimism, where withdrawals take a week. However, zkSync Era will impose a 24-hour waiting period initially as a security precaution.
ZkSync Era has also enabled native account abstraction, meaning every account in the network is a “smart account” that can utilize two-factor authentication (2FA), social recovery, autopay transactions, and more via smart contract wallet providers like Argent.
The network will not be fully decentralized on launch, so the team can implement fast fixes for any security or technical issues. However, a time lock will later be implemented so that the Security Council and community can sign off on decisions. Like competitor StarkWare, zkSync relies on a centralized sequencer and prover, which are faster, but provide a centralized point of failure.
Running a prover requires the purchase of expensive hardware or renting cloud capacity at $10,000 a month, which makes decentralizing that aspect of the network tricker. A new proof system is already being developed that substantially reduces hardware requirements and should be available on mainnet this year.
Overall, zkSync Era represents an important step forward for Ethereum, which has been grappling with scaling issues for years. The network’s launch on mainnet has the potential to significantly reduce gas fees and enable faster and more efficient transactions, benefiting not only DeFi projects but also other Ethereum-based applications.
Ethereum scaling startup Optimism has secured a $150 million Series B round, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Paradigm.
After this financing, the company was valued at $1.65 billion.
Since NFT and Defi products are closely linked to the Ethereum network, the Ethereum network has found transactions becomes slow and expensive for paying gas fees, pushing drive users to Layer 2 look for solutions like Optimism.
Layer 2 (L2) solutions are reported to have saved users of the Ethereum network more than $1 billion in gas fees. This “Total value locked” (TVL) on the L2 platform has exploded over the past year, with about $5.75 billion currently held on these blockchains, according to tracker L2Beat.
Optimism CEO Jinglan Wang said:
“We made a commitment to the public that we would not take profit from operating centralized parts of the system, so we wanted to remove the financial incentive for ourselves to remain centralized. While we are making revenue, we’re giving all of that revenue back toward funding public goods on Ethereum … We don’t just want to say that we want to be decentralized, we also want to show the community that we’re setting up our own incentives to be compatible with that.”
As reported by blockchain.News on September 1, Ethereum Layer-2 Off-chain Labs raised $120 million led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in its Series B financing, aiming to expand Ethereum contracts to meet the growing demand for Ethereum transactions.
FTX has added support for the Ethereum Layer 2 solution Arbitrum.
The exchange will let users make direct deposits to Ethereum’s Layer 2 without having to bridge assets from mainnet.
While Binance and FTX have shown their interest in supporting Layer 2, crypto enthusiasts have slammed Coinbase for showing more interest in pet coins.
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FTX has announced support for Arbitrum withdrawals and deposits. Meanwhile, Coinbase has faced criticism for focusing on small cap coin listings instead of Layer 2 integration.
FTX Launches Arbitrum Support
Another exchange has added support for Arbitrum.
FTX, the third-largest crypto exchange by volume, announced onboarding support for Arbitrum Tuesday, following on the heels of Binance to adopt Layer 2 Ethereum.
FTX users will now have the option to withdraw ETH purchased on the exchange directly to their Arbitrum mainnet wallets. Previously, users needed to send funds to Ethereum mainnet before bridging them over to Arbitrum, a process that forces users to pay Ethereum’s high gas fees. Likewise, FTX users wishing to send ETH back to the exchange from Arbitrum can now deposit funds directly into their FTX exchange wallets.
Arbitrum is an Ethereum Layer 2 network that leverages Optimistic Rollups. The network benefits from the security of Ethereum mainnet while reducing gas costs by bundling transactions and posting them to the base chain calldata. For complex transactions like swapping ERC-20 tokens, Arbitrum can currently reduce gas fees by a factor of up to 10.
According to data from L2Beat, Arbitrum currently holds around $3.4 billion in total value locked, and many of Ethereum mainnet’s most popular DeFi protocols have built on it to make the jump to Layer 2.While fees to use Arbitrum come in at a fraction of those for processing transactions on Ethereum, the high gas cost associated with bridging funds onto the network has acted as a barrier to adoption. However, as centralized exchanges like FTX and Binance build easier, lower-cost onboarding for Arbitrum, it’s likely that more users will be incentivized to use the network.
While the likes of Binance and FTX have moved fast to add Ethereum Layer 2 support, not all exchanges are following their example. Coinbase, the biggest U.S. exchange, has lagged behind its competitors in adopting Layer 2 in recent months. Prominent crypto community members have widely criticized Coinbase for listing illiquid, small-cap tokens instead of working on native withdrawals for assets such as Fantom and Arbitrum onboarding.
In response to Coinbase’s latest listing of the pet digital identity token Pawtocol, The Daily Gwei founder Anthony Sassano tweeted out his disappointment in the exchange, stating, “I like Coinbase but their priorities are out of whack on this.” Sassano was joined in the comments by followers who expressed similar views, stating that Coinbase had first announced its intention to launch support for Arbitrum over five months prior but hasn’t updated customers since then. Coinbase has also been slow to unveil its NFT marketplace; Coinbase NFT was due to go live with support for Ethereum NFTs before the end of 2021 but is still yet to launch.
As Ethereum scaling solutions like Arbitrum gain momentum, exchanges that don’t support onboarding for their customers are at risk of being left behind. On the back of FTX’s Arbitrum announcement, many are already calling for other Layer 2 solutions such as Optimism to receive support next, highlighting public demand for Ethereum Layer 2 onboarding.
Disclosure: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned FTT, ETH, and several other cryptocurrencies.
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GameStop has partnered with Immutable X to further develop its NFT marketplace.
Immutable and GameStop will create $100 million fund dedicated to support game developers.
GameStop is among several traditional video game companies exploring NFTs.
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Immutable has announced a new partnership with GameStop to power its NFT marketplace.
GameStop Leveraging Layer 2 Technology
Immutable has partnered with GameStop to develop its NFT marketplace.
Immutable is the developer of Immutable X, a Layer-2 protocol for NFTs on Ethereum that allows for faster, less computationally-intense transactions at zero gas costs. It is also the creator of well-known blockchain games such as Gods Unchained and Guild of Guardians.
Immutable X is built using StarkWare’s StarkEx zero-knowledge proof technology, which is capable of rolling up hundreds of thousands of transactions into a single Ethereum transaction.
The news comes not long after GameStop first announced its foray into the NFT world, confirming their plan to build a hub for trading in-game items such as avatars, outfits, and weapons. Immutable X will have a role in powering the development of GameStop’s NFT marketplace.
The team’s plan includes launching a token pool to support developers building gaming apps and creators making content in the GameStop NFT marketplace.
In an apparent attempt to outsource developer talent, GameStop is allowing NFT content creators to apply for grant consideration via a link published via its NFT website.
In recent weeks, some of the industry’s biggest publicly traded video game companies have launched or announced plans to sell NFTs, including Ubisoft Entertainment, Zynga Inc. and Square Enix Holdings.
The global video games market has been reported to have reached $138 billion during 2021 and GameStop’s valuation is close to $10 billion at the time of reporting.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this piece owned ETH and other cryptocurrencies.
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The information on or accessed through this website is obtained from independent sources we believe to be accurate and reliable, but Decentral Media, Inc. makes no representation or warranty as to the timeliness, completeness, or accuracy of any information on or accessed through this website. Decentral Media, Inc. is not an investment advisor. We do not give personalized investment advice or other financial advice. The information on this website is subject to change without notice. Some or all of the information on this website may become outdated, or it may be or become incomplete or inaccurate. We may, but are not obligated to, update any outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate information.
You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities.
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Cardano (ADA) founder Charles Hoskinson envisions completing much of his personal outline for the project in 2022.
In a new interview with Crypto Capital Venture, the CEO of Input Output Hong Kong (IOHK) was asked what Cardano developments would be finished by 2022.
Replies Hoskinson,
“I think everything will get done that I outlined – the sidechains, the pipelining, the import endorsers, the library optimization, Hydra and Mithril.
Now there are degrees and flavors like there’ll be more Hydra stuff to do, but at least you’ll be able to use Hydra for something like microtransactions.
Mithril will be probably completely finished because it’s a finite scope of work, and we had to bring on some sophisticated contractors for it.”
Hydra is a layer-2 scalability solution that aims to enable a more efficient means of processing transactions off-chain, explains David Orr, a content creator at IOHK.
Mithril is a protocol that aims to help “users join the network with less technical overhead,” according to the Cardano Summit Organization website.
Hoskinson says in his new interview that while there will always be ways to improve Cardano, the upgrades in 2022 should allow it to match the technical elements of competing smart contract platforms.
“You can always optimize pipelining and do more in those heartbeats and the same for input endorsers – there are always ways to optimize that.
But some version of it will ship, and… I think we’ll be in an exceedingly strong position to match what we see with Solana and these other platforms, but have the added benefit of being actually decentralized and having real theory and strong foundations behind it.”
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StarkWare uses Zero-Knowledge Rollups to develop scaling solutions for Ethereum.
StarkWare’s STARKs allow scaling to be completely trustless and can be deployed in either Rollup mode or Validium depending on the use case.
Layer 2 projects like StarkWare could help Ethereum achieve 100,000 transactions per second with significantly reduced gas costs.
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StarkWare co-founders Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny sit down with Crypto Briefing to discuss how their project’s STARK-based technology will bring down the cost of using the Ethereum network.
What Is StarkWare?
StarkWare is one of several crypto projects that leverages Zero-Knowledge Rollups to help scale Ethereum. Unlike other Layer 2 scaling solutions, it uses ZK-STARK proofs, otherwise known as zero-knowledge, scalable, transparent arguments of knowledge. StarkWare’s President Eli Ben-Sasson and Chief Architect Michael Riabzev co-invented STARKs.
StarkWare’s has an application-specific scaling solution called StarkEx that uses STARKs to achieve scalability. StarkEx powers several major platforms including the decentralized exchanges dYdX and DeversiFi. Over the past six months, it has settled over $250 billion worth of transactions and with significant gas fee savings for users.
Starkware is currently developing a multi-app Ethereum Layer 2 solution called StarkNet. The product will let users hold their funds in a single wallet and interact with multiple applications on Layer 2. Additionally, StarkWare intends to launch the current StarkEx platforms as so-called “Layer 3s” on top of StarkNet, making it easier and cheaper for users to interact with these applications.
STARK-based technology offers several key innovations over existing Ethereum scaling solutions. STARKs offer a way to use Ethereum permissionlessly at a high speed and low cost. STARKs are also the first cryptographic technology that allow proofs to be verified without any form of trusted setup.
Crypto Briefing caught up with StarkWare co-founders Eli Ben-Sasson and Uri Kolodny to hear about their plans to scale Ethereum on Layer 2, and they discussed how the technology offers security for users because it is completely trustless. “The math that we developed prevents anyone from stealing funds—it’s impossible,” Ben-Sasson said. “We can’t steal funds from our customers even if we wanted to, or even if we were hacked.”
“We can give Darth Vader or the Bogeyman access to our servers, and there’s still no harm that they could inflict on users’ ownership and custody of their assets,” Kolodny added.
StarkWare’s goal is to unlock blockchain technology’s true potential. While cryptocurrencies have attracted more mainstream than ever in recent months, blockchains like Ethereum are constrained by high costs and limited data availability. As a result, most newer users are currently priced out of the network. Other Layer 1 chains increase transaction throughput by running fewer yet more powerful validators. However, this method increases centralization as users need to trust a small set of validators for all transactions on the network. StarkWare is aiming to stay true to Ethereum’s founding principles of decentralization and accessibility through its scaling solutions.
Ethereum mainnet currently handles about 15 transactions per second, and more complex smart contract interactions can cost hundreds of dollars at peak congestion. StarkWare says that StarkNet will reduce gas fees by a factor of 100 to 200, while Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin has previously stated that rollups like StarkNet will help the network achieve 100,000 transactions per second.
Staying True to Ethereum
StarkWare is currently responsible for proving and sequencing all transactions on StarkEx and StarkNet that are sent to Ethereum for confirmation. While this has some benefits, such as limiting the potential for MEV, it doesn’t fulfill the company’s vision of decentralization.
By the end of 2022, StarkWare plans to make the sequencing and proving software open to the public, allowing anybody to participate and secure transactions made on StarkNet. Ben-Sasson shared his optimism about the shift to community validation, stating:
“I think it will likely look very much like mining on Ethereum in the early days. You’ll have to get off your couch, learn a little bit, install some things, and run a server. But hopefully, you won’t need to build a facility in Iceland next to some geothermal plant or something. It’s going to be within reach.”
Like many other successful crypto projects, StarkWare will need to have an incentive structure in place to get people engaged with proving and sequencing on StarkNet. Similar to how miners receive block rewards and transaction fees for validating transactions, StarkNet will also incorporate similar monetary incentives. “There will be fees that will go to, among others, the operators, provers, and sequencers, and then beyond that, we’re deliberating on other approaches,” says Ben-Sasson. “It will be a fully decentralized network that will require coordination and governance mechanisms,” added Kolodny.
Crypto projects often issue tokens to achieve decentralization and add governance mechanisms. In 2021, several popular Ethereum projects such as dYdX, Ethereum Name Service, and ParaSwap launched their own tokens with airdrops for early users. Many Ethereum users have speculated that Layer 2 projects such as StarkWare will also issue tokens to encourage adoption, but Ben-Sasson and Kolodny did not shed any light on whether StarkWare was planning to launch one.
One of the key reasons for Ethereum’s success has been its commitment to decentralization and accessibility. Anyone with a few graphics cards can start mining blocks and validating transactions, and even running a node requires simple hardware. By emulating Ethereum’s accessibility, StarkWare is also refusing to compromise on decentralization as it works toward its vision of a secure and public scaling solution.
Security and Cost
StarkWare’s STARKs can be deployed in one of two data availability modes: Rollup or Validium. The differences between these two modes highlight the compromise between security and cost in Ethereum scaling.
In Rollup mode, every transaction or change of state on Layer 2 is “rolled up” together and sent to Ethereum mainnet in a validity proof, meaning that they all benefit from Ethereum’s security. As this method uses more data and thus more block space than Validium, it costs more gas.
On the other hand, Validium does not report every change in the Layer 2 data to Ethereum. Instead, it relies on a data availability committee to confirm they all have the same state, before signing off the transactions along with the Merkle root of the new state. The small compromise in security results in substantial gas savings compared to Rollup mode.
Currently, applications such as dYdX run STARKs in Rollup mode to take advantage of its enhanced security. As the dYdX exchange handles billions of dollars in trading volume, it makes sense to pay for extra security. While Rollup mode currently reduces transaction costs by a factor of 100 to 200, savings that will increase as more people use the network due to gas cost amortization, there is still a linear limit to how much they can scale. It’s with Validium, though, that the true potential of Ethereum scaling can be unleashed.
Validium uses validity proofs, meaning the network only needs to send a proof confirming the difference between two states back to Ethereum mainnet. For example, a proof could capture every transaction in a one hour period and demonstrate that all of the changes within that period are valid. As such, there is no limit to the number of transactions that can technically be included in the proof.As such, there is technically no limit to the number of transactions that can be included in each proof. “We do not know of an upper bound,” Kolodny remarked, explaining how the concept of Validium scaling blew his mind when he first learned of the details.
Additionally, when more transactions take place between the proof updates to mainnet, the gas cost gets split between more users. In other words, the more users Validium attracts, the cheaper the transaction fees become.
The NFT-based soccer game Sorare already runs STARKs in Validium mode to finalize transactions. As games are likely to be some of the most gas-intensive protocols on blockchains over the next few years, Validium’s limitless scaling offer huge promise for blockchain gaming. Kolodny said that some game developers have already started to see the potential of the technology. He explained:
“Gamers are telling us, in a very explicit fashion, ‘for the first time as a developer on the blockchain, I can actually focus on the game I want to build, as opposed to the computational resources I’m constrained by, or by the “gas ceiling” that’s hanging over my head. The question of ‘what was that game we wanted to build on Ethereum’ is not the relevant question; the real question is ‘what was that game that we actually dreamed of.””
StarkWare and Ethereum’s Scalable Future
StarkWare’s application-specific scaling solutions are already proving that STARK-based Layer 2 solutions could be a game-changer for Ethereum and the crypto space at large. StarkEx applications are already settling over six million transactions weekly, while the total value of transactions settled has surpassed $300 billion—orders of magnitude higher than other Ethereum Layer 2s such as the Optimistic Rollup solutions Optimism and Arbitrum.
Ethereum’s roadmap is geared toward building out Layer 2 to help the network scale (on the completion of Ethereum 2.0, it will also add 64 new chains called shards). Vitalik Buterin has long discussed how Ethereum of the future will leverage ZK-Rollups. Kolodny summed up StarkWare’s ambition to help the blockchain achieve scalability, commenting:
“What we’re doing with validity proofs is making the most succinct use of this public utility—the blockchain—that we are aware of, allowing others to use this resource in a far more effective fashion.”
The next step for StarkWare is to bring StarkEx’s scaling power to its multi-application network, StarkNet. Once launched, StarkNet will unlock more possibilities for scaling, including cross-Layer 2 bridges that immediately make funds available to end users. This should help pave the way for shared liquidity across multiple Ethereum Layer 2 instances, improving efficiency and the cost of capital further than any other Layer 2 scaling solution.
As the crypto space has grown over the last few years, Ethereum has soared in popularity. However, it’s also faced many well-documented scalability challenges. Thanks to StarkWare, the leading smart contract network may finally have a shot at becoming a truly scalable base layer for Web3.
Disclosure: At the time of writing this feature, the author owned ETH, IMX, and several other cryptocurrencies.
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The information on or accessed through this website is obtained from independent sources we believe to be accurate and reliable, but Decentral Media, Inc. makes no representation or warranty as to the timeliness, completeness, or accuracy of any information on or accessed through this website. Decentral Media, Inc. is not an investment advisor. We do not give personalized investment advice or other financial advice. The information on this website is subject to change without notice. Some or all of the information on this website may become outdated, or it may be or become incomplete or inaccurate. We may, but are not obligated to, update any outdated, incomplete, or inaccurate information.
You should never make an investment decision on an ICO, IEO, or other investment based on the information on this website, and you should never interpret or otherwise rely on any of the information on this website as investment advice. We strongly recommend that you consult a licensed investment advisor or other qualified financial professional if you are seeking investment advice on an ICO, IEO, or other investment. We do not accept compensation in any form for analyzing or reporting on any ICO, IEO, cryptocurrency, currency, tokenized sales, securities, or commodities.
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The Ethereum layer 2 network Arbitrum has suffered its second outage in less than five months following a hardware failure.
Arbitrum is back online at the time of writing but the team did report some downtime during the late hours of Jan. 9. The timing of the tweets suggests that the network was down for around seven hours.
At the time, the Offchain Labs platform reported that it was experiencing some issues with the sequencer which prevented transactions from being processed for the period.
We are currently experiencing Sequencer downtime. Thank you for your patience as we work to restore it. All funds in the system are safe, and we will post updates here.
— Arbitrum (@arbitrum) January 9, 2022
On Jan. 10, Arbitrum released a post mortem explaining what had occurred to cause the brief outage. “The core issue was a hardware failure in our main Sequencer node,” it revealed, adding that backup Sequencer redundancies that would normally take control also failed due to an ongoing software update.
The network is designed to fall back to layer 1 Ethereum to process transactions when it has its own Sequencer issues. However, it stated that efforts were made to make sure all transactions were confirmed by the Sequencer before going offline. A total of 284 transactions captured by the Sequencer were prevented from being posted to the Ethereum chain.
This was a very minor outage in the grand scheme of things but the team did remind users that the network is still essentially in beta.
“The Arbitrum network is still in beta, and we will keep this moniker as long as there are points of centralization that still exist in the system.”
The team concluded that it was working on further decentralizing the network with a “twofold path of minimizing Sequencer downtime” that will be deployed in the coming weeks and months.
In mid-September, Arbitrum suffered a similar Sequencer outage when a bug caused the system to get stuck after a large batch of transactions was executed over a short time frame.
Related:Ethereum layer-two TVL reaches all-time high
Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer 2 network using Optimistic rollups to batch transactions for faster and cheaper processing. It was launched as Arbitrum One in early September following a massive $120 million funding round.
According to layer 2 data platform L2beat, Arbitrum is the most popular layer 2 network at the moment with a total value locked of $2.57 billion giving it a L2 market share of 47%.
