Uniswap Developer Unveils Own Layer-2 Network, Unichain, Built on Optimism Tech

Uniswap Labs, the developer behind the extremely regarded decentralized crypto trade Uniswap, introduced that it has constructed a brand new layer 2 community, which was set to launch on testnet on Thursday.

The brand new challenge is constructed utilizing Optimism’s OP Stack, a blockchain blueprint that has additionally been utilized by crypto trade Coinbase and electronics big Sony to construct layer-2 networks.

The principle developer behind Uniswap, the biggest decentralized crypto trade, plans to launch its personal blockchain as a layer 2 community on high of Ethereum – a part of an effort to make transactions sooner and cheaper whereas bettering liquidity.

Unichain, as the brand new community is thought, would go dwell on a personal check community on Thursday, in line with a press launch.

The technical improvement of the challenge is led by Uniswap Labs, utilizing expertise borrowed from Optimism’s Ethereum Layer-2 staff OP pile. As such, Unichain will turn out to be a part of the Superchain, a federation of Optimism-affiliated networks that features US crypto trade Coinbase’s personal layer-2 blockchain, Base.

“Folks really need issues to really feel on the spot,” Hayden Adams, the inventor of Uniswap and CEO of Uniswap Labs, mentioned in an interview with CoinDesk, when requested concerning the motivation for the initiative.

The information is in keeping with the continued development that has hit the Ethereum scaling world since late 2023: big and well-known crypto exchanges launching their very own Layer-2 networks. Coinbase famously created the Base with OP Stack, whereas OKX has X Layer and uses technology from the team behind another layer 2 project, Polygon.

One other layer 2 is coming

Over the previous yr, layer 2 techniques have been popping up in all places, and a few within the trade have argued that there’s rising fatigue and fragmentation as a result of these networks. Some consultants have argued that there may very well be 1000’s of layer 2 networks inside just a few years, and that groups are already constructing layer 3 networks that may run on high of the layer 2 networks.

Adams argues that the fatigue is because of the truth that “there are various extra folks centered on infrastructure than there are folks centered on use circumstances for that infrastructure. And so it results in there being 1,000,000 platforms on the lookout for builders, and never that many builders on the lookout for a platform.”

His argument for Unichain is that, simply as Uniswap is a liquidity hub on the Ethereum community, Unichain may very well be a DeFi hub for a lot of chains. as a part of a number of chains related to Optimism’s Superchain ecosystem.

“We expect this might in the end result in merchandise and consumer experiences which can be extra like the true world, issues that do not really feel like it’s important to be taught one thing fully new to make use of them,” Adams advised CoinDesk.

Technical particulars

As a part of the revealing, the Uniswap Labs staff plans so as to add distinctive expertise options to the chain, constructed with Ethereum analysis and improvement staff Flashbots, together with a trusted execution surroundings (TEE) for block constructing and a safe computing space that transactions and code ensures. It can’t be tampered with, in addition to a group validation community.

The TEE ought to present transparency when ordering transactions, constructing blocks between 200-250 milliseconds, the staff shared in a press launch. That quantities to one-fifth to one-fourth of a second, in comparison with 12 seconds now on the Ethereum mainnet and two seconds on most layer 2 networks.

“Going from two seconds to 250 milliseconds for the expertise a consumer can have is definitely extraordinarily impactful,” Adams mentioned.

Sooner blocks may also cut back most extractable worth (MEV) capabilities, the place automated buying and selling bots can execute transactions in a blockchain’s queue earlier than they are often processed.

The group validation community, coming in 2025, ought to assist with decentralization “by permitting full nodes to assist confirm blocks by staking UNI,” the Uniswap staff wrote within the press launch.

“This method reduces the danger that sequencers will suggest conflicting or invalid blocks, which may delay the finality of the transaction or expose customers to monetary threat from interacting with uncompleted blocks.”

Learn extra: Optimism pushes for ‘interoperability’ between related blockchains