Sam Kessler
Sam is a reporter at CoinDesk focused on decentralized technology, DeFi and DAOs. He owns ETH, BTC and MATIC.
Offchain Labs, the company behind Ethereum (ETH) scaling solution Arbitrum, announced this week the launch of Nitro – a major update to the optimistic rollup’s technical stack.
- According to Offchain, the update to Arbitrum will cheapen fees, speed up transactions, and make it easier for native Ethereum apps to interface with the Layer 2 chain.
- Offchain founder Steven Goldfeder told CoinDesk that Arbitrum’s fees, which were usually around 50 cents to $1 before the update, will be cut by at least 50%.
- Rollups like Arbitrum scale the Ethereum network by processing transactions and executing smart contracts – the mini-computer programs that run on blockchains – on separate rollup-specific chains.
- The data generated on Arbitrum gets bundled up and passed back down to Ethereum, where Ethereum network actors can check whether the data is valid.
- Last week, a $625 million theft from Ethereum’s Ronin sidechain showed the potential vulnerability of sidechains, which, unlike rollups, do not inherit their security from a layer 1 blockchain.
- In March, Offchain also announced Arbitrum AnyTrust chains – a cheaper, faster, more centralized alternative to its optimistic rollup.
- Arbitrum is currently Ethereum’s largest rollup solution, with nearly $2.5 billion total value locked (TVL), according to DefiiLlama.
