Although Ethereum gas prices appear to have returned to ‘normal’ as DeFi activity has tailed off, the mission for many dapps continues to ensure they can deal with any future disruption.
That means using scaling solutions that offer fast transactions with minimum fees.
One of the most active projects in this regard is Synthetix, which is currently running a test for its Mintr dapp.
Mintr is the way users generate Synthetix’s sUSD stablecoin, which is used for trading the various synthetic assets available on the platform.
This occurs as users stake (or lock up) their SNX tokens as collateral, gaining sUSD in the process.
Once locked in, such SNX also generates weekly rewards – both SNX and sUSD tokens – which is a share of the overall activity on the Synthetix platform.
Both of these actions require Ethereum transactions and when gas prices were at their highest, it cost +$50 in gas fees to complete transactions that for many Mintr users were perhaps only worth a couple of dollars in rewards.
And this is why Synthetix is testing the Optimistic Ethereum project. Currently running on an Ethereum testnet, it uses the so-called Optimistic Rollups technique via its Optimism Virtual Machine (OVM) to combine many transactions on its layer 2 network into one transaction on the Ethereum mainnet.
The results to-date have been impressive, with gas prices reduced by more than 99% and the confirmation times for transactions reduced from 15 seconds to around 0.3 seconds.
Certainly, Synthetix is very happy with its CTO calling the technology “one of the most exciting developments for Ethereum today”.
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