Optimism grows for layer-two scaling after Etherscan integration

The Ethereum layer-two scaling solutions provider Optimism has announced a collaboration with blockchain analytics platform Etherscan.

In an announcement on May 21, the technology provider declared it a major usability milestone, stating that it makes highly technical information easily searchable and human-readable.

The firm provides L2 scaling technology called Optimistic rollups which builds on zero-knowledge proofs but changes the consensus so that instead of verifying each transaction, the network assumes that all of them are correct. Intervention is only necessary if there is an incorrect transaction in which case a “fraud-proof” is submitted.

With the Etherscan integration, Optimistic Ethereum users will now be able to monitor deposits and withdrawals in addition to viewing when L2 transactions are pre-confirmed and when they have been posted and finalized in batches on L1. Withdrawal completion on L1 is coming soon, the announcement added.

According to the Optimistic Ethereum roadmap, it expects to launch to public mainnet in July 2021. However some whitelisted protocols are moving ahead of that date.

One of the first protocols to deploy Optimistic Ethereum (OΞ) is DeFi synthetic assets exchange Synthetix. Founder Kain Warwick stated that the rollout has taken longer than expected but is now imminent. “While it has taken far longer than we hoped to get to this point, we are now only a few weeks away from having everything ready to enable exchanges on BTC, ETH and LINK,” he wrote.

He added that the delay had enabled oracle provider Chainlink to work on latency upgrades on L2 aggregators. This will enable lower fees to be achievable through additional optimizations which also allows for the removal of fee reclamation, resulting in Synthetix regaining composability with other protocols for the first time in almost two years.

“It really cannot be overstated how enormous a development this will be on OΞ. Especially as more protocols migrate and liquidity transitions to this new L2 infrastructure.”

In his May 18 blog post, Warwick stated that the launch of multiple other protocols on Optimistic Ethereum will significantly undermine the value proposition of chains like Solana and Binance Smart Chain.

The lengthy update did not specify a date for launch but did state that there will be a scalable platform on which to finalize the scope of Synthetix version 2 (V2x) in the next few months.

The world’s largest decentralized exchange, Uniswap, has also been whitelisted for Optimistic deployment which means the long-awaited layer-two scaling for v3 could be launched before July. There has been no official announcement regarding the L2 launch from Uniswap Labs, however.