Optimism, which has been successful in building an ecosystem of connected blockchain networks, is now trying to connect them all more closely.
“The Superchain should feel like one chain,” the Optimism team wrote in a blog post shared with CoinDesk.
Optimism, one layer-2 blockchain ecosystem on top of Ethereum that has been successful in attracting new projects to use its technology – most notably including Coinbase’s Base – is now looking to more closely connect its member networks.
The ecosystem, built with the aim of allowing users to more cheaply transact on top of Ethereum, on Monday laid out its roadmap for what it describes as a native interoperability solution, addressing issues of fragmentation between the different optimism chains.
The announcement comes as more layer 2 ecosystems release their own interoperability solutions, like rivals Polygon’s AggLayer and the Elastic Chain from Matter Labs, the developer company behind the ZKsync blockchain.
Optimism’s own ecosystem has grown tremendously since its inception, thanks in part to the OP Stack. a customizable toolkit that allows developers to build their own layer 2 networks based on Optimism’s technology, like Coinbase’s Basic chain or Worldcoin’s World Chain.
Among the top 20 layer 2 blockchains followed by the data site L2Beat, nine are part of the Optimism ecosystem. Collectively, these have about $16 billion in total value locked up, which is more than the $15.1 billion boasted by the largest individual layer 2 network, Arbitrum One.
When teams launch their own networks using OP Stack, they agree to sign up with Optimism’s Superchain Ethos: A set of economic and cultural agreements that contribute to the Optimism ecosystem.
“I think the best way to think about the Superchain is that it is a group of people and organizations aligned with the common goal of uplifting humanity and upgrading capitalism,” said Mark Tyneway, the co-founder from OP Labs. the main developer company behind Optimism, in an interview with CoinDesk.
“All chains that are part of the Superchain pay a portion of the revenue they earn from running their sequencer to the Optimism board, and the Optimism board retroactively funds public goods,” meaning that it distributes tokens and grants to those who contribute to the Optimism ecosystem, Tyneway said.
Trust in Ethereum
One drawback that stifles growth is that the networks that make up the Superchain rely on Ethereum to communicate with each other to move assets, often making such moves slow and expensive.
To address this, Optimism is coming with its own native interoperability layer, so that networks in the Superchain can communicate with each other more easily.
“The Superchain should feel like one chain,” the Optimism team wrote in a blog post shared with CoinDesk. “To achieve this, we want to build a unified Superchain where users, assets and developers can move seamlessly across the network and beyond.”
The Optimism team plans to have the native interoperability solution operational on Mainnet in early 2025. In the meantime, the Optimism team will soon launch the interoperability layer on a developer network, followed by a launch on a test network.
“So interoperability as a technology essentially lets you read information from one chain and process that information into another chain,” Tyneway told CoinDesk.
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