Unichain, intended to offer faster and cheaper transactions, unifies the cross-chain experience and was made in collaboration with Flashbots, a company known for its research into maximum extractable value.
Uniswap launched in 2018 and was one of the first decentralized exchange apps to gain popularity.
(Shutterstock/Eugenia Porechenskaya)
Posted October 10, 2024 at 9:01 AM EST.
The company behind Uniswap, the largest decentralized exchange by trading volume, has entered the Ethereum L2 race, focused on user needs in the decentralized finance space.
Called Unichain, the nascent scaling solution is built by Uniswap Labs on the Optimism Superchain, referring to the unified network of layer 2 blockchains built using the OP stack.
Hayden Adams, CEO of Uniswap Labs, told Unchained: “One of the biggest benefits of Optimism is just that I think it’s a standard that a lot of people can converge around… We’re excited about their vision of interoperability and being able to join forces with Optimism, a partner. with Base, and truly prove the Ethereum roadmap of interoperable L2s. Optimism’s OP Mainnet and the Coinbase incubated base are part of the Superchain ecosystem.
The new network, which runs on a private testnet and is expected to be rolled out in the coming months, has two key features – verifiable block construction and a validation network – according to its white paper authored by a number of people such as Adams , Hasu, Head of Flashbots Strategy, Karl Floersch, CEO of OP Labs, and Dan Robinson, General Partner of Paradigm.
Created in collaboration with Flashbots, a research and development company known for its focus on maximum extractable value (MEV), the verifiable block build is ideally designed to help Unichain have block times of 200 to 250 milliseconds.
An already crowded L2 ecosystem
Uniswap Labs unveiling Unichain marks an additional entrant into the already populated L2 arena. As of press time, the number of L2 protocols attempting to help scale Ethereum currently stands at 105, with Arbitrum, Base and OP Mainnet occupying the top three ranks in terms of total value locked, according to the platform. analysis of Ethereum scaling solutions L2Beat.
As for why Uniswap Labs is introducing yet another L2, Adams told Unchained that he wants Unichain to improve DeFi’s fragmented user experience in which liquidity on each network is isolated from capital on others. The company intends to achieve this by allowing users and developers to easily access liquidity on the Superchain.
“We want to create a channel where other channels can interact with each other very easily,” Adams said. “If you have a token on a chain and want to buy another, that transaction can run on Unichain.”
Although Unichain will start with single-block cross-chain messaging between all Superchain L2s, the company will also work to create interoperability for all chains, not just those in the Superchain ecosystem, by working on proposals improvement of Ethereum, like the one around “cross-chain intentions”, an interface that will allow users to easily transact across chains.
Unichain’s sequencer compared to others
Unichain, like all, or at least the vast majority of L2s, depends on a single sequencer, a critical piece of the rollup infrastructure responsible for ordering and aggregating L2 transactions before posting them to the base layer. ‘Ethereum. Unichain’s validation network is expected to address the centralization risks associated with single sequencer architectures.
“While Unichain leverages a unique sequencer for efficiency, it introduces additional decentralization by allowing full nodes to help verify blocks by staking UNI,” the Uniswap blog states. “This approach reduces the risk of sequencers offering conflicting or invalid blocks, which could delay transaction finality or expose users to financial risks from interacting with unfinalized blocks.
Read more: What are sequencers in Layer 2 protocols such as Optimism, Arbitrum and Base?
Most L2 sequencers are controlled by a single entity. For example, the Base Sequencer is dictated by Coinbase, which collects 100% of the fees generated by the Sequencer. But Unichain has several parties, namely Uniswap Labs and Flashbots, involved in its sequencer, as well as UNI stakers which act as a second layer of security. By participating in the Unichain validation network, UNI stakeholders verify each transaction block constructed by the sequencer.
As a result, the fees collected by Unichain from users carrying out transactions on the blockchain will be distributed among the different actors contributing to the network. “Sequencer will earn fees for being a sequencer (and) the validation network will earn fees for being a validation network. They’re two different roles within the ecosystem,” Adams said.
UPDATE (Oct. 10, 9:58 a.m. ET): A previous version of this story read “Optimism, aka OP Mainnet,” which has since been revised to “Optimism’s OP Mainnet” for clarity. Optimism is the collective and home of the superchain, while OP Mainnet is a single blockchain.
