The Ethereum scaling solution for layer 2 On Wednesday, Arbitrum will get one of its most important updates, which will speed up transactions, lower their costs, and make it easier to talk to Ethereum across chains.
In a Twitter tweet on August 29, Arbitrum reaffirmed the timing of the “Nitro” update, stating that the upgrade will take place on August 31 at 10:30 a.m. Eastern Time and that two to four hours of network outages are anticipated.
Abritrum is an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution that uses Optimistic Rollup technology to package huge batches of Ethereum smart contract and decentralised application transactions off-chain before sending them to Ethereum.
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Offchain Labs’ GitHub page says that Nitro will be a “fully integrated, comprehensive layer 2 optimistic rollup system” that builds on Arbitrum One with better sequencers, token bridges, and calldata compression techniques, as well as much better fraud proofs.
Offchain Labs is a blockchain-based startup founded in 2018 that develops a suite of Ethereum scaling solutions, the most notable of which is the Arbitrum One network.
Additionally, Offchain Labs has redesigned its ArbOS (Arbitrum Operating System) component in the programming language Go. The new version will enhance cross-chain communication between Ethereum and Arbitrum, as well as transaction batching and data compression, thereby reducing expenses on the Ethereum mainnet.
The letter also said that the state of Arbitrum One will be “seamlessly moved” to Nitro. If this is done correctly, it should make it impossible for a chain split to happen.
In a paper published in April 2022, Offchain Labs said that the Arbitrum Nitro update will be “the most sophisticated Ethereum scaling stack” and that “Nitro would significantly increase network capacity and decrease transaction costs,” saying:
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“Currently, we limit Arbitrum’s capacity, but with Nitro, we’ll be able to remove these restrictions and substantially increase our throughput. And while Arbitrum is currently 90–95% less expensive than Ethereum on average, Nitro substantially reduces our expenditures. ”
Decentralized finance (DeFi) aggregator DeFi Llama reports that Arbitrum’s network has a total value locked (TVL) of $936 million distributed over 111 protocols, with GMX, Stargate, Curve, and Uniswap being among the most popular.
