Arbitrum; 1st Smart Ethereum Layer 2 Solution Went Alive on Friday

          So Arbitrum by Offchain Labs, became the first general smart contract Ethereum layer 2 solution to go live on Friday. Arbitrum claims to significantly increase transaction throughput than Ethereum mainnet with 270 times lesser gas fees.

Ethereum scaling solutions can be divided into two categories, zk-Rollups and Optimistic. zk-Rollups are faster and technically advanced but as of now are not easily compatible with mother layer. Optimistic type Rollups on the other side are far easier to integrate with Ethereum main-net and are the most logical way forward for scaling Ethereum, at-least in short to mid term.

Two of the noteworthy Optimistic projects are Optimism and Arbitrum. Optimism has faced delays, pushing release date till July this year. So, Arbitrum getting launched now, certainly gives the project a heads up against Optimism.

Arbitrum have already started to get traction with more than 250 projects already seeking access, e.g. Uniswap’s community poll about deploying its smart contracts on Arbitrum(in wake of Optimism's delay) had received wide community support. This will offer Uniswap V3 user pay only few cents for a far way faster transaction speed.

Arbitrum being deployed on Uniswap will have a huge effect on Ethereum network in terms of transaction volume off-loading, because Uniswap is one of the biggest Ethereum gas consumers. And with reduced traffic on main network, gas prices will certainly start getting low.

Arbitrum launch is anticipated as a huge way forward in scaling Ethereum network with minimal transaction fees. Meanwhile highly anticipated EIP-1559 still remains in pipelines. All in all, exciting times lies ahead for Ethereum users.