A new layer 2 is about to arrive, and not the least. Uniswap Labs, the firm behind the famous decentralized finance protocol Uniswap, has just unveiled “Unichain”. With the layer 2 market already saturated, will Unichain bring real added value to DeFi?
Uniswap Labs unveils Unichain, its new layer 2
“Unichain”: this is the name given to layer 2 just unveiled by Uniswap Labs, the company behind the development of Uniswap, the essential decentralized finance (DeFi) protocol which at the time of writing displays These lines have a total value locked (TVL) of $4.5 billion.
Why a new layer 2 in an already saturated market segment, more than 105 layer 2s are currently launched or under development? To solve the ever-present challenges within decentralized finance. And for this, Uniswap intends to rely on its 6 years of experience in a market that could not be more changing.
Interviewed by our colleagues at The Block, an anonymous developer from Uniswap Labs responded in these terms to the saturation of layer 2 on the market:
You can imagine a world where each additional L2 does not necessarily constitute participation in the fragmentation of Ethereum, but rather an increase in the total amount of things the system can do.
Concretely, the raison d'être of Unichain is based on the following pillars: low fees, decentralization, speed and interchain exchanges.
And it is precisely interchain exchanges that seem to constitute the anchor point of Unichain. As Uniswap notes, and as we recently addressed through one of our recent files, the appearance of countless layer 2s (initially launched with the aim of solving Ethereum's scalability problems) has reality contributed to significant fragmentation of liquidity, sacrificing user experience in the process.
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This is why the Unichain will be part of the Superchain initiated by Optimism. Concretely, thanks to a partnership with OP Labs, Unichain will benefit from native interoperability with other layer 2 of the Superchainincluding Base, OP Mainnet, Mode, Zora Network, Mantle and Celo.
But that's not all. For a DeFi user, speed is the key word, and Uniswap knows this.
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Almost instantaneous transactions are the promise made by Uniswap with Unichain. According to his press release, Layer 2 built for DeFi will launch with a block finalization time of one second, and will subsequently be optimized with the introduction of “sub-blocks” with a finalization time of just 250 ms.
Achievable performance thanks to a partnership with Flashbots and a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) which reduces block processing time while maintaining the integrity and transparency of transactions. Flashbots will allow Unichain to benefit from its “Rollup-Boost”, which allows the creation of sub-blocks.
This technical feat will also be inaugurated on Unichain, the first layer 2 to benefit from it.
🗞️ In similar news – Layer 2 Linea unveils its roadmap listing the steps towards its decentralization
Furthermore, in parallel with a considerable improvement in the user experience, this block finalization time should also largely reduce concerns about maximum extractable value (MEV), a point also highlighted by Hayden Adams, CEO from Uniswap Labs.
Developers wishing to participate in the construction of the Unichain can already participate in the dedicated testnet, the latter having been launched today alongside the Uniswap Labs announcement.
At the time of writing, the price of the UNI token reacted positively to the news, with the latter posting a gain of 11% over the last 24 hours.
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