In June 2019, work began on Optimism – a scalability solution designed to lower the cost of using Ethereum and to simplify its use. The layer 2 scaling solution was officially launched over 2 years later in December 2021 and is now leading the way for scaling solutions on Ethereum.
What Optimism does
Optimism is designed to speed up Ethereum. It does this by processing transactions off-chain while only publishing the data from the transactions on-chain in order to free up a significant quantity of highly valuable blockchain space. This saves around 129x in fees that transactions would regularly be subject to.
Optimism assumes all transactions processed through its off-chain rollup are valid and leaves up to a week for validators to confirm everything contained in the rollup was true. This saves time and work, and with future plans to streamline the validation process, this could prove a valuable asset to Ethereum’s network.
Simplicity
Optimism prides itself on its simplicity, as the goal is to have the least amount of moving parts as possible. Block production is very minimal and effective, as a single party known as the Sequencer manages and oversees the entire process by:
Providing real-time transaction data and updates, including confirming, denying, and transferring data.
Creating the layer 2 block and executing it entirely offline.
Harvesting the information from the transaction and publishing it on the layer 1 blockchain.
The process is simple and effective. The severe compression of data off-chain creates lower gas fees as blockspace availability is increased because only the rollup of data is published to the L1 chain rather than each unique transaction. Miner cost is spread out over a larger pool of transactions, thus reducing personal fees. This in turn allows Ethereum to mass scale as rollups become more compact and accessible, leading to a sustainable network that can meet the demands of its users.
