Autobahn Network Canary Testing - Part 1 Live Now

5 min readFeb 28, 2022

It is with a great deal of excitement that we announce the first phase of the Autobahn Network launch: The private Canary Network testing part 1 exclusively for the existing TXL Community.

This is an important step toward our goal of making the crypto-world more interoperable. In this article, you will find all the details about the testing and how can you deploy a contract.

What is the Autobahn Network?

2021 was the year of Layer 1 (L1) blockchains. With the launch of each new blockchain, it became clear there was a need for other networks, as transactions costs on the existing ones - such as Ethereum - began to increase and slowdowns occurred as block space demand grew. Additionally, multiple use cases have arisen in crypto that put a strain on block space — such as NFTs and GameFi — making future demand unpredictable to foresee for any given chain.

Rollup scaling solutions were invented — such as Optimistic and Zero-Knowledge Rollups — to increase transaction volumes, reduce transaction times and minimize gas fees. However, these scaling solutions focused mainly on scaling Ethereum. The developers of the Autobahn Network saw the need for other EVM chains to have a scaling tool to prevent them from running into the same situation, hence the creation of the network.

The Autobahn Network is purposefully designed to serve BNB Smart Chain (BSC) and its community. BSC has proven to be one of the highest throughput Layer 1s in terms of volume and new projects being built in the blockchain ecosystem. To enhance this growth, and ensure that projects are not hindered by a slower and more expensive base layer, the Autobahn Network is launching before the BNB network becomes more congested and expensive. Even today, the average BSC transaction costs around $0.35 (Source: YCharts). This is not feasible for the many NFT and game projects with high transaction volumes. A transaction with the Autobahn Network Optimistic Rollup is expected to be 95% cheaper, at around $0.0175.

In summary, the Autobahn Network is a canary L2 optimistic rollup for Binance Smart Chain (now BNB Chain). It is based on a fork of the Optimism codebase.

What is a Canary Network?

We really like the following definition for the term “Canary Network”:

A “Canary network” is an operational blockchain with a defined (and hence scarce) token supply that is intended to be used to test features for a related main net. (Flare)

Because we are launching a rollup, we’d like to adjust the definition a little. The Autobahn Network does not have a native token itself but uses BNB to cover transaction fees. However, at launch, the Autobahn Network will have neither fraud proofs enabled nor will it allow the community to run a sequencer and post transaction batches onto L1. We consider this a “canary” because, although the network can already be used, to a certain degree it is still centralized. According to l2beat, the same applies to other rollups which are currently live for Ethereum.

Phase 1 — Closed Canary Testing

Last week, as many of you may have seen on our Twitter and Discord, we collected addresses from our Community from members who wanted to deploy contracts or use some that other members from our Community have deployed, and today we can already whitelist all the addresses. We are very thankful to have everyone’s participation.

So today, the “Closed” Private Canary Network Testing PART 1, exclusive for Tixl Community, starts. To follow are all the important steps for those who are participating in the test group, and soon we will also publish our GitBook

This is how you access the network and set it up

Network Name: Autobahn Network Canary
RPC URL: https://rpc.autobahn.network
Chain ID: 45000
Currency Symbol: BNB
Block Explorer URL: https://explorer.autobahn.network

Adding the Autobahn Network to MetaMask

To add the Autobahn Network to MetaMask, you can navigate to this page and click the “Add network” button. Alternatively, follow this tutorial and use the information listed above.

Deposit BNB

To deposit BNB from L1 to L2 you must interact with the L1StandardBridge contract on BSC. To do so, transactions must go through the proxy contract L1ChugSplashProxy deployed at:

L1ChugSplashProxy (L1 -> L2): 0x05935627cff3d76cec292651176217a98cc9c355

To bridge BNB the depositETH method must be called. Don't be frustrated by the ETH involved in this process. This is due to the code being forked from Ethereum related codebase. The BSC code is also based on go-ethereum and not go-bsc 😉

FYI: The CrossChainBridge.org, developers are already working to build the native gateway for BNB in their frontend. This will be released soon.)

Deploying Smart Contracts

As the Autobahn Network is based on Optimism, it is EVM equivalent, meaning that it is almost identical to Ethereum or, in our case, BSC. Examples of Smart Contract Deployments will be provided in the newly launched GitBook, very soon.

Questions & Feedback

We have set up a closed Discord group for all participating developers. Please ask questions there and provide as much feedback as you can.

Next Phases

2. Onboarding infrastructure/tools to the Canary Network
With more tools/infrastructure, more can be built/deployed in PART 1.

3. “Closed” Private Canary Network Testing PART 2
Exclusive for Tixl Community + Builders

4. “Open” Canary Network Testing — “Autobahn Builders Month”
Whitelisting & big incentive program — with categories, missions, and rewards with a closed network available for a couple of weeks.

5. Mainnet “Public” Launch

6. Grant Program Launch with rewards

Exciting Times Ahead

With the crypto world constantly evolving, we know how important it is to not only keep up with, but also to be ahead of, the pack. While many development solutions have focussed on L2 solutions for other blockchains, the fact is that — even with the BNB Chain being relatively cheaper and faster now — it is inevitable that it will become more expensive & congested over time. For high-transaction volume sectors, it already is.

The Autobahn Network is in the unique position of being the first to address an issue that exists right now. We are pushing as fast and hard as we can to get this solution to market, and we’re excited to see the results.