What is Arbitrum? Discover the Ethereum scaling solution

You saw our Arbitrum announcement, now what? Let’s take a closer look at Arbitrum. What exactly is it? What can you use it for? This article might answer some of your questions about the network.

What is Arbitrum?

Arbitrum is a layer-2 solution built on Ethereum by Offchain Labs. It’s designed to boost speed and scalability while keeping the costs down. It’s well-known that while Ethereum is used by many people, the popularity also results in a congested network and high transaction fees, which can be quite inconvenient for users. Arbitrum, and other scaling solutions, aims to alleviate these concerns.

How does it work?

Arbitrum handles Ethereum transactions using a technique called optimistic rollup. This technique “rolls up” batches of transactions into a single transaction and processes them on another layer before recording the results on the mainnet. The results that get sent back are the “calldata”, which only has the hashes of the confirmed rollup blocks that can be processed much easier on Ethereum. This way, it increases the number of transactions that can be processed at any second and decreases the network congestion. Optimistic rollups significantly reduce the transaction costs while improving the transaction speed and efficiency. As Arbitrum is built on Ethereum, it is able to leverage the security and trustlessness of the network.

What makes Arbitrum different?

There are other Ethereum solutions out there to address the scalability issue. But because Arbitrum is EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) compatible, it’s simple for developers to migrate their Ethereum projects onto Arbitrum instead of significantly modifying the code. dApps and smart contracts can process more transactions at a lower cost, giving users a better experience. For other users, it makes for a seamless transition moving from Ethereum to Arbitrum as well with a user-friendly interface to use existing apps more efficiently.

What can you use Arbitrum for?

When this article was written, there were more than 2.9 million users on Arbitrum and $445 million gas fees saved, showing the popularity of the network. The ecosystem has various dApps and projects like NFT marketplaces, wallets, CEX, and many more. Some projects that have moved onto Arbitrum include Curve, UniSwap, and most recently, PayTrie! Looking at the Arbitrum Portal page, you’ll see their wide range of applications have something for everyone.

Why use PayTrie to get onto Arbitrum?

In most cases, users are bridging their existing Ethereum tokens with the Arbitrum bridge and paying ETH to cover the transaction cost. But for those new to Arbitrum or new to crypto in general, this might be an extra step for them. PayTrie makes it easy for all users to get onto Arbitrum. You can purchase USDC-ARB directly using the website, and your gas fees are covered for this transaction as well. Instead of purchasing USDC, then bridging it to Arbitrum, PayTrie shortens this process.

If you’ve been looking into Arbitrum and are interested, but are not quite sure about the bridging process, give PayTrie a try! It’ll get you directly to Arbitrum in a hassle-free and simple process.

Go to www.paytrie.com to sign up and start taking advantage of Arbitrum today!