Guide to Optimism — Layer 2 Ethereum
Making transactions on the Ethereum mainnet is expensive, as gas fees alone can easily outweigh the transaction itself.
Many of us might have seen gas fee spiking during periods of high activity, pricing out many users.
Thankfully, good news are around the corner with layer-2 scaling solutions like Optimism and Arbitrum both live on the mainnet.
In this article, we will cover Optimism in greater detail.
Optimism — a layer 2 scaling protocol for Ethereum
Optimism is a layer 2 scaling protocol for Ethereum.
Unlike layer-1 scaling solutions where changes to Ethereum’s architecture are made to make Ethereum more scalable, layer-2 scaling solutions move transactions and computations away from the main chain onto a second layer, reducing gas fees and increasing transaction throughput.
Optimism allows Ethereum developers to reuse all the existing tooling on Ethereum with little to no changes in code. This means the developer stack, such as programming languages (Solidity, Vyper) and how the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) works is well…
