Lending a helping hand: Introducing X-Rollups’ Ethereum Layer-2 solution

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Wanchain

4 min readApr 19, 2021

Decentralised Layer-2 rollups!

As the Wanchain team continues its dogged march towards truly decentralised blockchain interoperability, it is important to take a moment and remember why connecting the world’s many siloed blockchain networks is an essential undertaking. While the Wanchain team believes that interoperability is required to drive adoption, the reason the team is building fully decentralised bridges is to empower developers to design truly decentralised cross-chain applications to power the future of DeFi. This, ultimately, is in service of end users.

This approach has never been more evident than with Wanchain’s recent “Jupiter” hard fork. The “Jupiter” hard fork made Wanchain fully compatible with Ethereum. Not only did this make Wanchain fully compatible with Ethereum-based DAPPs like MetaMask, it paved the way for Wanchain’s highly anticipated Ethereum Layer-2 solution.

With that, the Wanchain team is incredibly proud to publicly share — for the first time ever — their Ethereum Layer-2 solution!

Introducing X-Rollups

Wanchain is no stranger to the world of Layer-2 solutions. Indeed, conceptually, Wanchain’s approach to blockchain interoperability shares many similarities with Layer-2. For instance, by building decentralised XRP Ledger — Ethereum and XRP Ledger — Wanchain bridges, Wanchain’s recent XRP Ledger integration solved one of XRP’s enduring shortcomings — an inability to engage with DeFi applications. This, in effect, is a XRP Ledger Layer-2 solution. Similarly, Wanchain’s Ethereum Layer-2 solution — dubbed X-Rollups — solves two of Ethereum’s greatest shortcomings: debilitating network congestion and excessively high transaction costs.

Ethereum primary pain points

No network has been more impacted by the explosion of DeFi as Ethereum. While Ethereum’s importance and influence on the blockchain industry cannot be overstated — Wanchain itself was born of Ethereum, after all — the world’s most widely used smart contract platform has been stretched to its limits. Ethereum, as it exists today, simply cannot process the volume of transactions required at a reasonable cost to end users. Luckily, help is right around the corner!

Primary pain point 1: debilitating network congestion

There are a couple reasons why Ethereum often suffers from network congestion. First, Ethereum’s block generation time clocks is a very modest 13 seconds per block, on average. Second, the size of each block is capped. This means that relatively few transactions can be included in each block. Both these issues conspire to limit the number of transactions that can be processed per second. The result? Often debilitating network congestion.

Primary pain point 2: excessively high transaction costs.

When using Ethereum, users must pay fees to compensate for the computing resources required to execute and validate transactions. When there are few transactions to process, these fees are relatively low. However, related to pain point 1, when there is an abundance of transactions waiting to be processed, the fees a user needs to pay skyrockets. With the huge demand driven by the rise of DeFi applications, fees on Ethereum have ballooned to such a point that they are now a real detriment to the network and serve as an impediment limiting its usage.

The X-Rollups architecture

Wanchain’s X-Rollups takes direct aim at Ethereum’s primary pain points while maintaining the decentralised concept that defines Wanchain’s approach to blockchain interoperability. The X-Rollups architecture is relatively straightforward:

Layer-1 = Ethereum
Layer-2 = Wanchain

Between these two layers is the Layer Connector. The Layer Connector ensures the security and scalability of X-Rollups. It is a kind of Super Bridge connecting Ethereum’s Layer-1 and Wanchain’s Layer-2.

The Layer Connector comprises two groups: the Storeman Group and the Voucher Group. The Storeman Group manages the transfer of assets from Layer 1 to Layer 2 while the Voucher Group is responsible for maintaining the validity of Layer 2’s blockchain data, compressing this data into block headers, and injecting these block headers into Layer 1 at regular intervals. In other words, the Voucher Group pegs or anchors Wanchain’s Layer 2 to Ethereum’s Layer 1.

It should be emphasised that both the Storeman Group and the Voucher Group are decentralised. Group members are elected from the community and must each deposit and lock collateral to protect and ensure the integrity of the system.

X-Rollups solves Ethereum’s network congestion and high transaction costs pain points using the same principles underlying Wanchain’s decentralised blockchain interoperability efforts.

Additionally, because the “Jupiter” hard fork made Wanchain fully compatible with Ethereum and the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), developers can easily port their existing DAPPs on Ethereum’s Layer-1 to Wanchain’s Layer-2. In other words, X-Rollups is perfectly suited for existing Ethereum-based DAPPs and is extremely simple for developers to implement. This detail is incredibly important to the Wanchain team as this ease is necessary for developers to design truly decentralised cross-chain applications to power the future of DeFi.

For more details, please read the X-Rollups lightpaper!

About Wanchain

True DeFi is interoperable — Wanchain, the Wide Area Network chain, is the world’s premier decentralised blockchain interoperability solution. Our mission is to drive blockchain adoption through interoperability by building fully decentralised bridges that connect the world’s many siloed blockchain networks. This crosschain infrastructure empowers developers to build truly decentralised crosschain applications to power the future of DeFi.