Compiled by: Felix, PANews
Recently, Uniswap developer Uniswap Labs announced the launch of its own L2 network Unichain on Ethereum and released a white paper. The network is built on OP Stack technology and is scheduled to be launched on the test network today, and the main network will be launched later this year. Uniswap said that the chain is expected to provide faster and cheaper transactions and enhance interoperability across blockchain networks.
Unichain, developed in collaboration with Uniswap Foundation, Optimism and Flashbots, will introduce a number of technological innovations, including a trusted execution environment (TEE) for block building and a community verification network. TEE is expected to reduce block generation time to 200-250 milliseconds. Perhaps influenced by this news, UNI broke through $8, with a 24-hour increase of more than 12%, the highest level in three months.
Technical Details
Low cost and further decentralization
Decentralization is the foundation of DeFi. Ethereum is highly decentralized, which requires compromises in the speed and affordability of L1 transactions. In order to maintain the decentralized way to scale Ethereum, Ethereum began to provide cheap data to L2s earlier this year as part of a rollup-centric roadmap.
Unichain aims to leverage and accelerate Ethereum’s scaling roadmap by moving execution to L2. In practice, this means that Unichain will reduce transaction costs by approximately 95% in the short term compared to Ethereum L1, and even more in the future.
Unichain will launch a decentralized validation network that allows nodes to validate blocks. This adds an extra layer of finality and reduces the risk of conflicting or invalid blocks. The community validation network will be launched in 2025. It is designed to help achieve decentralization "by allowing full nodes to help validate blocks by staking UNI." To become a validator of the Unichain VM, node operators must stake UNI tokens on the Ethereum mainnet.
Fast, near-instant transactions
In order to bring the next generation of markets to the chain, DeFi needs to be faster. Currently, the Ethereum mainnet has a block time of 12 seconds, and most L2 networks have a block time of 2 seconds. Unichain's initial block time is 1 second, and in the future, "sub-blocks" will be launched, planning to reduce the block time to less than 250 milliseconds. Instant, faster blocks improve market efficiency and reduce the value of MEV loss.
The improvement was made possible by a block builder developed in partnership with Flashbots that uses a trusted execution environment (TEE). In addition to improving speed, TEEs are designed to increase transparency in transaction ordering and prevent transaction failures.
While TEE cannot replace decentralized consensus, it can significantly enhance trust and security compared to other block builders.
Seamless multi-chain transactions
As Ethereum's scaling roadmap is realized, many L2s will emerge. While new L2s help reduce costs, they fragment liquidity and create a poor user experience. Unichain is built to enable seamless access to transactions regardless of which chain the user is on.
As part of the Optimism Hyperchain, Unichain is working with OP Labs to enable native interoperability, which will enable single-block cross-chain messaging between Hyperchain L2s. Hyperchain is an interoperable network of L2 scaling solutions built using the Optimism technology stack. Other Hyperchain networks include Base and SNAXchain, which manages Synthetix's decentralized perpetual exchange. For chains outside of Hyperchain, Unichain will improve interoperability between all chains through initiatives such as ERC-7683.
It will have a greater impact when users have a simple, intuitive interface to access cross-chain liquidity. Shortly after Unichain launches, cross-chain trading will be introduced in the Uniswap interface and Uniswap wallet.
Currently, Uniswap has selected Pyth Network to provide real-time data for Unichain. Pyth Network's more than 500 real-time price information and low-latency data are updated every 400 milliseconds, ensuring that Unichain developers can access DeFi data in real time.
Is it meaningful for Unichain to catch up late?
Although the launch of Unichain has received some market attention and boosted the performance of the UNI token, a large number of L2 solutions have emerged in the crypto industry over the past year, which market experts believe has led to network fragmentation. However, Hayden Adams, CEO of Uniswap Labs, explained the importance of multiple L2 chains for Ethereum's expansion, pointing out that "the Internet of Value cannot run on a single chain."
But it is not all applause. As early as September 2022, Vitalik said that he did not understand the significance of Uniswap as a chain. He believes that the core value of Uniswap is that users can complete transactions quickly, and the Uniswap chain or Rollup does not provide additional advantages in this regard. It makes more sense to replicate the Uniswap model on each Rollup, because cross-chain bridging has inherent friction and time delays that cannot be completely abstracted. In addition, wealthy users can use automated tools to split transactions across multiple Rollups to reduce slippage risks.
Related reading: Uniswap launches L2 chain, is UNI finally going to get out of the “governance token dilemma”?
