Tag: optimistic rollup

  • Orbiter Finance Token Airdrop Guide: Huge gains to be made!

    Orbiter Finance Token Airdrop Guide: Huge gains to be made!

    Orbiter Finance is the hottest bridge for emerging layer-2 blockchains right now. They have confirmed they will issue a token. No airdrop has been officially announced yet, but it IS hinted. This means that no snapshot has been taken yet, and early users can potentially earn huge airdrop rewards. In this article, we will explain what Orbiter Finance is and what you can do to position yourself for their potential airdrop.

    Orbiter Finance Airdrop Step-by-step Guide

    Here’s how you can get a potential Orbiter Finance token airdrop:

    1. Connect your MetaMask or other Ethereum/Polygon/zkSync/Arbitrum wallet.
    2. Select the chain you want to send your assets to.
    3. Complete the transaction.
    4. Get Discord Roles
    5. Claim Orbiter Pilots NFT

    See below for more details.

    What is Orbiter Finance?

    Orbiter Finance is a decentralized bridge that supports cross-rollup transfers between Ethereum and other layer-2 blockchains such as zkSync and Arbitrum. Users can move ETH, USDC, USDT, and DAI between those supported networks.

    It is secured by a series of smart contracts that involves two roles: Sender and Maker. The Maker provides liquidity for the transfer initiated by the Sender. If the Maker does not carry out their role, the Sender can initiate an arbitration request to the contract with the Maker’s margin and receive compensation for any excess losses.

    Does Orbiter Finance have a Token?

    Orbiter Finance does not have a token yet, as they are currently focusing on developing the protocol and improving user experience. However, in a recent Tweet, they strongly hinted at issuing a token as well as a possible airdrop. Moreover, Orbiter Finance has closed its first round of funding with participation from Tiger Global, A&T Capital, StarkWare, and even Vitalik Buterin. As such, DeFi projects backed by major players tend to launch a token after product completion.

    How to Receive Potential Orbiter Finance Token Airdrop?

    The best chance to receive Orbiter Finance token airdrops is to bridge ETH or stablecoin assets between the 11 supported networks. Here’s how to get a potential Orbiter Finance airdrop:

    1. Connect your MetaMask or other Ethereum/Polygon/zkSync/Arbitrum wallet.
    2. Select the chain you want to send your assets to.
    3. Complete the transaction.

    Although it is recommended to bridge assets frequently to increase your airdrop chances, there will be a transaction fee. However, Orbiter will modify its fees based on the Gwei of the destination network to maintain a fee that is below the average, but this will not happen frequently due to the volatile nature of gas fees. The sender can view the current fee on the Orbiter website.

    Get Discord Roles

    Get higher ranking roles on Orbiter Finance’s Discord by completing tasks on their Guild page. The requirements for the Orbiter Finance roles are as follows:

    1. Member: Connect your wallet to the Guild page.
    2. Flying Alien: Have the UFO emoji in your Twitter username and follow Orbiter Finance’s Twitter.
    3. Trainee Pilot: Complete 3-9 transactions on Orbiter Finance.
    4. Pilot: Complete 10-49 transactions on Orbiter Finance.
    5. Elite Pilot: Complete 50-99 transactions on Orbiter Finance.
    6. Expert Pilot: Complete 100-499 transactions on Orbiter Finance.
    7. Ace Pilot: Complete 500 transactions or more on Orbiter Finance.

    You can check the number of transactions by connecting your wallet here. Note that the allowlist is only updated once a week on Mondays, so you will need to check the Guild page frequently. You must have a role of Trainee Pilot or above in order to be included in their allowlist.

    Claim Orbiter Pilots NFT

    Orbiter has created an NFT series for Orbiter Pilots (i.e. Orbiter users). There are 5 NFTs based on your Discord role. To claim your Orbiter Pilot NFT, connect your wallet to their Galxe Page and click “Claim”. Note you will need MATIC to pay for gas fees when claiming your NFTs.

    Airdrop Review

    When reviewing an airdrop, there are several factors to consider. First, the likelihood the project will even do an airdrop in the first place. Then, to look at how many tokens the project intends to allocate towards airdrop campaigns, as well as the difficulty in participating in their airdrop. It is also important to look at the utility of the token so that there will be an actual use and purpose in participating in the airdrop in the first place. Finally, a factor to consider when reviewing an airdrop is whether the airdropped tokens are subject to any lockup period.

    Likelihood of Airdrop: There is no confirmation of a token launch and airdrop by Orbiter Finance, but they hinted in their Tweet that they are considering issuing a token as well as a potential airdrop.

    Airdropped Token Allocation: Since there is no token launch yet, tokenomics data are not available.

    Airdrop Difficulty: If there is a potential airdrop, the steps to be eligible is fairly easy. All you have to do is connect your wallet on their platform and bridge assets to another chain. It is recommended to do this frequently, but be cautious of transaction fee.

    Token Utility: Since there is no token launch yet, token metrics are not available.

    Token Lockup: Since there is no token launch yet, tokenomics data are not available.

  • Understanding Layer 2 & Scaling Solutions: Arbitrum, Boba, Optimism, Polygon, Ethereum 2.0

    Understanding Layer 2 & Scaling Solutions: Arbitrum, Boba, Optimism, Polygon, Ethereum 2.0

    One of the core problems with the Ethereum network today is scalability. As more and more decentralized apps (dApps) are built on the network, the number of users and transactions increases. This has slowed down the speed of transactions and driven up the cost of using the network, creating the need for scaling solutions.

    At its full capacity, the Ethereum network is only able to process 15 transactions per second. To put Ethereum’s scaling limits into perspective, consider that Visa handles around 1,700 transactions per second on average. Therefore, increasing the network capacity in terms of speed and throughput is fundamental to the meaningful and mass adoption of Ethereum.

    There are multiple solutions being researched, tested and implemented that take different approaches to achieve similar goals. Two solutions that we will explore in this article are known as sidechains and optimistic rollups.

    Check out our explainer video on layer 2 solutions such as Arbitrum, Boba, Optimism, and Ethereum 2.0

    Layer 2 solutions explained (Arbitrum, Boba, Optimism, Ethereum 2.0)

    What is Layer 2 and How Does it Work?

    The Ethereum main chain is known as Layer 1. Layer 1 applications and smart contracts interact directly with the native chain. Layer 2 refers to a series of different protocols that facilitate the creation of smart contracts and decentralized applications (dApps) on top of the core Ethereum blockchain.

    Operating on Layer 2 frees up Layer 1 by taking transactions off the main chain, offloading it to Layer 2, enabling them to interact, and then recording the remainder of the whole transactions back to Layer 1. Due to transactions being processed off-chain on Layer 2, Ethereum benefits from higher transaction processing capacity, faster confirmation times, and lower gas fees. 

    In fact, many believe that Layer 2 solutions will be how Ethereum wins over mainstream users. It is estimated that 2,000 – 4,000 transactions per second can be processed in Layer 2, which is already in line with Visa’s processing capabilities. By combining the scaling of Layer 1 with Ethereum 2.0 and Layer 2, Ethereum is set to obtain a powerful economic bandwidth.

    Sidechains: Polygon Network

    Sidechains are a Layer 2 solution utilizing separate blockchains that run in parallel to the Ethereum main chain but operate independently, hence increasing its scalability. 

    Polygon is the most popular sidechain that aims to scale Ethereum by building and connecting Ethereum-compatible blockchain networks. Polygon operates on its own consensus mechanism and also has its own native token known as $MATIC.

    Because sidechains run on a separate blockchain, they do not inherit the security of Layer 1. If a sidechain is hacked or compromised, the damage will be contained within that chain and will not affect the main chain. Conversely, should the main chain become compromised, the sidechain can still operate.

    Sidechains also provide room for a lot of flexibility, allowing developers to experiment with new features or software updates before pushing them onto the main chain.

    Rollups Explained: Optimistic Rollups & Zero Knowledge Rollups

    Rollups are another Layer 2 solution intended to solve Ethereum’s scalability and complement the network. Rollups interact with the main chain, therefore inheriting Layer 1’s security features as well as its secure consensus mechanism. The term ‘rollup’ refers to the way that the chain bundles many transactions to be submitted to the main chain.

    Because rollups use smart contracts that reside within Ethereum, they do not require a native token like Polygon, but instead use $ETH as their currency. Rollups seem to be the most sound scaling solution for Ethereum as it does not compromise the security and sovereignty of Layer 1.

    There are basically two types of rollups: Optimistic Rollups and Zero Knowledge Rollups (ZK Rollups). Both aim to scale Ethereum by processing transactions on Layer 2 before submitting the results back to Ethereum. However, the difference is in how they validate transactions. 

    In simple terms, Optimistic Rollups assume that transactions are valid — hence an optimistic outlook. However, it also allows what are called “watchers” to call out fraudulent transactions since blockchain is transparent and public. If a watcher proves instances of fraud, the transaction is reverted, the bad actor penalized, and the watcher rewarded to incentivize them.

    On the other hand, Zero Knowledge Rollups attempt to prove that transactions are valid. They do so by submitting validity proof to an Ethereum smart contract along with the bundled transactions.

    Optimistic Rollups are currently the more popular option, so let us look at some projects that have adopted this mechanism. These projects are Arbitrum, Boba, and Optimism.

    Optimistic Rollups: Arbitrum, Boba & Optimism

    Arbitrum, Boba and Optimism are 3 projects which have the same goals of scaling Ethereum and reducing gas fees. All of these Layer 2 projects are competing with one another to be the best network. Therefore, each project offers different features to stand out from the others.

    • Arbitrum describes itself as a Layer 2 solution designed to improve the capabilities of Ethereum smart contracts — boosting their speed and scalability while adding additional privacy features to boot. Arbitrum is, according to the team, around 90-95% cheaper than Ethereum. And with their Nitro being launched soon, they expect costs to be cut even further.
    • Optimism is an EVM-compatible Optimistic Rollup chain designed to be fast, simple, and secure. Optimism pledges to uphold the values of Ethereum by producing infrastructure that promotes the growth and sustainability of public goods.
    • Boba Network is a next-generation Layer 2 scaling solution that reduces gas fees, improves transaction throughput, and extends the capabilities of smart contracts, shrinking the Optimistic Rollup exit period from seven days to only a few minutes, while giving liquidity pools (LPs) incentivized yield farming opportunities.

    Arbitrum’s fraud proofs seek to find the particular point of disagreement over transaction history. In contrast, Optimism’s tech looks at fraud a bit more holistically. And this means that Arbitrum has a higher transaction capacity equating to higher performance.

    Optimistic Rollups have a time period in which users can dispute transactions and call fraud. Both Arbitrum and Optimism allow one week for that dispute period, which means that transactions in a bundle under suspicion can be held in limbo for one week before they are verified and released. This is where Boba comes in as a serious player. 

    Instead of having funds locked for several days, Boba’s solution brings the dispute period down to only a few minutes. It also provides incentivized yield farming opportunities, both serving as very attractive features in comparison to its competitors. 

    Will Ethereum 2.0 Make Layer 2 Solutions Irrelevant?

    Ethereum 2.0 is regarded as the long-term solution that can bring speed, efficiency, and scalability to the Ethereum network. The long awaited upgrade will move the network from a Proof-of-Work consensus to a Proof-of-Stake consensus, a much more energy efficient method of maintaining the network that uses validators instead of miners.

    Ethereum 2.0 is currently slowly being released in different phases and will ultimately speed up transactions as well as drastically reduce the cost of gas fees. That brings up the question: Will Ethereum 2.0 make all these Layer 2 solutions irrelevant?

    While there are many different opinions and discussions surrounding this topic, however, we think that all of these solutions can coexist and benefit the network as well as its economy.

    This is because despite the upgrade, Ethereum 2.0 may still not be able to handle the amount of transactions per second required for widespread adoption. The impressive capabilities of Layer 2 solutions could eradicate Ethereum’s scalability issues for good, allowing the network to improve other aspects and prevent congestion on the main chain.

    Final Thoughts: Why Are So Many Solutions Needed?

    There is no debate that Ethereum has a stronghold over developer mindshare. It is the first network that enabled developers to build truly unstoppable decentralized applications with global distribution from day one. But competition is coming fast, and as it stands today, Ethereum will not be able to handle the scale necessary for millions of users. If the network wants to retain the same level of decentralization, it will have to look for new ways to structure use around the main blockchain. 

    As such, there are currently several Layer 2 solutions that aim to resolve Ethereum’s scaling issues. There are also some hybrid solutions which seek to improve the network’s scalability by combining the technologies. But is there really a need for so many solutions?

    We say yes, because multiple solutions can help reduce the overall traffic on any one part of the network, and also prevent single points of failure. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Different solutions can exist and work in harmony, allowing for an exponential effect on future transaction speed and throughput. Furthermore, not all solutions require utilizing the Ethereum consensus algorithm directly, and alternatives can offer benefits that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.

    If Ethereum achieves its full potential of becoming a global trust layer, it is likely that these solutions and more will be required to scale the network in combination with Ethereum 2.0. In the future, the Ethereum ecosystem could see significant change as new projects assess the benefits and drawbacks of running on Layer 2. 

    If all of these solutions can come together in harmony, Ethereum will achieve a blockchain system that can match the speed and scale of programmatic advertising – one that can be used by industries with high data processing needs as well as users worldwide.

    Sources:

    https://ethereum.org/en/developers/docs/scaling/

    https://hackernoon.com/ethereums-layer-2-the-story-so-far-and-what-to-expect-next-kn41342c

    https://dappradar.com/blog/ethereum-rollups-a-simple-explanation

    https://medium.com/general_knowledge/rollup-rollup-top-layer-2-compared-arbitrum-vs-optimism-vs-polygon-4a469389faef
  • Boba Network: Is it an improvement on Ethereum?

    Boba Network: Is it an improvement on Ethereum?

    Introduction of Boba

    Boba Network is an Ethereum Layer 2 Solution that is designed to drastically improve the speed and efficiency of ethereum. Boba uses Optimistic Rollup technology that combines outstanding open-source work with the research and development of swaps based on onramps, rapid exits, and cross-chain bridging. Boba was created because it is essentially a modified version of Ethereum, making it relatively easy to ensure Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and Solidity compatibility in minimizing the efforts required to migrate smart contracts from Layer 1 (L1) to Layer 2 (L2).

    What is BOBA’s vision?

    BOBA’s vision is to gain more accessibility to the market with a larger audience by providing a more cost-effective, fast migrating process and more capacity by delivering more layers to the user. Hence, BOBA takes the benefit of Ethereum by using it as an active transaction and settlement layer to encourage more transactions in BOBA. Plus, by using Ethereum as the settlement layer will make the transactions in BOBA much faster and cheaper. 

    Therefore, together with other developers such as oolong swap, senpai swap, and others, BOBA has provided more exciting opportunities for the users to farm and trade Non-fungible tokens (NFTs).

    How to bridge to Boba on the Network?

    Currently, the developer is working on user experience to a point where they even subsidise some of the costs for bridging to Boba to reduce a couple of clicks in the process.

    This is how to bridge to Boba using $OMG 

    1. Ensure that you holding $OMG in your own private wallet, not an exchange wallet and connect your wallet to Metamask. (https://metamask.io
    2. Go to boba.gateway.network to connect to Boba Network using your Metamask
    connect to Boba Network using Metamask
    1. Scroll down to where it shows OMG and click Bridge
    Bridging to OMG
    1. Select “Fast Bridge to L2”
    Fast bridge to L2
    1. Enter the amount of OMG you like to bridge. Choose “Use all” to bridge them all. Then click the “Bridge”button.
    enter amount of OMG to bridge
    1. Metamask will pop up. Confirm the transaction by clicking “Confirm”. First check you happy with the gas fee, which is paid with Ethereum.
    Confirm transaction using Metamask
    1. Once the transaction is confirm, the Metamask will show confirmation of the first transaction and pop up again for the second transaction confirmation. Click “Confirm”.
    transaction confirmation

    What is the Boba currency of transaction?

    Currently, Ethereum has been used as a currency of transactions on the Boba network because most users have Ethereum. The developer doesn’t want first-time users to experience acquiring Boba token before they do any transactions. The user only has access to the bridge over Ethereum; however, if they have any other access, it would be great for Boba as there will be many different pools that the users can join in and farm. 

    What is the BOBA token used for?

    The BOBA token serves two purposes. One is to join a network where there will be rolling out the boba dial. The Boba developers will invite the whole community or token holders to participate in proposing changes in the network by voting on proposals to improve Boba.

    The second purpose is staking, where the Boba developers will be sharing a portion of the network profits with token holders who stick the tokens on the mobile network. The reason for doing this is to build an engaged community of boba token holders around the network since they need strong communities to attract more people to join Boba and achieve the vision, which is to gain more access to the large market with a large audience.  

    Where do the profits come from? 

    The profits come from the transactions that happen on the networks, which any transactions that the users do will need to burn some layer 2 gas. As a result, the network itself will need to pay Ethereum to store cryptographic proofs on the main chain to prove that the user has done the transactions correctly. 

    However, the user must reach a certain break-even point in order to earn a profit. The user must reach a minimum level of transactions that needs to happen before the network starts generating profits. For example, just like the airline or bus, if they have too few passengers, they will begin to lose money, so they must reach a certain point of passengers to generate profit.

    How many transactions and profits can be made?

    As for now, Boba Network can handle 54 transactions in one block. However, how much profit can be made depends on the variable since the developer will tweak the pricing structure to ensure the network is price competitive. The more volume the network processes, the more ability they can lower the cost per transaction.

    The mechanism behind Boba

    The developers have used optimistic roll-up as a mechanism for BOBA. It is a very modular system that lets the developer easily switch up and update different pieces of the optimistic roll-up system. Hence, the developer of BOBA can keep updating and adding more functionality to the BOBA system. Aside from that, by using optimistic roll-up, the developer can easily change the existing solidity code without affecting the major barrier and re-audit the smart contract since they want to make sure that BOBA is compatible with virtually all smart contracts. 

    What is optimistic rollup?

    BOBA has been called “optimistic rollup” because its system gives the users the benefit of the doubt. The BOBA system has provided the users with a community fraud detector. The community fraud detectors can allow the users to compute whether the operator is honest or fraudulent by checking every single one of the BOBA states routes and transactions that they submit to L1.

    Why not a centralised platform?

    The system is set up in which all the funds that are on L2 are on Ethereum mainstream bridges or in volts that are positioned on a theory main chain. Everything that is going on in the L2 represents tokens and Ethereum that live on the L1. When you bridge funds on the L2, BOBA will represent those funds on the L2, and when you leave, L2 will burn them. However, the actual tokens reside on the L1 permanently, so that it gives people a little bit extra security on what would happen if BOBA went down. Aside from that BOBA is an open-source project in which the code used has been audited once and is now being reaudited for a second time. 

    What is the difference between all the L-2 solutions?

    There are two main categories that Boba considers using, which is the Zero-Knowledge (ZK) roll-up and the Optimistic roll up. However, the developer has decided to use the Optimistic roll-up to run immediately and easily arbitrary solidity smart contracts compared to the ZK roll-up which cannot take arbitrary smart contracts and run on ZK layer 2. Aside from that, the cost for Optimistic roll-up is lesser compared to ZK roll up

    Conclusion

    In conclusion, people should try BOBA since many new dApps are launching and lots of farming opportunities that many robot users have enjoyed. Plus, there will be an NFT series launching, which will be a good opportunity to try BOBA.