Optimistic Ethereum approaches Mainnet launch, Infura launches API for Optimism
Optimistic Ethereum, an Ethereum Layer 2 scaling solution from Optimism, is closing the public launch of its mainnet. The long-awaited scaling solution is receiving support from the Ethereum community while Infura has released an API for Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM), a soft-release version of Optimistic Ethereum.
In an announcement Thursday, June 24, Infura, a ConsenSys product to provide tools and infrastructure for developers, has announced that it is now available with support for the Optimism Layer 2 scaling solution as it released an API to provide developers with developers access to their Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM).
The launch of this API was not a surprise, as on June 17, ConsenSys announced support for Optimistic Ethereum. As part of this support, Consensys said that its API-centric product Infura would offer Optimistic Ethereum support for developers as an API. Additionally, Truffle, another ConsenSys product that provides a development environment and testing framework for Ethereum smart contracts, would implement a Truffle Optimism Box, the standard framework required to begin coding Optimism's Ethereum Layer 2 solution.
Truffle Optimism Box launched on Wednesday, June 23. And now the Infura API is active which will provide all the necessary API methods to build a fully functional application on the Optimism network.
What is Optimistic Ethereum?
Optimistic Ethereum, the Layer 2 scaling solution developed by Optimism, uses an optimistic rollup solution to scale general smart contracts and enable instant transactions, higher total transactions, and much lower gas costs on Ethereum.
Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM) is an Optimistic implementation of Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) and is a full-featured Ethereum compliant runtime environment built for use on Layer 2 systems. It is kind of a soft-release version of Optimistic Ethereum.
Existing Solidity smart contracts can run on Optimistic Ethereum with minimal differences. But other off-chain code such as user interfaces and wallets will need to update their RPC endpoints to interact with Optimistic Ethereum, and will largely only work once the update is done.
The project was initially scheduled to launch in March 2021, but was delayed until July 2021 as, according to Optimism, the ecosystem was not ready for launch.
Now, the long-awaited scaling solution is nearing for public release somewhere in July. Uniswap is Optimism's contributor and Optimistic Ethereum will reportedly launch on Uniswap first.
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