Conversation with the Arbitrum team: Layer 2 competition is heating up. How can Arbitrum continue to lead?

This year, Ethereum L2 has experienced explosive growth. Just like the previous public chain explosion, a large number of project parties have begun to lay out the Layer 2 track. As an expansion player on the Optimistic Rollup track, Arbitrum gradually stood out with the Airdrop event in February this year.

We interviewed the team behind Arbitrum, Offchain Labs Asia Pacific Head Nina, Offchain Labs Asia Pacific Engineer Jason, and Arbitrum Foundation Chinese Community Leader Shin**, and listened to them talk about how Arbitrum copes with the latecomers on the Layer 2 track. Fierce competition, and views on the evolution of the entire Layer2 future pattern.

**1. As the leader of the Layer 2 track, what does the Arbitrum team think about the evolution of Layer 2 in the Ethereum and blockchain ecosystem, and its impact on the entire encryption industry? **

**Offchain Labs: **Layer2 exists to enable the expansion of Ethereum while ensuring security and decentralization. Therefore, Arbitrum already has a complete fraud proof when the first version is launched. After Offchain labs has carried out several technology stack product updates, bringing nitro, stylus and bold.

In addition, for developers, most Layer 2 uses EVM, so it can well handle the expansion needs of projects on Layer 1. Developers can easily use the original tools to deploy products to Layer 2 without making any code modifications. , for users, because Layer2 has far lower gas overhead than Layer1 and extremely fast transaction confirmation, users can experience the user experience of web2 in web3 products. It is conceivable that as Layer 2 continues to improve its technology in the future, more users and developers will enter the Layer 2 ecosystem.

**2. We see that the current competition on the Layer 2 track is very fierce. ZkSync, Starknet, etc. are expected to bring rapid growth in user volume and TVL due to Airdrop. As a latecomer, Base chain relies on resource advantages such as Coinbase to become a dark horse. So how does Arbitrum respond to the increasingly competitive Layer 2 market? **

Offchain Labs: If you want to have a billion users, you must first have a million developers. If the new technology stack Stylus developed by Offchain Labs for Arbitrum passes the DAO vote, developers can deploy programs developed in Rust, C, and C++ on Arbitrum. There are estimated to be 3 million Rust developers and 12 million C++ developers on the Internet. **Through Stylus, Arbitrum can develop a new door for the Ethereum ecosystem in addition to the existing 20,000 Solidty developers. **

Prior to this, evm and wasm of other public chains did not share the same state, so new wasm developers could not interact with the existing EVM ecosystem. The introduction of Stylus (EVM+) broke this limitation. EVM Developers and WASM developers will be able to build together on the same ecosystem without being restricted by the ecosystem.

**3. The Arbitrum team recently launched a very important technology stack, Stylus. Can you understand that Stylus is the killer tool launched to deal with the current fierce competition on the track, and what impact it may have on the entire track? **

**Offchain Labs:**As answered in the previous question, we expect more Web2 developers to enter the Web3 industry. The above three languages far exceed solidity in terms of the number of developers and tools, so . At the same time, for the original Web3 developers, the developers can add the library written by the wasm contract to their own contracts. The wasm contract can also easily interact with the solidity contract, and even rewrite and upgrade the original solidity contract to make the contract more efficient. Efficient and lower-cost operation, which will further reduce user expenses and improve the performance of the blockchain, as well as generate more application innovations.

**4. The current Arbitrum ecology can be said to be the most mature and richest ecology in the entire Layer 2 track. However, some very hot projects such as Base have also emerged recently. The bear market is more among the stocks. game, then, what do you think about the competition between the Layer 2 project ecology? What new actions might Arbitrum take in the future? **

Offchain Labs: I think competition in this field is healthy and beneficial to users. We don't mind competition, and we also believe that Arbitrum has the best technology and Ethereum scaling solutions.

Offchain Labs will progress with Arbitrum to provide users and developers with the best technology and products, giving them the confidence to always choose Arbitrum. Now we have launched the Stylus test network and Orbit test network deployment. In the future, we will continue to pay attention to users' feedback on using the test network and provide users with the best user experience when the main network is launched. In addition, We are also working on the decentralization of the sequencer and we will provide detailed plans in the near future.

**5. The detonation and development of high-quality native projects is not unimportant to the Layer2 ecology. If you review it, what do you think is the reason why Arbitrum can have such a persistently popular native project like GMX? Do you think there are replicable points in this path? **

**Offchain Labs:**Arbitrum has one of the most powerful DeFi ecosystems besides Ethereum. Many innovative and high-quality projects choose to deploy on Arbitrum because Arbitrum has a strong community and other projects they want to work with and cooperate with. In addition, the projects and communities on Arbitrum are very willing to cooperate with each other to build a good ecosystem and products. At the same time, we also pay great attention to developers, and we are constantly improving developer tools. For example, we provide a complete Arbitrum Tutorial for newly joined community projects, and provide Arbitrum SDK for developers who have already developed on Arbitrum , these will reduce the extra workload of developers during Layer 2 development, making it easier for developers to get started. **

**6. Currently, major Layer2 projects have launched Layer3, and Arbitrum is no exception. What do you think of the prospects and development of Layer3? **

**Offchain Labs: **Arbitrum has also launched its own Orbit Chains (L3). Orbit Chains not only has low fees and low latency, but can also be customized in terms of gas, privacy and other aspects. When using Orbit, users can choose to use Rollups or Anytrust mode. They can also choose Arbitrum One or Arbitrum Nova as their DA chain. For gas Tokens, users can also customize gas Tokens other than ethers, and For any future technology stack upgrades of Arbitrum, Orbit can choose whether to upgrade. We believe that in certain areas, the development of Layer 3 may even exceed that of many Layer 2s.

**7. Previously, many voices believed that Zk-rollup is the best solution for Layer 2. What do you think? **

**Offchain Labs: **Although Zk-rollups can achieve short-term finalize with zero-knowledge proof, due to its huge proof calculation overhead and performance bottleneck, this will cause ZK-rollups to at least take the lead in terms of performance and cost. Now both are weaker than Optimistic rollups. We want to bring users technical solutions that meet the current market needs, and Optimistic rollup is the solution that best meets the current market needs. Arbitrum's technology has also been evolving, and we have been researching cutting-edge technologies in the ZK field. When ZK technology matures, maybe we will also integrate this technology into our product line.

**8. Finally, can you share the future development path and vision of Arbitrum? **

Offchain Labs: Offchain Labs will continue to promote the development of technology for Arbitrum. The most recent focus is the launch of the official version of Stylus, the launch of the license-free validator version (BOLD developed by Offchain labs), and the decentralized Sequencer , to provide users with a high-performance and high-security layer2. Of course, these can only be adopted on Arbitrum after DAO voting.

**In addition, the Arbitrum Foundation launched two programs some time ago: the grant program and the student ambassador program. **The grant program will provide grants to different categories of projects/organizations in the Arbitrum ecosystem in phases. The current phase is for the dapps and infrastructure being developed on the Arbitrum chain. The Student Ambassador Program is designed to empower students to represent Arbitrum within their university and local communities while also creating their own personal visibility and influence.

In the near future, the foundation will also launch a new phase of the ambassador program, open to non-student communities and technical personnel to participate.

Whether now or in the future, we are very much looking forward to seeing more friends from the Greater China region actively participating in these plans!