Uniswap Labs, the primary developer behind one of the largest decentralized exchanges (DEX), Uniswap, shared Tuesday that the long-awaited Layer-2 network, Unichain, is now live.
Powered by the in the pipeline of optimism, Unichain-such as other low-2s on Ethereum-Sneller and cheaper transactions compared to the Mainnet of Ethereum. Developers can implement apps on the network, which is specifically optimized for decentralized finance (Defi) and wants to serve as “the house for liquidity about chains,” says Uniswap Labs.
For Uniswap Labs, the advantage of launching a low-2 two-fold: it offers a better experience for users of Uniswap and similar platforms, and it will create a new chance of income in the form of network costs. A representative for Uniswap Labs told Coindesk that “about 20%” of the turnover of the chain will go directly to the company.
Unichain has been testing since October 2024 and is classified by Uniswap Labs as an “Stage -1” role, which means that it has elements of decentralization, but retains some centrally controlled guarantees in this early phase.
The network is built on the Op-Stack, a modular framework with which developers can build interoperable Layer-2 chains based on the optimistic Rollup technology of optimism. Various well-known teams have been released with their own-based layer-2s, including Coinbase’s ‘Base’, Kraken’s ‘Ink,’ World’s ‘World Chain’ and Sony’s ‘Soneium’.
What makes Unichain different?
Dozens of low-2 chains have surfaced in recent years and co-founder of Uniswap, Hayden Adams, is of the opinion that most of them will eventually be used for specific use cases instead of serving as general blockchains. “We anticipate a world of many, many different use cases, whose trade is a small subset,” Adams Coindesk said in an interview.
In collaboration with Ethereum Research and Development Firm Flashbots, the Uniswap team said it created a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE) on Unichain. The TEE is a safe area for more sensitive transactions and is intended to optimize the Defi chain by making more advanced transactions and faster transactive sinality possible.
“In essence, we want Unichain a chain that is good for making liquidity, good for trade, good for applications that have to be related to it, and then good for applications that are essentially want to access liquidity,” said Adams.
Build on optimism
As part of its integration with the ecosystem of optimism, Uniswap Labs has been agreed to give 2.5% of Unichain’s gross income -or 15% of Unichain’s net income, dependent optimism’s Rollup Tech. Many of the chains in the optimism -Superchain -Ecosystem have been agreed with comparable setups, including Coinbase and Kraken.
In exchange for continuing on optimism, both Coinbase and Kraken received subsidies from Optimisms on governance tokens of the Optimism Foundation, which controls a treasure chest of tokens that is reserved to grow the ecosystem. Coinbase agreed to receive up to 118 million to -Tokens, while Kraken agreed to 25 million. Uniswap Labs refused to comment on whether it had his own deal with the Optimism Foundation.
In anticipation of the launch of Unichain, Uniswap Labs announced that 65% of the netto income from the chain to the Unichain validation network -a group of validators and strikers that secure the blockchain.
UVN will act as “another layer of transparency and validation of the network,” said Adams.
“A part of the uniqueness about us as a project that is always decentralized first is that we actually reduce the role and power of Sequencer compared to other things that perform more centralized sequencers,” Adams added.
Read more: Uniswap developer reveals his own Layer-2 network, Unichain, built on Optimism Tech
