Arbitrum Orbit mainnet launched, is the Layer 2 RaaS battle reignited?

Author: Kaori, BlockBeats

Editor: Jack, BlockBeats

Yesterday, the Arbitrum Foundation posted a tweet titled "Tomorrow," hinting at a major announcement today. And today, the Arbitrum "Orbit" mainnet is ready.

Arbitrum Orbit is a plan launched earlier this year that allows blockchain developers to utilize Arbitrum's technology to launch their own Layer 2 or Layer 3 networks. Steven Goldfeder, CEO of Arbitrum's parent company Offchain Labs, stated that these new Layer 3 networks previously only operated on the Arbitrum test network.

According to Offchain Labs, Orbit enables developers to "create their own dedicated chains on Arbitrum One, Arbitrum Nova, Arbitrum Goerli, and Arbitrum Sepolia to accommodate one of Arbitrum's Layer 2 or L2 chains."

Orbit+Stylus+BoLD, Arbitrum's "L3 Blueprint"

The Orbit plan was one of the first announcements made by the Arbitrum Foundation when it was established in March, aimed at creating and deploying a development framework for L3 on top of the Arbitrum mainnet, where transactions on these L3s will be settled through Arbitrum's L2 (such as Arbitrum One or Nova).

To better enable developers to utilize the Orbit chain, Arbitrum has launched a series of technical solutions.

On June 22, Offchain Labs released the Arbitrum Orbit development tools, designed to help developers more easily develop on the L3 blockchain Arbitrum Orbit and manage their own Arbitrum Rollup and AnyTrust chains. Additionally, Offchain Labs provided a quick start guide and on-chain tools for Orbit DevNet.

By August, Arbitrum had intensified its updates, launching a new verification protocol called Bounded Liquidity Delay (BoLD) at the beginning of the month, which allows for permissionless verification on Arbitrum, aiming to minimize the delay in settlement states. Arbitrum has relied on Ethereum to confirm the accuracy of its states. Ed Felten, co-founder and chief scientist of Offchain Labs, stated that the introduction of BoLD will eliminate the risk of delay attacks in this process, allowing anyone to become a validator without worrying about fraud.

On August 31, Arbitrum launched the Arbitrum Stylus code and public testnet, allowing developers to build applications on the Arbitrum Nitro chain using traditional EVM tools and WASM-compatible languages (such as Rust, C, and C++). Furthermore, by improving computational, storage, and memory efficiency, Stylus significantly reduces gas costs and supports new blockchain use cases, such as alternative signature schemes, larger generative art libraries, C++-based games, and previously computation-intensive AI models.

Since the launch of Arbitrum Orbit, several projects have joined the Orbit Chain ecosystem.

On April 27, the Ethereum scaling solution AltLayer's RaaS (Rollups-as-a-Service) solution supported the L3 blockchain Arbitrum Orbit, allowing users to launch any L3 application bound to Arbitrum in minutes using no-code tools.

On September 5, the rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) company Caldera announced the launch of its first Arbitrum Orbit chains, with a total of three partners planning to launch production-grade mainnet Orbit chains through Caldera in the coming weeks: Syndr, Sanko GameCorp, and Volatilis Technology.

On October 26, Celestia became the first modular data availability (DA) network integrated into Arbitrum Orbit and the entire Nitro stack.

It is foreseeable that Orbit will transform Arbitrum into a settlement layer similar to Ethereum, adding more value to its core chain and enhancing the long-term scalability of the entire Arbitrum ecosystem.

Is the RaaS Track a Red Ocean?

In addition to Arbitrum, other mainstream L2s such as Optimism, zkSync, Starknet, and Polygon have also launched stack solutions, attempting to open source core components and promote RaaS solutions in a bid to seize strategic high ground in Layer 2 and even Layer 3.

Image source: Binance Research

The rollup solution OP Stack (formerly known as Optimism) has taken the lead, already ahead of many L2s.

OP Stack builds Optimism's L2 rollup to create a shared, interoperable, and collaborative L2 blockchain network. Builders can modify existing modules or create new ones to suit their needs. Ultimately, Optimism expects highly compatible L2s, referred to as OP chains, to form part of a superchain.

In June of this year, Optimism announced the launch of the mainnet Bedrock upgrade, which is the first official release of OP Stack, representing a complete modular rewrite of the core components of the Optimism rollup architecture. Today, Optimism's flagship rollup is built on the modular OP Stack, and Bedrock not only represents an upgrade to the Optimism rollup but also provides tools for launching an Optimism L2 rollup blockchain.

In addition to the OP ecosystem, the two major L2 giants in the zk track have also made breakthroughs in this area.

On June 26, the zkSync development team Matter Labs announced the launch of a modular open-source framework called ZK Stack for building custom zkRollups. ZK Stack will give developers complete autonomy, from choosing data availability models to using their own tokens for decentralized ordering.

ZK Stack offers two key features: sovereignty and seamless connectivity. Creators have full rights to the code and enjoy unrestricted autonomy to customize and shape various aspects of the zkRollup chain. These zkRollup chains operate independently, relying only on Ethereum L1 for their activity and security, while cross-chain bridges facilitate interconnection between each chain, achieving trustless, fast, and low-cost (per transaction) interoperability.

Additionally, zkSync hyperchains, like Arbitrum, are also eyeing L3. Hyperchains implement a modular approach, providing developers with a superchain software development kit (SDK) framework that allows them to choose various components to build their blockchain or develop their own components.

Looking at Starknet, on July 19, StarkWare co-founder Eli Ben-Sasson stated at the EthCC (Ethereum Community Conference) in Paris that Starknet is about to launch Starknet application chains (Appchains). Starknet Appchains feature customizability and decentralization. By creating Starknet application chains, applications can provide users with better throughput and enhanced user experience.

The Polygon team, recognized as the most capable in business development (BD) in the crypto space, has also brought in Canto, previously based on Cosmos, and Manta, which has transitioned through Polkadot and OP.

From the above analysis, it is evident that although these L2 visions differ, their core is customization and application-specific chains. Overall, the technological development in the crypto industry has evolved from "one-click token issuance" to "one-click chain issuance."

"There are already a large number of ready-to-use RaaS services in the market. I have also used another RaaS product, Conduit, which previously helped Zora launch a testnet and mainnet based on OP Stack. After testing, it can be said without exaggeration that setting up an OP L2 test chain only requires a click of the mouse."

The multi-chain and multi-rollup landscape in the crypto world has become an inevitable trend, and the giants' layout in the RaaS track brings more possibilities for future on-chain ecosystems. Under the guidance of these giants, RaaS is gradually and clearly becoming a new sub-track with huge demand. Regardless of the technology used or the management methods employed, the value of L3, superchains, and hyperscalability is evident, and they all seem to point towards the ultimate ideal of infinite scalability.