Ethereum scaling solution development company Optimism announced on Jan. 16 that it had launched the Optimistic Ethereum solution on the mainnet, taking the first step in a soft launch that the team said would see multiple development iterations.

• The team explains that a soft launch, which will take place in four phases, will result in better implementation of security, while still allowing Ethereum to take advantage and reduce network congestion
• Optimistic Ethereum is a layer-2 scaling solution that that brings down reduces transaction costs by 10-100x; it also also allows the cross-layer porting of smart contracts without requiring any changes to the code
• Several DeFi insiders, including Uniswap founder Hayden Adams and Compound Founder Robert Leshner, said that the release would be a boost for the entire Ethereum ecosystem
• The company has been made easy integration a high priority, with Synthetix to be the first to integrate the solution; a demo on Synthetix resulted in gas costs being reduced by a factor of 143x and a confirmation time of 0.3 seconds
• A public testnet will be deployed in March, with the public mainnet launch following once security audits and learnings from the testnet have been implemented