It is well known that the emergence of L2 solutions allows smaller independent blockchains to leverage the deep liquidity on the Ethereum chain. Additionally, for DeFi, L2 also provides a way to optimize user experience—this is the direction that the highest volume DEX, Uniswap, is currently betting on.

Uniswap Launches Native L2

On October 10, Uniswap announced plans to build L2 on Ethereum, utilizing Optimism's OP Stack, named Unichain. This aims to address the limitations currently faced by DeFi, namely cost, speed, and interoperability, unlocking new markets and use cases with faster, cheaper transactions and better cross-chain liquidity.

Uniswap Labs CEO Hayden Adams believes, "After years of building and scaling DeFi products, we have seen where blockchains need to improve and what is required to continue advancing the Ethereum roadmap. Unichain will provide the speed and cost savings that L2 has achieved, better cross-chain liquidity access, and be more decentralized."

Features and Advantages of Unichain

Among many L2 solutions, Unichain attempts to enhance competitiveness in three key areas: cost, speed, and interoperability.

According to official estimates, transaction costs on Unichain will be 95% cheaper than Ethereum after its launch, and costs will decrease over time. While low transaction costs are not new for Ethereum L2, Uniswap claims it will achieve this low cost while maintaining decentralization, which most other L2s have not yet accomplished.

Uniswap states it will achieve this goal through an upcoming decentralized validation network, allowing full nodes to help validate blocks by staking UNI, further contributing to the decentralization of the blockchain. UNI stakers will act as a second layer of security on the Unichain platform, enhancing the network's security and making it less susceptible to attacks and manipulation. The addition of new validators also increases the network's resilience, ensuring it can support greater transaction demands without compromising security.

At the same time, Unichain will provide users with near-instant transactions, with block times of 1 second, ultimately reducing to 0.2-0.25 seconds. In contrast, Ethereum's block time is 12 seconds, while most L2s have a block time of 2 seconds. This speed not only improves user experience but also plays a crucial role in enhancing market efficiency.

The shorter block time on Unichain will reduce the value loss caused by MEV (Miner Extractable Value, a form of attack that allows block builders to front-run normal users), as the rapid transaction times on Unichain decrease opportunities for arbitrage and MEV, allowing users to gain better value from transactions.

Additionally, Unichain significantly shortens transaction times by utilizing a block builder developed in collaboration with the Ethereum development team, Flashbots. The core of the block builder is a Trusted Execution Environment (TEE), which enhances the transparency and speed of transaction ordering and prevents transaction failures.

Unichain promises to provide a seamless cross-chain exchange experience for transactions on the Superchain (a multi-chain network of Optimistic rollups) by leveraging Optimism's native interoperability. This is crucial for the future of DeFi, as users and protocols increasingly demand smooth and convenient access to various blockchains. Currently, L2s of Optimistic rollups include the Optimism mainnet, Base network, Blast, Celo, etc., all of which are potential candidates for seamless interoperability in the future.

For chains outside of the Superchain, Unichain is working to improve communication between different blockchains. Through plans like ERC-7683, a cross-chain transaction execution standard developed by Uniswap and the Across protocol, aimed at enhancing cross-chain transactions, the goal is to make transactions between any chains effortless.

Unichain adopts a modular design, meaning new features can be added to make it more decentralized and user-friendly. Moreover, it is open-source, allowing other chains to join and utilize its technology. Uniswap Labs will also continue to contribute to Ethereum's scaling, ensuring that DeFi provides a better experience for everyone.

What Does Vitalik Think of Unichain?

Currently, Vitalik has not commented on Unichain, but many community members are curious about Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin's stance on the launch of Unichain. As a result, some searched for clues on X and finally unearthed an old post from Vitalik in September 2022, where he commented on some of Uniswap's ideas at that time.

Vitalik believes that Uniswap's value proposition is the convenience of trading, and therefore deploying rollups on DEXs is meaningless. He also stated that if Uniswap deployed on each rollup, it could achieve better development.

Of course, this only represents some of Vitalik's past thoughts, and based on his comments on L2 last month, he believes that low transaction fees on L2 are an important milestone for the entire Ethereum ecosystem, as they address the main challenges of mainstream adoption.

In fact, Uniswap has been continuously expanding since its launch and has deployments across multiple protocols, including Ethereum, Base, and Binance Smart Chain, but ultimately chose to launch its native L2—Unichain. Notably, the launch of Ethereum L2 solutions has become a common phenomenon in the crypto space. Most of these projects focus on addressing Ethereum's scalability challenges.

According to L2Beat data, there are currently 105 L2 protocols attempting to solve Ethereum's scalability issues. Among these L2 protocols, Arbitrum, Base, and Optimism's OP Mainnet rank the top three in TVL, with $13 billion, $7.2 billion, and $5.8 billion, respectively.

At the same time, Vitalik is also seeking more ways to improve Ethereum's functionality. He recently shared his new vision for the ecosystem, centered around enhancing Ethereum's alignment. [Note: Generally, the concept of alignment includes value alignment (e.g., open-source, minimizing centralization, supporting public goods), technical alignment (e.g., collaborating with standards across the ecosystem), and economic alignment (e.g., using ETH as a token wherever possible).]

In the Ethereum ecosystem, balance is one of the most important governance challenges, integrating decentralization and cooperation. The strength of this ecosystem lies in the wide array of individuals and organizations (client teams, researchers, layer two network teams, application developers, local community groups) all working towards their respective visions of what Ethereum could become. The main challenge is ensuring that all projects collaboratively build an Ethereum ecosystem rather than 138 incompatible territories.

How Unichain Affects Ethereum?

Since Uniswap generates the highest revenue for Ethereum and is one of the largest user bases on the Ethereum L1 chain, some crypto community commentators believe that the launch of Uniswap's native L2 chain may impact the Ethereum mainnet. Once Uniswap transitions to its own chain, it will be able to capture transaction fees and MEV fees. Although the exact share of business moving from Ethereum to the new blockchain remains to be seen, both revenue sources are certainly substantial.

However, this may lead to a decline in relevant network activity on Ethereum L1, which in turn could affect the rate of ETH burn. An increasing number of protocols migrating from Ethereum's L1 may continue to weaken the narrative of ETH as a "super sound currency" (an asset that defaults to deflationary after EIP-1559 activation).

Catalysts for Ethereum Growth: Innovation, Users, Big Tech, dApps

Although the launch of Unichain has raised doubts about the Ethereum narrative, community supporters argue that Ethereum still has strong catalysts, and Ethereum as a technology and ecosystem will only grow larger over time.

First, the rise of restaking infrastructures like Eigenlayer brings a wealth of innovation to Ethereum technology: data availability layers, on-chain oracles, trustless bridges, and more. Next-generation L2 solutions will push Ethereum's throughput beyond 100,000 TPS and achieve seamless interoperability with ecosystems outside of EVM.

Second, the participation of top asset management firms (Blackrock) and Web2 tech giants (Sony, Samsung) in using Ethereum solutions will only increase over time.

Finally, L2 is continuously bringing retail customers to Ethereum, especially in scenarios with lower on-chain transaction fees. The same goes for mainstream dApps, such as Polymarket or Farcaster, which have finally found product-market fit and meet the real-world needs of internet users.

Conclusion

Although the launch of Unichain may impact transaction fees on Ethereum L1 and challenge some of Ethereum's foundational roles to some extent, Uniswap's move to redirect fees and network activity could trigger a broader migration trend, reshaping the competitive landscape of the cryptocurrency market, encouraging innovation and competitiveness among Ethereum and other blockchains.

At the same time, as the largest decentralized exchange by trading volume, Unichain will expand DeFi and the Ethereum ecosystem by optimizing transaction speed, reducing costs, and improving user experience, increasing user participation in DeFi, and promoting mass adoption, benefiting multiple blockchains, including Ethereum.

Essentially, L2s like Unichain and Ethereum are not in direct competition but are working together to create scenarios more suitable for mass adoption, tapping into the true growth points of Ethereum, namely technological innovation, user growth, widespread participation from tech giants, and the explosion of dApp applications.

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。