Uniswap Launches Testnet For Unichain Layer 2

Uniswap Labs, the team behind the top decentralized exchange, announced it is building a Layer 2 network.

On Oct. 11, Uniswap Labs launched a testnet for Unichain, an upcoming Layer 2 intended to support high-speed DeFi applications.

The team estimated the network will support one-second block times and fee savings of 95% compared to transacting on the Ethereum mainnet. Uniswap also estimated the network will support sub-block times of between 200 and 250 milliseconds, with the high-speed throughput limiting losses to Maximal Extractable Value (MEV).

“Unichain is designed to accelerate Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, prioritizing the needs of DeFi users and protocol,” Uniswap Labs tweeted. “Unichain is designed to provide seamless multi-chain swapping.”

Unichain is built on top of Optimism’s OP Stack infrastructure, meaning the network will boast interoperability with other networks in the Optimism Superchain ecosystem, which includes Base, OP Mainnet, and Mode.

“We will be building out cross-chain user experiences that are even better than the experience of swapping within a single chain today,” said Hayden Adams, the CEO of Uniswap Labs.

The team said Unichain’s technical architecture was developed in partnership with Optimism and Flashbots, a research and development team focused on MEV. “Everything we develop for Unichain is open source and available for other chains to adopt,” Uniswap Labs added.

The team estimated that Unichain will launch on mainnet before 2025. Unichain’s code will be open-source through an MIT license, allowing other teams to build on top of it.

The price of Uniswap’s UNI token is up 11.8% over the past 24 hours, according to The Defiant’s crypto price feeds. The Uniswap decentralized exchange has processed $2.4 trillion worth of trades since launching its first iteration six years ago.

Layer 2s proliferate

The news comes as Ethereum’s scaling ecosystem is rapidly expanding, with L2beat currently tracking data for more than 100 Layer 2 and Layer 3 networks.

The proliferation of Layer 2s has given rise to concerns regarding liquidity fragmentation within the Ethereum ecosystem, with cross-chain bridging solutions theoretically requiring a quadratic increase in liquidity as the number of chains expands.

However, the bulk of Layer 2 adoption is concentrated among a handful of networks, with Base accounting for 70% of active L2 users and 50% of daily L2 transactions, according to GrowThePie.

Data from L2beat also shows Arbitrum commanding 37% of the $35.2 billion in combined Layer 2 total value locked (TVL), followed by Base with 20.6%, and OP Mainnet with 16.7% — meaning three networks account for three-quarters of the value residing on Layer 2 networks.