Developer Spotlight: Supporting the Optimism L2 Ecosystem

How Infura supports the Optimism L2 ecosystem scale with high-availability APIs.

Welcome to our Developer Spotlight! This post is derived from the Infura webinar, which spotlights the Optimism ecosystem and features important figures from the web3 space, including E.G Galano, Co-founder of Infura, Binji, DevRel at Optimism, and Alexander, Team Lead at Velodrome, all moderated by Clemens, Solution Architect at Consensys.

This spotlight emphasizes how Infura is helping web3 projects of all sizes achieve remarkable success and scale by acting as an access point for reliably retrieving information from blockchain networks and propagating information to these networks as a node-as-a-service provider. As we will see, Infura provides Optimism with a robust connection to the Ethereum network, and Velodrome, a Decentralized Exchange (DEX) on Optimism, relies on Infura for access to the Optimism network.

The Optimism L2 Ecosystem

Optimism is an L2 solution designed to tackle Ethereum's existing scalability challenges. It utilises Optimistic Rollup technology to process the majority of its transactions off-chain thereby enhancing the transaction speed, decreasing fees, and improving the user experience for Ethereum users. Optimism’s full compatibility with Ethereum means that developers can effortlessly port existing smart contracts onto Optimism, establishing it as a scalable and efficient solution for Ethereum's future.

Central to the Optimism ecosystem is the OP stack, which is essentially a collection of software components whose primary purpose is to create shared, high-quality, and fully open-source systems for creating new L2 blockchains. By coordinating on shared standards, Optimism can avoid rebuilding the same software in silos repeatedly. Projects like Base by Coinbase and Gitcoin chain are examples of exciting projects that are leveraging the OP stack to build new L2 networks that serve various purposes.

To illustrate Optimism's current infrastructure demands, they recently facilitated the launch of Worldcoin on the Optimism network, leading to a significant surge in daily transactions. The volume of transactions on the network has continued to rise since Worldcoin's debut, reaching an unprecedented peak of 944,668—nearly a million transactions in a single day—according to Etherscan data.

Moreover, Optimism hosts Velodrome Finance, the largest DEX on Ethereum L2. Velodrome combines the best features of Curve, Convex, and Uniswap into a unified, streamlined DEX design, acting as Optimism's primary liquidity hub. It caters to liquidity providers, protocols, and traders, optimizing efficiency for:

• Projects aiming to build deep liquidity for their tokens on Optimism
• Traders seeking to swap and interact with these tokens, and
• Protocols striving to minimize their liquidity maintenance costs.

Infrastructure that makes scaling L2s possible

Infura was able to support Optimism during this period of high activity by managing some of its node operations. Equipped with robust infrastructure and technical expertise, Infura ensured that Optimism could effectively handle this surge in transaction volume, reaching its peak activity since January 2023. This accomplishment underscores Infura's essential role in facilitating the seamless operation and scalability of web3 projects during high-demand periods

In addition to Optimism, Infura also lends its support to some of the largest Layer 2 solutions, DEXs, and Wallets on Ethereum, including platforms like Linea, Arbitrum, Uniswap, and MetaMask. This extensive backing reinforces Infura's vital role in enhancing scalability across the Ethereum ecosystem.

We plan to continue to support these big projects as well as smaller ones, which is why we’re extending our offering to include the Decentralized Infura Network (DIN). DIN will allow us to serve developers better by ensuring that they continue to get access to the networks that they need, without being held by the timeline Infura needs to add a new network.

Build with Infura today

As we continue to look for ways to better serve the web3 developer community, we’re particularly excited about the potential of the Decentralized Infura Network, which we expect to serve as a marketplace of network providers that can service this RPC and API demand for consumers. If you haven't already, register with Infura to access the world's most powerful networks.