Scaling DeFi: Decentralized exchange Uniswap is testing Optimistic Rollout

Earlier this month, Uniswap launched a new, high-throughput version of its decentralized exchange on the Ropsten testnet. The testnet demo, called Unipig, is running on Optimistic Rollup, a layer 2 scaling solution that supports Solidity smart contracts. Uniswap claims its demo is capable of processing ~250 gas-free transactions per second (tps), a steep improvement over the 12-15 tps supported by the Ethereum ($ETH) mainnet.

Why it matters:

• Ethereum’s current inability to scale and non-trivial transaction fees are not conducive for most use cases. A scalable, Solidity-compatible environment like Optimistic Rollup creates the opportunity for projects to build a wide range of new applications while still leveraging Ethereum’s robust developer toolset.
• Ethereum 2.0 is still in development and may not be production-ready by its proposed launch date. If network utility grows in the near term, projects will need to explore alternative scaling solutions, and the preferred choice would be compatible with existing smart contracts to minimize switching costs.
• The caveat to this is second layer applications may find it more difficult to communicate between chains due to a lack of standards for executing cross-network transactions.