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L2 scaling finally arrives on Uniswap v3

Uniswap (UNI/USD) the world’s biggest and most popular decentralized exchange, has finally rolled out the long-awaited Layer 2 scaling solution upgrade. The project introduced it to its ecosystem with the launch of v3 of its platform, as announced in a blog post published on July 13th.

According to Uniswap’s announcement, the solution is currently in alpha on the Optimistic Ethereum (OE) mainnet. However, while the solution is finally here, the fact is that it is still rather limited, being still in alpha. As such, it allows developers to deploy different parts of the system gradually. This will mean that they can focus on smaller portions of the system, and search them for bugs and potential issues quicker.

Then, as each portion of the full system gets launched, the product will be more and more complete, while all of its components will be carefully checked and safe to use. Even so, the project’s developers insisted that the solution should be treated as a very early alpha product, and that there is still rigorous battle testing ahead of them.

A few things that users should keep in mind

Uniswap further pointed out that there might be potential downtime, and that withdrawals from OE to L1 will take seven days. In addition to that, the new system will only support limited assets after launch, so users shouldn’t expect too much too soon. The available assets will include ETH, WBTC, USDT, SNX, and DAI. However, new assets will continue to join as days and weeks go by, and there will soon be a sizable amount of assets to choose from.

Uniswap further pointed out that the platform’s initial throughput in alpha will be 0.6 TPS, which should be relatively the same as what users were used to seeing on L1. These will continue to grow in weeks to come, as well. However, one major difference is that OE transactions will have instant confirmations, so stuck swaps will become the thing of the past.

Users can also expect massive cost reductions — up to 10 times. But, any increase in demand will keep driving gas fees higher.

Hayden Adams, the protocol’s founder, said that this is an extraordinary undertaking, and he sees it as a critical step to ensure mass adoption of decentralized finance.

First users have certainly been impressed already, noting that it is ‘instantaneous and insanely cheap,’ at least for the time being. David Hoffman, the founder of Bankless, said he managed to make 5 swaps in 30 seconds, without even trying to be fast.

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