Ethereum Layer 2 Arbitrum Launches Nova Chain, Links With Reddit

The new chain, Arbitrum Nova, is optimized for cost-sensitive and high transaction volume use cases like on-chain gaming and social projects.

Arbitrum Nova Goes Live

Arbitrum has launched a new gaming-optimized blockchain and partnered with Reddit to help it move its community points system to Ethereum.

The Layer 2 project’s developer Offchain Labs announced the updates in a Tuesday press release. Arbitrum Nova, as the new network is known, is now live for all end-users following a private July launch for developers. While Offchain Labs’ first chain, Arbitrum One, is designed for more common DeFi use cases, Abitrum Nova is optimized for cost-sensitive and high transaction volume scenarios. Per the press release, Arbitrum Nova is designed to become “the premier solution for Web3 gaming and social applications.” 

According to a July blog post from Offchain Labs, Arbitrum Nova is an entirely new chain, completely different from Arbitrum One. It’s built on top of the firm’s proprietary AnyTrust technology and leverages a “data availability committee” to certify and validate transaction batches before broadcasting them on Ethereum mainnet. “Rather than posting all data to the Ethereum network, the committee certifies and validates batches of transactions and only posts the certifications to Ethereum, resulting in significant cost savings for users,” Offchain Labs explained in today’s announcement. The firm claims that its AnyTrust technology delivers much stronger security guarantees than other high throughput or low-cost blockchains.

Commenting on the launch, Offchain Labs co-founder and CEO Steven Goldfeder said that the new chain marked a “major milestone” of the Arbitrum ecosystem and that its ultra-low-cost transaction fees would open entirely new possibilities for developers. “We look forward to continually optimizing and improving Nova to drive costs down even further,” he added.

Complementing the launch, Offchain Labs also announced today that it had partnered with the world’s largest online forum, Reddit, to move its community points system to Ethereum. The initiative marks the first major deployment on the Arbitrum Nova chain.

Arbitrum is one of several Layer 2 projects working to scale Ethereum. It leverages Optimistic Rollup technology to increase throughput and process transactions off the base chain. Arbitrum One launched last year and is currently the ecosystem’s leading Layer 2 network. According to L2Beat data, it holds about $2.72 billion in value locked.

Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this article owned ETH and several other cryptocurrencies.