Uniswap v3 looks set for layer-two scaling on both Arbitrum and optimism

The Uniswap community has voted in favor of launching the leading decentralized exchange’s v3 iteration on layer-two scaling solution, Arbitrum.

Uniswap’s creator, Hayden Adams, announced the vote on May 27, revealing the proposal’s governance vote received 41.35 million votes in favor and zero opposing votes from UNI token holders.

He noted that work is already underway to plan the deployment and design its interface.

Arbitrum raised $3.7 million in 2019 to explore smart contract scalability, and launched the first Rollup system for Ethereum in early 2020. Arbitrum claims to have achieved a reduction in gas costs of 55 times for its testnet port of Uniswap v2 in November 2020, supporting 390 swaps per second compared to jusseven on the Ethereum mainnet.

Adams said that the Uniswap team remains “incredibly excited” for the launch of rival layer-two scaling solution, Optimism. Adams noted Uniswap is still targeting a deployment on Optimism for “the near future.”

Optimism, which raised $25 million in a February funding round led by A16z, announced in March its launch would be delayed, offering July as a “rough estimate” for mainnet launch.

Optimism’s delay has provided opportunities for other second-layer scaling solutions to secure market share, with Polygon taking an early lead after Aave quickly attracted a 10-figure TVL on the network.

Arbitrum has also emerged as a major layer-two contender, with the project currently targeting May 28 for its mainnet launch. Developers will initially have exclusive access to Arbitrum after launch, allowing time for the network's initial cohort of projects to establish infrastructure and conduct testing.

In early May, OKEx became the first major centralized exchange to enable deposit and withdrawal functionality with the protocol. Arbitrum has also secured notable partnerships with The Graph, Bancor, and Biconomy.

In March, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin praised Arbitrum for its progress on Ethereum Virtual Machine-compatible rollups.

Since launching earlier this month, Uniswap v3 has lived up to its promise of delivering superior capital efficiency than its previous incarnations, with v3 surpassing v2 by daily volume despite currently representing 26% of v2’s total value locked. 

---