3 Big Changes Arbitrum is introducing to make Orbit Chains Super Attractive

magine a rollup solution, which has already gained huge prominence, capturing 40% of the rollup market share, now planning to go full-throttle to stage 2. In that case, what would unfold? Series of upgrades.  This sounds like an interesting question to dig and that’s what  Arbitrum Orbit New development is bringing on the table. So, if you have been swayed away so far by only the first grade narrative of Arbitrum  “ your chain, your rules”, what would happen when the 3D narrative unfolds with a long series of updates to transform the whole ecosystem. 

The 3D narrative of  Arbitrum is solidifying the existent one D, which stands for dominance by improving the other two D’s, which stand for decentralization and developer experience. In order to do that, the Arbitrum chain is rolling out a few series of upgrades that shall change the face of the Arbitrum ecosystem to make it super attractive and developer friendly. Though the changes have been lot, but we will be focussing on those which shall make the Arbitrum Orbit chain Super Attractive Web 3 builders.  

Let’s first explain the importance of this statement through an example. Suppose, you are traveling in a group with your friends and everyone’s using an Android phone, on the other hand, you have an iPhone. Now, accidentally you have lost your iPhone charger and there’s no store closeby. In that case, you are seemingly put in a tight spot. Either you have to travel all the way into a city to find a store that has an iPhone charger or your trip is ruined.

But, what if there’s a bridger/ USB  that can let an Android charger be connected to an iPhone. 

Enter: Stylus 

Stylus is that bridger/USB for the developers in the Web3 space who are not aware of Solidity, but want to leverage the benefits of an EVM chain. Through Stylus, now the erstwhile constraints where you have to write bytecodes in Ethereum-compatible language for inheriting Ethereum’s trade-off has been solved. But how does Stylus do that? Stylus uses a second Virtual Machines Execution or WASM VM, instead of the EVM bytecodes. The WASM acts like a translator/compiler, compiling the EVM Bytecodes and translating the same into Rust, C, and C++ . 

In this way, if a RUST/C++/C developer wants to code in the Arbitrum ecosystem, in that case, they can very well do that without any challenge whatsoever. In addition to this, Stylus further appends developer capabilities to a limited computing environment leading to lower data outputs that shall occupy very little space. In this way, not only allow custom gas/adaptive pricing options to emerge in the Arbitrum Orbit ecosystem deeper participation by both developers and users,  further amplifying the dominant narrative of the Arbitrum ecosystem. 

As of now, we are only theoretically practicing a high degree of decentralization. On the other hand, in a Web 3 space, decentralization must be innate. In the 2024 H2 Road map, Arbitrum rollups unveiled the BoLD( Bounded Liquidity Delay Protocol) upgrade, which shall completely change this narrative and make Arbitrum chain akin to a matured stage 2 L2. 

So, what would that mean?  It means that the erstwhile inefficiency, where a handful of validators were validating the chain, will be replaced by a new BoLD model.  As a result of this innovation, the erstwhile process  of resolving disputes, where the fraud proofs passed in a sequential manner will be replaced with parallel processing. So, this will also remove the chain latency issue.  In addition to this, if you have the necessary software system with you, you can easily become a validator, decentralizing the network in the process. 

But doesn’t that also create a problem where if anyone can participate as a validator, they can corrupt the chain in the process. 

Enter: Censorship Timeout 

Censorship timeout ensures that under the BoLD roadmap that no sequencer has complete control on the network. 

In order to do that, the Censorship Timeout (H2 2024), under the 2024 Roadmap will reduce the delay time from 24 hours to 4 hours. Due to this, an unforeseen event will not completely put the chain to a standstill. How? For example, in the present context of the Arbitrum Orbit chain, if there’s a fraudulent inclusion, in that case, the chain goes on a halt mode for 24 hours. 

Which means, all validators will be going through all the transactions that have been sequenced by the sequencers in the last 24 hours. Due to this practice, it makes the chain high on latency.

However, under the BoLD upgrade, there will be a threshold limit of only 4 hours. Meaning, all the validators will be going through all the transactions that happened in the last 4 hours to give a soft finality guarantee. Due to this, it will give the Arbitrum Orbit chains a 6X decrease in latency. In addition to this, the proposal of including decentralized sequencers would further push the chain towards being absolutely decentralized for operations in the near future. 

Now, the question to raise is when you are already a battle-tested and most sought after chain in the Web3 space, in that case, you already have a lot of activity in hand. At the same time, if you are further amplifying your ecosystem, meaning, making it better, in that case, you need to provide the infrastructure for cross-chain operations and scalability. That’s what the Chain Clusters, or the Arbitrum Orbit 2025 roadmap promises. 

Under the Chain Clusters, every chain can have a separate STF or State Transition Function but they will be using execution semantics that would be uniform across. Which means, apparently the DA layer will be closely intertwined. The chain clusters will be acting like messaging protocols using a synchronous guarantee window where any cross chain message that passes across all the chains must have a T+Delta timeout, where Delta will always be less than the settlement time of the destination chain. 

So, we are in a way covering the interoperability bottlenecks of the Arbitrum Orbit  chains, but what about the horizontal scalability. And that’s where another upgrade works smoothly. 

The Joint Cluster. Under the 2024-25 roadmap upgrade, Offchain Labs would be rolling out a ZK+Optimistic Hybrid Proving. Due to this, it would unify all the chains in the Arbitrum Orbit ecosystem and produce recursive proofs that shall allow faster finality and settlements on the source and the destination chains subsequently, using the parent chains for settlements. 

What will be the outcome of these Upgrades: A quick analysis

• Arbitrum Orbit to become a  Stage 2 Rollup network.

• Developer base of the Arbitrum ecosystem will expand massively.

• Faster block production and lower costs 

• There will be reduced censorship risks and better reliability 

• Network performance will increase by leaps and bounds. 

• Fund access will be better post these upgrades. 

• Native interoperability will be possible now aligning Arbitrum with Optimism Superchain Thesis. 

As mentioned, these 3 game-changing upgrades are among Arbitrum’s Orbit related  roadmap, but the overall Arbitrum Network is huge with a series of upgrades. Let’s look at its comprehensive action plan:

If you are already managing an Arbitrum Orbit Chain or planning to build an Orbit L2/L3, all these features will be restored post the upgrade. With that being said, you are on the route to getting everything for launching your application-specific chain in the Arbitrum ecosystem. However, having a reliable partner like Zeeve that can help you with the installation and setup of the chain could take away all the hassles that you might come across. With more than 40+ integration services, Zeeve brings everything that you need for launching your Arbitrum chain. Send us a query over email or schedule a call with us for a detailed discussion.