Ethereum has been chastised for its poor scalability capabilities and exorbitant gas pricing. For a long time, there have been discussions regarding boosting the Ethereum mainnet’s scaling capability.

However, the Ethereum ecosystem currently requires a scaling solution, and if Ethereum is unable to provide these new apps with a platform that meets their needs, they can go to alternatives like the BNB Chain or Cardano. The Optimism rollout was intended to address Ethereum’s scalability issue.

One of several solutions to Ethereum’s congestion problem is the Optimism Rollup network.

The Ethereum network is frequently overburdened, and while updates to the main blockchain are implemented, scaling solutions like Optimism allow Ethereum’s transactional capabilities to be used without paying exorbitant gas rates.

In a nutshell, Optimism accelerates and reduces the cost of Ethereum transactions by employing advanced data compression techniques. They do so via a method known as Optimistic Rollups, in which numerous transactions are “wrapped up” into one and settled on a cheaper blockchain. After that, the validated transactions are sent back onto the Ethereum main blockchain. The most significant advantage of Optimistic Roll Ups is that they do not compute by default, resulting in theoretical scalability gains.

According to estimates, Optimistic Rollups can boost scalability by 10-100x. The availability of a “challenge period,” which is a time window within which anyone can contest an allegation and lengthen withdrawal time, is a disadvantage.

Rollups vs. Rollups

Now comes the obvious question: how does this differ from the widely utilized zero-knowledge (zk) Rollups?

For all state transitions to work correctly, Zk-Rollups rely on a zero-knowledge proof. After that, each transaction is compared to the mainchain smart contract. Optimistic Rollups, on the other hand, rely on a user sending a new state root to the sidechain without first confirming the rollup contract.