important point
- Andreessen Horowitz is releasing a new OP stack rollup client called Magi.
- Magi is written in Rust, in contrast to OP Labs’ existing client, op-node, which is written in Go.
- The company acknowledges that Magi is still months away from becoming a viable alternative to op-node.
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Venture capital firm a16z aims to diversify Optimism’s rollup client with its own client.
Magi and Opnode
Andreessen Horowitz is launching a new infrastructure around Optimism.
venture capital firm announced Today we released Magi, an OP stack rollup client written in Rust.
Optimism is a Layer 2 solution aimed at helping scale up the throughput capabilities of Ethereum. Instead of processing all Ethereum transactions on the mainnet itself (leading to blockchain congestion, transaction confirmation delays, and high fees), Optimism offers a way for Ethereum to outsource computational data.
The OP stack is a standardized open source development stack that powers Optimism. It’s basically a toolbox that allows you to create decentralized applications (dApps) in a layer 2 solution. According to a16z engineer Noah Citron, Magi aims to offer more variety in his Optimism rollup client, software that allows developers to interact with blockchain networks. So far he is the only client in Optimism. op-node is maintained by OP Labs and written in the Go programming language.
“Magi aims to be a drop-in replacement for independently developed op-nodes, adding to Rollup’s client versatility,” Citron wrote. “By building this new Rust-based client, he hopes the entire OP stack will become more secure and vibrant, and bring more contributors to the ecosystem.”
Citron indicated that Magi is still in development and will likely be months away from becoming a viable replacement for op-node. He also said that Magi’s development was done with the help of his OP Labs team.
Disclosure: At the time of writing, the author of this work owned BTC, ETH, and several other crypto assets.