Why Metis Is An Optimistic Project

You may be wondering what is metis? It's a fork of Optimism that aspires to outperform its more well-known competitors. Metis aims to provide optimistic rollups with the normal benefits of cheap costs ($1), speed (less than one second), and Ethereum-level economic security. However, it intends to set itself apart by offering native data storage, faster Ethereum layer 1 main chain withdrawals, and increased usability for DApp developers.

Side Chains and Rollups

Sidechains and other layer 1s have dominated the scaling battles, with Polygon garnering the greatest traction among the top names in DeFi and the Metaverse. Sushiswap, Aave, and Curve have all extended to Polygon, with SushiSwap also launching on a number of other chains. To protect the popular play-to-earn game from Ethereum's pricey fee fluctuations, Axie Infinity now runs on a custom-built sidechain called Ronin.

The major problem with side chains and some layer 1s is that they may have various attacks interfaces and economic security assurances than Ethereum (due to their perceived lesser levels of decentralization). As an outcome, scaling solutions that minimize security and decentralization compromises have become a top priority for the Ethereum community.

Ethereum founder Vitalik Buterin began recommending “rollups” as a strategy to scale Ethereum and its security into its next growth cycle. Rollups are additional execution layers that sit on top of a layer 1 network. Before pushing transactions to their underlying blockchain, they batch and sequence them in an off-chain context. Rollups "inherit the security qualities of the blockchain they're constructed atop," because the underlying layer serves as the arbitrator of truth.