Magi: a16z brings diversified Layer 2 Rollup clients to Ethereum

Original title: " a16z's L2 ambition Magi: bringing diversity to Rollup clients "

Original author: The Block & a16z Crypto

Original compilation: Odaily Planet Daily

After Coinbase launched the new Ethereum L2 network Base based on OP Stack, a16z also made a move.

On the evening of April 19th, a16z Crypto announced the launch of a two-layer Rollup client solution called Magi. Coincidentally, Magi customers The end software will also be built on the OP Stack (Note: OP Stack is a software stack that can be used to create a blockchain dApp ecosystem around the Optimism Layer 2 network), and will be a16z's first step into the Optimism Collective.

A16z is one of the most well-known investors in the crypto space, with more than $7 billion in funds invested in the space. Since 2023, the venture capital has participated in 11 financing transactions of encryption startups. A16z Crypto is also one of the investors of Optimism, an Ethereum expansion project. According to the latest data from CoinGecko, Optimism’s native token OP has climbed from about $2.55 to $2.65 after the Magi news was released today.

What is Magi?

Magi is a high-speed OP Stack Rollup client written in Rust, in the traditional Act as a consensus client in the execution/consensus split, providing new blocks to the execution client to advance transactions on the chain. Magi execution has the same core functionality as the reference implementation (op-node) and works with execution nodes (like op-geth) to sync to any OP Stack chain, including Optimism and Base.

A16z's reason for building Magi: to bring Diversity

Execution and consensus on the Ethereum chain require client diversity, however to Most of the development so far has focused on executing the client.

Existing Ethereum execution clients can all be made compatible with Optimism by implementing a modest set of changes, and several new projects Already tweaking these clients to help with client diversity, such as OP Labs modifying the Geth client to build op-geth, and other groups are currently building op-erigon and op-reth.

Retrofitting the Rollup client is more difficult, however, because the Rollup client is a brand new piece of software. So far, there is only one implementation: op-node, maintained by OP Labs and written in Go. Magi aims to be an independently developed op-node drop-in replacement to improve Rollup's client diversity. A16z hopes that building a new Rust-based client will encourage the entire OP stack to be more secure and active, and bring more contributors to the ecosystem.

The future direction of Magi

Magi is still in a very early stage and may take months of development time before it becomes a viable alternative to op-nodes. Some functions and improvements that A16z plans to add in the near future mainly include:

1. Track unsafe block headers (not confirmed blocks) to reduce latency.

2. Building a new synchronization mechanism can increase the initial synchronization speed.

3. Provide support for alternative data availability layers.

4. A better framework for testing Magi, op-node and any future clients.

a16z said that the Rollup client still has a long way to go, and a16z also hopes to work together to continue to promote Magi and The OP Stack ecosystem moves forward.

Original link

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia