What is Unichain? What are the technical highlights of the L2 mainnet developed by Uniswap Labs?

Unichain mainnet officially launched

According to the official announcement, the L2 network Unichain mainnet, built by Uniswap Labs based on the Superchain ecosystem, has been officially launched. This is the second major product launched by the team this year, just after the release of Uniswap V4 version.

Unichain As early as last autumn, it was already being tested online, with the goal not only of giving Uniswap a dedicated memory blockchain, but also of solving Ethereum's fragmentation problem caused by the "Rollup scaling roadmap" and providing a better cross chain experience. Uniswap founder Hayden Adams stated in an interview with The Block that, Unichain The biggest goal is to improve the severe fragmentation of applications, users, and liquidity in the Ethereum ecosystem

In my opinion, various applications should be distributed on different chains, right? If there is any application that is truly suitable for having its own dedicated chain, it must be Uniswap

According to official statements, there are currently over 80 applications and infrastructure providers built on this network.

technological innovation

Although Unichain is described as a 'DeFi private chain', like other general-purpose L2, it supports multiple application scenarios. However, Uniswap has made some technological innovations to meet the specific needs of DeFi, making it more suitable for the development of the DeFi field.

According to the introduction, Unichain The Rollup Boost system (jointly developed with Flashbots) is built using a brand new memory block, which can achieve sub second memory block time. Although the tool will not be immediately available online on the main network, it is expected to be launched in the coming months. At present, Unichain's block generation time is about 1-2 seconds.

Core features of Rollup Boost:

Decentralized transaction sorting: Traditional L2 relies on a centralized sequencer, while Rollup Boost transfers this work to a physical chip in a trusted execution environment (TEE) to reduce centralized dependencies. Reduce MEV (maximum extractable value) risk: The memory block will be split into 4 sub blocks of 250 milliseconds, reducing the possibility of miners or validators profiting from transaction reordering, benefiting liquidity providers (LPs) and traders.

In addition, Unichain has also introduced the "Fair Priority" mode to ensure that user transactions are not maliciously reordered. At the same time, it has' Permissionless Fault Proofs' that allow anyone to challenge suspicious transactions.

Hayden Adams emphasized:

Through this technological innovation, we hope to create a cross chain liquidity center not only at the chain level, but also at the front-end product level. In the long run, users will be able to quickly bridge from Unichain to any other chain and build products on this basis, making the entire experience feel like they are using the same chain

The role of UNI token

Adams emphasized that UNI tokens will serve as "network tokens" and participate in verification mechanisms. However, he remains neutral on whether to activate the 'Fee Switch' mechanism

This is a community governance issue, not the current focus of Uniswap Labs

However, some community members expressed dissatisfaction with this and believed that Uniswap Labs decided to develop Unichain without the consent of UNI holders. Some people question whether this will lead to conflicts of interest between equity holders and token holders.

It is worth noting that when the Unichain validation mechanism is activated, 65% of the on chain revenue will be allocated to validators and stakers of UVN (Unichain Validation Network).