The decentralized finance sector is one important sector in the crypto industry. This is because traders can carry out a wide variety of activities in this sector. Ranging from lending to borrowing and yield farming, traders are open to various options to earn rewards. The main platform of DeFi, Etherum, has seen a vast increase in protocol and users across the years.

With this, the network has been overly stretched transactions on it takes time before they are processed. Asides from that, users have to pay exorbitant fees to complete their transactions on the network. This is why some Layer 2 scaling such as Arbitrum and Optimism have taken that burden off Ethereum. In this article, we will be looking at Optimism and moving the crypto sector forward.

Optimism is a layer 2 scaling solution that is used on Ethereum. The main feature of Optimism is to make transactions on Ethereum applications very cheap. Optimism moves transactions away from the blockchain to another blockchain. With this, gas fees are drastically reduced, and throughput increases. Optimism provides Ethereum developers with the opportunity to use all available tools on Ethereum without the need for changes. According to the Optimism developing team, traders will pay a 10x reduced cost as gas fees. To tackle fraud and invalid state transition, Optimism makes use of Optimistic rollups.

Optimism allows fast Layer 1 to Layer 2 transfers from Ethereum mainnet to Optimism. However, all transfers from Optimism to Ethereum take up to 7 days. This is because it uses the waiting period to verify transactions against fraud. To bridge between Optimism and Ethereum, users can use the Optimism Gateway. To bridge between both chains, a user needs to enter the gateway and connect his wallet. The next step requires you to choose your type of wallet and make your deposit.

Once the contract acknowledges the tokens that you sent in, your tokens will be bridged over. The bridging process is swift, and it takes about 5 minutes from start to finish. After the tokens are bridged on Optimism, users can make transactions just like they do on Ethereum. Also, Optimism has the same security and resistance that the Ethereum mainnet has. Optimism supports wallets such as Coinbase, Metamask, Rainbow, and Token, among others.

Optimism is a chain for the future due to the so many advantages that abound on the network. All these advantages and other features are why Optimism will help Ethereum achieve more scalability. Optimism will provide users with a faster transaction with cheap fees while providing Ethereum's security. Also, it is noteworthy that the data-infused determines the performance of Optimism on Layer 1. This means that users can compress as much data as possible and have a large and cheap data layer. Optimism is also hoping that it can seduce more apps onto its chain due to its features. With that, more users will be on the blockchain.

The Ethereum Layer 2 season is underway. Major scaling solutions will become live on the DeFi protocol. Currently, devs are trying to onboard them in a bid to scale the Ethereum blockchain and provide low-cost/fast processing tx. The latest to join the party is the liquidity aggregator 1inch. It is the leading decentralized exchange that integrates its services with the O? mainnet - the Optimism L2 solution.

Initially, the protocol limits to 0.6 tx per second, which will likely increase once the Optimism technology matures with further testing and optimization. How to start trading on 1inch Optimism? Well, visit the Optimism Gateway and start your L2 journey by connecting your wallet.

Then, start exchanging tokens on the Optimism L2. The full tutorial is already live and helps other users. The deposits are instant, but the withdrawals take a week to process, owing to the Optimism solution limitations. 1inch is the second major DEX to onboard the solution after Uniswap.

In the future versions of Optimism L2, scaling performance improvements will integrate alongside efforts to increase decentralization and wallets paying for gas in any token (not only ETH). 1inch is likely to benefit from that. Optimistic Ethereum is an EVM-compatible Optimistic Rollup solution. It's a developing solution and the team is treading carefully in uncharted waters to ensure maximum security and stability.

The Layer 2 scaling solutions are protocols that increase the processing capacity of a blockchain (hence scaling) and as a result, relieve congestion on the network. They work by delegating the network processing “off-chain” to their own chain, processing it there, before settling the final balances on the base layer mainnet.

The second-layer off-chain scalability solutions apply to subsidiary etiquette developed on top of the principal blockchain where transactions are ‘off-loaded’ from the principal blockchain to conserve area and decrease network bottleneck. Second-layer solutions are normally in the order of side-chains and state channels.