What is Layer-2 and 'Arbitrum'?

If you have been transacting via Ethereum and enjoying the 'fruits' of DeFi, then you know just how fees, or Gas, have been ridiculous.

So dire was the situation that back in early May, posting a single transaction was upwards of $69.

And the number could have been higher if Vitalik hadn't intervened, crashing the doge meme hysteria.

Ethereum base layer is struggling with scalability, a trade-off for better decentralization and security.

To counter this 'sacrifice,' the development team wants projects to migrate to Layer-2 solutions.

Many of these options, like ZK-Rollups and Plasma, are already gaining traction. A few plan to launch on the mainnet in the upcoming days.

Ahead of the curve is Arbitrum.

Arbitrum by Offchain Labs is an Optimistic Rollup on Ethereum that integrates Chainlink to secure its smart contracts when linking to Oracles. 

The creators of this protocol meant to first lift the pressure off the base layer—that is, Layer-1, and contribute to helping bring down Gas.

Second, Arbitrum will help scale Ethereum. Accordingly, from the Layer-2 portal, smart contracts controlling some of the most intensive dApps can quickly process thousands of transactions every second, competing with traditional options.