Jinglan Wang & Karl Floersch: Optimism – The Optimistic Approach to Ethereum Scaling (#336)
Channel: Epicenter Podcast
Date: 2020-04-21

The Plasma Group was a not for profit research group focussing on layer-2 scaling on Ethereum. Optimism is a new Public Benefit Corporation that builds on the lessons of the Plasma research and is implementing Optimistic Rollups. This solution scales Eth 1.x and offers near-instant transaction finality on Ethereum, while providing over 100x transaction throughput. Jinglan Wang and Karl Floersch, co-founders of Optimism, explain the transition to this new entity and its goals moving forward.

Topics discussed in this episode:
- Jinglan and Karl's backgrounds and how they came to work together
- How the Plasma Group and all of the Plasma research evolved into Optimism
- Funding of Optimism through Gitcoin, and the lessons learned from donation funding
- What are Optimistic Rollup and how they achieve scaling
- How to make an Optimistic Rollup chain
- Optimistic Rollups compared to other scaling solutions like Truebit, sharding and zkRollups
- How Optimistic Rollups fit within the Eth 2.0 roadmap
- The role of an aggregator and how to become one
- Submitting transactions, the fees involved, and different finality levels
- Problems that could arise from mining transactions on incorrect states
- Who is using the OVM alpha and what's next for the project

Links mentioned in this episode: 
- Optimism Website: 
- Plasma Group Website: https://bit.ly/34LaZVb
- Introducing the OVM - Plasma Group Blog: https://bit.ly/3cr6bGU
- ""Ethereum Smart Contracts in L2: Optimistic Rollup - Plasma Group Blog: 
- A New Way to Scale - Optimized Optimistic Rollup — IDEX Blog: https://bit.ly/2XKqCKL
- Optimism Twitter: 
- Jinglan Wang Twitter: 
- Karl Floersch Twitter:

Sponsors: 
- Least Authority: Register for Security Sessions on April 30th to learn about security audits for your blockchain project - https://leastauthority.com/meetup

This episode is hosted by Friederike Ernst & Sunny Aggarwal. Show notes and listening options: https://epicenter.tv/336