Arbitrum, an Ethereum Scaling Solution, Completes 500 Transactions Per Second in Alpha Test

The development of scalability solutions for legacy blockchains (Bitcoin and Ethereum) is key to enhance mass adoption of these blockchains and cryptocurencies. Offchain Labs, an Ethereum based scaling solution for permissionless blockchains, successfully released the alpha test of its Arbitrum code compiler. Arbitrum allows users on the Ethereum platform to scale to up to 500 transactions per second using a smart contract.

Thirty Times Faster than On-chain Transactions

Currently, Ethereum speeds range between 7 to 15 transactions per second hence clogging and overpopulating the network. The new Arbitrum complier, allows developers to write smart contracts using Ethereum’s Solidity language and compile their code and transactions off chain using side chains and state channels.

In a press release, Offchain Labs revealed they are using a smart contract coded on Ethereum, called EthBridge, which allows Arbitrum to communicate and transact with Ethereum. As the transactions and code are executed offchain, the platform is highly scalable – over 30 times the transaction speed on the main chain.

Speaking on the successful release of Arbitrum, the Co-Founder of Offchain Labs, Ed Felten, said,

“We believe that blockchains have a distance to go in terms of being enterprise-ready, with the primary issue being scalability. We’ve built a solution that enables dApp developers to improve the performance of their applications without any significant cost or development time.”

Earlier in April, the company raised $3.7 million USD in seed funding stage led by Pantera Capital in a bid to build and develop better scalability solutions to permissionless blockchains. The current development of Arbitrum is reported to be funded by Coinbase Ventures, the investment wing of the U.S crypto exchange, Coinbase.