Arbitrum team begins testing Nitro upgrade on the testnet

The developers of the second‑layer (L2) scaling solution Arbitrum have begun testing the Nitro upgrade, designed to reduce transaction fees and increase throughput.

The Rinkeby Nitro migration was successful, the chain is back online! 🟢🚀

Teams may now feel free to resume testing out their protocols as they please!

Please note that partner infrastructure will come back up over the next few days. 🛠️

— Arbitrum (@arbitrum) July 28, 2022

If tests on the testnet Rinkeby are successful, within two weeks the project team will deploy the upgrade on the mainnet.

Under Nitro, a WebAssembly (WASM)-based transaction authentication system is implemented. This allows configuring and compiling AVM using standard tools and programming languages.

The upgrade also integrates the core Geth — one of the most popular Ethereum clients. It is expected to simplify the process of onboarding L2, as developers will not need to further optimise various parameters.

«In essence, we are now running Geth on Ethereum’s second layer and implementing a WASM-based anti-fraud system on the main Geth engine», the statement says.

After Nitro’s mainnet update, Arbitrum will introduce Anytrust Chains, aimed at applications with “special needs”. They will allow maintaining the required security level and reduce transaction fees.

Arbitrum chief Steven Goldfeder called Nitro “the best Ethereum scaling technology available today.”

Arbitrum Nitro is indisputably the best Ethereum scaling technology available today.

But there’s no question that over time, we’ll improve it.

Will those improvements include zk proofs? Maybe. Maybe not.

We will utilize whatever technology is best. That’s our guarantee.

— Steven Goldfeder (💙,💙) (@sgoldfed) July 29, 2022

Earlier, in January 2022, Arbitrum experienced a disruption — caused by an error in the Sequencer smart contract, the network stopped producing blocks.

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