Ethereum scaling network Arbitrum set for major upgrade

[wilkine]

The Nitro upgrade will further improve the transaction fee crisis that has plagued the growth of the Ethereum network over the last two years.

Abritrum is an Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution that utilizes Optimistic Rollup technology to bundle large batches of transactions off-chain from Ethereum smart contracts and decentralized applications before submitting it to Ethereum.

Referred to as the “Nitro” upgrade, Arbitrum reconfirmed the date of the upgrade in a Twitter post on Aug. 29, confirming that the upgrade will take effect on Aug. 31 at 10:30 AM Eastern Time, while noting a two to four hours of network downtime period is to be expected.

According to Offchain Labs’ GitHub account, Nitro will represent a “fully integrated, complete layer 2 optimistic rollup system” that builds on Arbitrum One with newly improved fraud proofs, along with updated sequencers, token bridges and calldata compression mechanisms.

Offchain Labs is a blockchain-based company established in 2018 which builds a suite of Ethereum scaling solutions, with the Arbitrum One network being the most notable network deployed by the firm.