Obol and Optimum Unite to Supercharge Ethereum Scaling

Obol and Optimum are joining forces to decentralize and scale Ethereum with Distributed Validators and Random Linear Network Coding. 

Ethereum has made significant progress in scaling over the past few years. But one of Obol’s core beliefs is that we must advance decentralization and scaling at the same time to ensure Ethereum fulfills its potential. More scale creates more capacity, UX improvements, and more demand, while more decentralization leads to more scale in data availability, more credible neutrality and censorship resistance, and continued delivery of Zero Downtime. 

It’s often overlooked that decentralization itself scales Ethereum. This is because adding more nodes increases data availability, and onboarding more operators improves censorship resistance. Obol helps decentralize Ethereum with our Distributed Validator infrastructure and in turn Ethereum also scales. 

Optimum, the MIT-bred infrastructure project unlocking high performance memory for decentralized networks, is similarly committed to advancing Ethereum with a focus on scaling and decentralization. Optimum uses RLNC, a powerful technology that can potentially offer Ethereum up to 20x bandwidth improvements, according to independent research from the Ethereum Foundation. 

Today we announce Obol’s partnership with Optimum as part of a joint commitment to supercharge Ethereum with more decentralization and more scale. Obol is currently testing Optimum with a potential integration in mind, to ensure Obol Distributed Validators remain the most performant staking technology.

If Ethereum is to become the world computer, it must scale for billions of users and offer Trillion Dollar Security with full WW3 resistance at once. We explain how Obol and Optimum will contribute towards this end goal below. 

How Optimum Will Scale Ethereum With High-Performance Memory 

Optimum was built to solve one of the onchain ecosystem’s biggest problems. The most used blockchains today face bandwidth and data access issues and many of the existing solutions are suboptimal. Optimum will offer high-performance, decentralized memory infrastructure to make chains like Ethereum faster and more resilient. 

With Random Linear Network Coding (RLNC) as its underlying technology, Optimum creates puzzles to encode data before sending it. When the recipient solves the puzzle, they can access the data. This process effectively splits data in Ethereum blocks into smaller chunks, preserving the chain’s memory. 

Optimum’s flagship protocol is mumP2P. Optimum describes this offering as a next-generation gossip protocol or “memory bus” that boosts throughput and reduces latency. Optimum propagates data including transactions, blocks, and blobs with much higher efficiency than alternative solutions. 

Like Obol, Optimum wants to advance Ethereum. But it’s of particular interest to Obol because its planned performance improvements should help boost validator rewards. This is because a more scaled Ethereum with higher throughput would lead to more usage. 

Optimum is currently in testnet but major operators like Blockdaemon, Everstake, Kiln, and P2P.org have already signaled their support. Obol is also exploring how using mumP2P with Distributed Validators could improve Ethereum scaling and decentralization. 

Improving Ethereum’s Decentralization and Scalability

Obol and Optimum are both focused on making Ethereum more performant. Obol decentralizes the network with Distributed Validators, which also improves scalability. Optimum uses RLNC to supercharge performance of validators. 

Together, Obol and Optimum’s infrastructure could drastically improve Ethereum staking. Obol is testing a way to run Distributed Validators with Optimum, which could result in faster consensus and improved performance. 

Ethereum must scale and decentralize to become the world computer. This partnership brings the network one step closer to its full potential. We’re currently testing Optimum’s infrastructure. Look out for more details on how to use OptimumP2P with Obol once mainnet goes live.