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 covered 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

Episode links:

• Optimism Website
• Plasma Group Website
• Introducing the OVM - Plasma Group Blog
• ""Ethereum Smart Contracts in L2: Optimistic Rollup - Plasma Group Blog
• A New Way to Scale - Optimized Optimistic Rollup — IDEX Blog
• 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: epicenter.tv/336