ConsenSys’ Layer 2 Linea Rolls Out Mainnet Alpha

The zero-knowledge proof scaling solution made its rollup and ETH bridge accessible for developers as part of its mainnet Alpha launch.

Ethereum infrastructure company ConsenSys has launched the mainnet for its Layer 2 scaling solution Linea, which uses zero-knowledge (zk) cryptography, compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) to offer cheaper and faster transactions.

📣Live from Paris at @EthCC: We’re excited to roll out access to Linea Mainnet Alpha to the entire Linea community!

— Linea (@LineaBuild) July 18, 2023

The team behind the project announced the mainnet alpha launch at EthCC in Paris on Monday, saying that developers and those operating nodes with Remote Call Procedure (RPC) endpoints in Infura and MetaMask would be able to access the rollup and ETH bridge user interface.

“The canonical token bridge supporting ERC20 tokens will be available over the next few weeks. During that time, we’ll continue to support builders and partners onboarding onto alpha,” wrote the Linea team. 

Blokchain data shows that 15,000 ETH had been deposited to the Linea ETH bridge through 8,240 transactions at the time of writing. 

ConsenSys made a private beta testnet of Linea available in December, where 1.5 million transactions were processed, before it was made public in March. Now, more than 5 million unique wallet addresses have sent over 50 million transactions on Linea.

Rollups like Linea work by bundling large groups of transactions off-chain and then pass them back on to Ethereum’s main chain to be settled, making these blockchain transactions far less expensive.

According to the project’s roadmap, Linea plans to open source its software stack and license it under AGPL-3.0 (Affero General Public License), giving users the freedom to modify and fork the code. The next phases involve decentralizing governance and enable censorship resistant withdrawals.

“The architecture will be refined to prevent rollup operators from preventing user withdrawals. We will ensure that users can independently initiate exits, which guarantees continuous access to, and control over their assets on Linea,” explained the team.