a16z Launches Magi, a Rollup Client for Optimism Scaling Solution

On April 19, venture capital (VC) giant a16z announced Magi, a new rollup client for the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem, Optimism.

This move is an effort to increase client diversity in the rapidly expanding layer-2 ecosystem, which is critical for the safety and liveliness of the network.

Magi is an OP Stack rollup client developed in Rust programming language, which will function as a consensus client for advancing the chain.

The new software is set to replace op-node, the only existing rollup client implementation. The goal of the release is to encourage greater safety and liveliness throughout the OP Stack while bringing more contributors into the ecosystem.

Optimism, the second most popular Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution behind Arbitrum, has a total value locked of $2.09 billion, an all-time high, according to L2beat.

The EVM-compatible Optimistic Rollup chain has a layer-2 market share of 21%. Meanwhile, TVL for the entire L2 ecosystem has reached just below $10 billion but is cooling off after reaching an all-time high this week.

Crypto markets have entered a long-overdue correction phase, with a total market capitalization decline of 5% to $1.26 trillion. The slide has resulted in Bitcoin falling 4.5% to $28,857, while Ethereum experienced a larger hit of 6.7% in a slide to $1,949. Many of the rest of the altcoins were also in the red.