Introduction
Unichain, a faster, cheaper L2 designed to be the home for DeFi and the home for multichain liquidity.
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Instant transactions: Unichain will launch with 1-second block times, with 250 ms block times coming soon. Reducing latency significantly improves market efficiency by increasing the frequency of arbitrage and lowering value lost to MEV.
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Reduced cost and further decentralization: Unichain is designed to leverage and accelerate Ethereum’s scaling roadmap, moving execution to an L2. This lowers transaction costs by ~95% in the short term, and even more over time. While Unichain relies on a single sequencer for efficiency, it introduces further decentralization by allowing full nodes to help verify blocks.
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Cross-chain liquidity: Unichain is built to support seamless transactions across dozens of chains, making it easy to access liquidity no matter what chain users are on. As part of the Superchain, Unichain will support native interoperability, and Uniswap Labs will continue pioneering standards for seamless interoperability across all chains.
Unichain Staking
Unichain addresses the risks associated with single-sequencer architectures by introducing the Unichain Validation Network (UVN), a decentralized network of node operators that independently validate the latest blockchain state. While rollups benefit from the strong security of the base blockchain, the sequencer’s behavior can affect the blockchain’s liveness, MEV dynamics, and finality. The UVN is an extensible platform, with an initial focus on verifying
blocks for faster finality. Two major risks in particular emerge in single sequencer rollups
that affect the speed of cross-chain settlement:
- Block Equivocation Risk: The possibility that the sequencer proposes multiple conflicting blocks at the same height, creating uncertainty around which block will ultimately be finalized.
- Invalid Block Risk: The risk that a sequencer posts an invalid block, leading to a chain reversion when fault proofs are submitted, further delaying settlement.
These risks cause longer wait times for finality of the blockchain, hindering the seamless flow of liquidity across networks. The UVN addresses these challenges by having verifiers attest to the canonical chain as blocks are proposed, providing faster economic finality.
LSaaS and rUNI: Accelerating Unichain Staking
StaFi’s development efforts in the LST domain are focused on two key areas:
- LSaaS Integration with Unichain LSD Stack: Unichain LST developers can quickly deploy a Unichain LST with minimal development and configuration, leveraging StaFi’s robust LSaaS framework.
- rUNI: Users can deposit UNI tokens on the StaFi Protocol without any limitations based on their capacity. The deposited UNI is then staked by StaFi’s staking contract, which autonomously selects the optimal sequencers to generate and maximize staking yields. Users who deposit UNI on StaFi will receive an equivalent amount of rUNI (rToken StaFi equivalent) to the value they staked. rUNI is an ERC20 and rebaseable token, allowing users to freely trade rUNI or provide liquidity (LP) to earn additional yield. This additional yield can be staked alongside reputable DEX partners on the Unichain ecosystem.
Why Chosse Unichain
Unichain, the latest L2 launched by Uniswap Labs, introduces several innovative features. Integrating LSaaS with Unichain positions it as a benchmark solution for L2 ecosystems, significantly enhancing both LSaaS’s and StaFi’s visibility and influence within the blockchain industry.