Specular: Abbreviated Introduction

The optimistic rollup technique has shown promising signs as a blockchain scalability solution. For example, existing systems have reduced user transaction fees by up to ~20x. However, these existing solutions are not without issues.

Specular proposes using a new optimistic rollup design that improves current solutions. It is claimed to be the first Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-native optimistic rollup that provides stronger decentralization and security properties than existing optimistic rollup solutions.

The project aims to build a secure and trust-minimized optimistic rollup that addresses issues associated with existing optimistic rollups, while preserving scalability and offering sufficiently efficient dispute resolution. The project openly advocates for users to become involved in building it.

The team has strong technical expertise and is lucky to have a member such as Dawn Song, with a renowned academic background. Considering the scholarly interests and commitments of the three core members of Specular, they might increase the team with full-time contributors.

Specular is the first EVM-native solution, entering an already competitive market. The product is in the Testnet phase, and anyone is able to deploy Uniswap V2 contracts on the Testnet. It will be interesting to see how the project progresses and how it fares against its competitors.

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