a16z's L2 Ambition Magi: Bringing Diversity to Rollup Clients

Original Title: Building Magi: A new rollup client for Optimism

Author: a16z

Compiled by: Moni, Odaily Planet Daily Translator

After Coinbase launched its new Ethereum L2 network Base based on the OP Stack, a16z has also made a move.

On the evening of April 19, a16z Crypto announced the launch of a Layer 2 Rollup client solution named Magi. Coincidentally, the Magi client software will also be built on the OP Stack (Note: OP Stack is a software stack used to create blockchain dApp ecosystems around the Optimism Layer 2 network) and will serve as a16z's first step into the Optimism Collective.

A16z is one of the most well-known investors in the crypto space, with over $7 billion allocated for investments in this field. So far in 2023, the venture capital firm has participated in funding rounds for 11 crypto startups. A16z Crypto is also one of the investors in the Ethereum scaling project Optimism. According to the latest data from CoinGecko, the native token OP of Optimism has risen from about $2.55 to $2.65 following the announcement of Magi.

What is Magi?

Magi is a high-speed OP Stack Rollup client written in Rust, acting as a consensus client in Ethereum's traditional execution/consensus split, providing new blocks to the execution client to advance on-chain transactions. Magi executes with the same core functionality as the reference implementation (op-node) and works alongside execution nodes (such as op-geth) to synchronize with any OP Stack chain, including Optimism and Base.

Reasons A16z is Building Magi: Bringing Diversity to Rollup Clients

There is a need for client diversity in both execution and consensus on the Ethereum chain, yet so far, most development has focused on execution clients.

Existing Ethereum execution clients can be made compatible with Optimism by implementing a set of moderate changes, and several new projects are already adjusting these clients to help achieve client diversity, such as OP Labs modifying the Geth client to build op-geth, while other groups are currently working on op-erigon and op-reth.

However, transforming Rollup clients is more challenging because Rollup clients are entirely new software. So far, there has only been one implementation: op-node, maintained by OP Labs and written in Go. Magi aims to be a directly developed alternative to op-node to enhance client diversity for Rollups. A16z hopes that building a new client based on Rust will encourage a more secure and active OP stack and bring more contributors to the ecosystem.

Future Development Directions for Magi

Magi is still in a very early stage and may require several months of development time to become a viable alternative to op-node. Some features and improvements that a16z plans to add in the near future include:

1. Tracking unsafe block headers (unconfirmed blocks) to reduce latency.

2. Building new synchronization mechanisms to improve initial synchronization speed.

3. Supporting alternative data availability layers.

4. A better framework for testing Magi, op-node, and any future clients.

A16z states that Rollup clients have a long way to go, and a16z hopes to work together to continue advancing Magi and the OP Stack ecosystem.