ConsenSys, the firm behind the popular web3 wallet Metamask, recently announced the opening of its Layer2 network, Linea’s mainnet Alpha, to all users. The official ETH Bridge UI is now accessible, and the canonical token bridge supporting ERC-20 tokens would be available in the coming weeks.
The announcement was made by the official Linea Twitter handle:
Linea is a zkEVM rollup that empowers developers to create scalable decentralized applications or transition existing ones without the need to change code or rewrite smart contracts. The mainnet Alpha was launched last week during the EthCC conference to onboard launch partners.
The launch of the Linea mainnet Alpha is a significant milestone in the blockchain industry. It introduces an improved user experience and an ecosystem of over 100 protocols, partners, and decentralized applications. The mainnet Alpha release also ushers in several significant upgrades, including a new outer-proof system, a dynamic fee mechanism, and batch conflation.
These upgrades would allow Linea to provide transaction costs up to 15 times cheaper than Ethereum’s base layer. The launch is expected to reduce friction for developers and enhance onboarding with fast finality, capital efficient bridge, and inherited Ethereum security.
The Linea mainnet was initially opened to the project’s testnet partners and was later opened to the public during the EthCC conference between July 17 and 20. Alongside the Linea Mainnet Alpha launch, ConsenSys also revealed the Linea Ecosystem Investment Alliance (EIA), an initiative backed by over 30 leading venture capital firms that aims to support builders by providing funding and resources.
ConsenSys stated that Linea harnesses the potency of zero-knowledge proofs and provides complete equivalence to Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM). This feature empowers developers to construct scalable decentralized applications (dApps) or transition existing ones without having to rewrite smart contracts or change code. The Alpha release of Linea ensures swifter throughput and slashes transaction costs by up to 15x compared to Ethereum layer-1.
In addition to the Linea network and Metamask, ConsenSys is also known for its Infura gateway, a suite of tools for developers, and the enterprise Ethereum chain Quorum, among other services. The firm added that the MetaMask wallet will also add support for Linea, and users will be able to access Linea through MetaMask Portfolio and Metamask’s Bridge, Swap, and Buy features in the coming weeks.
