Arbitrum Plans to Extend Orbit Chain Beyond Ethereum to Enhance Scalability

Arbitrum’s Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) is currently considering a proposal to broaden the scope of the network’s Orbit Chain to encompass blockchains beyond Ethereum.

The expansion initiative was introduced by the Arbitrum Foundation in January through the Arbitrum Expansion program, aiming to stretch the Orbit Chain to various Ethereum-based chains. This program permitted crypto projects to duplicate the Arbitrum codebase and customize it to suit their specific business requirements, with a commitment to share 10% of their profits with the broader Arbitrum ecosystem. These chains have witnessed a surge in adoption in recent times as they facilitate the creation of highly adaptable throughput and governance-enabled networks.

In response to the escalating demand, the Foundation put forth the idea of extending the Orbit Chain to networks outside of Ethereum. The Foundation reported receiving interest from projects wanting to deploy their own Orbit chain on networks such as Bitcoin, Binance Smart Chain, Cosmos, and others.

Anticipating a continuous rise in interest, particularly as the Arbitrum Tech Stack gains traction on Ethereum, the Foundation believes that expanding Orbit deployments could augment ArbitrumDAO’s revenue and bolster the dominance of Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM) and Stylus (EVM+). Moreover, the Foundation highlighted that confining Orbit chains solely to Ethereum might impede the adoption of the Arbitrum Tech Stack as other rollups are freely deploying.

Arbitrum stands out as one of Ethereum’s most comprehensive layer-2 scaling solutions, boasting a total value locked (TVL) of $3.1 billion, as per DeFiLlama data.

Early indications reveal robust community support for the proposed expansion, with 99.8% of over 14 million ARB token votes in the “temperature check” favoring the proposal. The voting process is set to conclude on July 31.

The community’s backing stems from the numerous advantages the Arbitrum Foundation claims the expansion will bring to the ecosystem. The community believes that broadening Orbit deployments could have a positive impact on revenue generation for ArbitrumDAO and enhance the prominence of Ethereum Virtual Machines (EVM) and Stylus (EVM+). Additionally, the Foundation pointed out that restricting Orbit chains to Ethereum alone might hinder the adoption of the Arbitrum Tech Stack due to the continued deployment of other rollups.

In conclusion, the proposed expansion of the Orbit Chain to non-Ethereum networks has garnered significant interest and support from the community, signaling a potential milestone in the evolution of Arbitrum’s ecosystem.