Bridge

Description

Q: Hello! What’s Arbitrum?​

Hi! Arbitrum is a technology suite designed to scale Ethereum. You can use Arbitrum chains to do all things you do on Ethereum — use Web3 apps, deploy smart contracts, etc., but your transactions will be cheaper and faster. Our flagship product — Arbitrum Rollup — is an Optimistic rollup protocol that inherits Ethereum-level security.

Q: What, what’s “Ethereum”? What’s a “smart contract”? Where am I?​

If you aren’t yet familiar with the Ethereum ecosystem, you can check out ethereum.org for an intro. Come back whenever you’re ready, no rush.

Q: You said Arbitrum exists to “scale” Ethereum; why does Ethereum need this help? Is there something wrong with Ethereum?​

Ethereum is awesome; on its own, however, it’s also very limited. The Ethereum blockchain only allows about 20-40 transactions per second (TPS) (that’s in total, for all Ethereum users); when the limit is reached, users are forced to compete against each other for their transactions to be included, which causes fees to go up.

Q: Why does Ethereum have such low TPS?​

This was a deliberate decision in Ethereum’s design. Ethereum requires that its nodes (computers running the Ethereum software) have a way of coming to consensus on the current state of things; the way they do this is by processing every transaction in Ethereum’s history; i.e., if you’ve ever used Ethereum, every Ethereum full node has a copy of your transactions in its blockchain ledger.