WHAT IS LINEA?

Linea is a network that scales the experience of Ethereum. Its out-of-the-box compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine enables the deployment of already-existing applications, as well as the creation of new ones that would be too costly on Mainnet. It also enables the community to use those dapps, at a fraction of the cost, and at multiples the speed of Mainnet.
It does this by leveraging quantum-resistant lattice-based cryptography to create zero-knowledge proofs that include every transaction performed on the network, and rolling them up to Mainnet. This ensures that every transaction is recorded to the Ethereum ledger while dividing the cost of that security by magnitudes.

Linea is a fully EVM equivalent zero-knowledge rollup (zk-rollup), designed to scale Ethereum with higher throughput and lowered transaction fees. Linea relies on an innovative, internally-built, lattice-powered prover which utilizes zkSNARK technology. It enables proofs to be generated quickly and yet does not require a trusted setup, which has long been a flaw of zkSNARK technology.

On Linea, transaction fees are expected to be 15X to 20X cheaper than on the Ethereum mainnet. In line with their history in building developer tooling and infrastructure, Linea is designed to be developer friendly, supporting ConsenSys’ MetaMask, Truffle and Infura natively. The chain is also designed to be composable and approachable, meaning that developers do not need to be zkEVM or zk-rollup experts to build on it.

As a fully EVM equivalent zkEVM chain, this makes Linea a Type 2 zkEVM according to Ethereum founder, Vitalik Buterin’s classification of zkEVM chains. This means that the chain will look and feel much like Ethereum, and will support almost all existing Ethereum DApps. The core differences only affect the interactions with the L1 such as block structure and state tree, rather than the application layer (i.e. the zkEVM chain itself).
A fully EVM equivalent zkEVM also means that developers and protocols can migrate any code from Ethereum to Linea without rewriting any code or additional audits. Similarly, if developers build a product for Linea but find it more suitable for Ethereum or other EVM chains, they can easily redeploy their code elsewhere.

Shortly after the launch of the Linea public testnet, the Linea team announced the Linea Voyage, a nine-week campaign to orientate new users to the Linea ecosystem and the applications that were live on the Linea testnet. These tasks covered all verticals, from bridging, decentralized finance (DeFi), NFTs, gaming, social apps, and even the use of infrastructure and on-chain analytics tools.
Across the duration of the campaign, more than 5.5 million wallets participated, generating more than 47 million transactions on the chain.

With the recent announcement of the gradual roll out of Linea’s Mainnet Alpha, Linea has opened up their mainnet to ecosystem partners to begin deployment of their protocols ahead of the public launch. More than 100 partners will be boarding during this period, including household names like Aave, Sushiswap, Uniswap, Stargate and PancakeSwap, among others. Moreover, with MetaMask natively integrated with the chain on launch, MetaMask’s in-built bridge, swap and buy features will all be supported.
Looking ahead, Linea will be opening up the network shortly to the public during EthCC Paris, which will be taking place from July 17 to 20.
As the mainnet launch is still in Alpha, Linea will have security measures in place to protect users from potential attacks from malicious actors. Withdrawals from the chain will be limited on launch, but these limits will be slowly removed over the coming 90 days. Additionally, a delay will be implemented between the L2 and Ethereum L1, ensuring at least eight hours before state changes are committed to the L1. This allows the team more time to monitor the chain and to take necessary action in the event of malicious actors.