Arbitrum Is Live on Alchemy (In Beta)

Published on October 26, 20212 min read

We’re proud to announce that Alchemy support for Arbitrum mainnet is live!

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Arbitrum’s layer 2 technology gives developers access to up to 270x lower gas fees, and starting today is available as part of the Alchemy developer platform. This means developers can tap into Alchemy Supernode and the developer tools that already power the most successful projects on Ethereum to access the scaling capabilities of Arbitrum.

Getting started with Arbitrum through Alchemy is super easy. Access to Arbitrum is included for all Alchemy users and uses the same API methods as Ethereum. Plus, Arbitrum is compatible with almost all existing Ethereum smart contracts, so there won’t be any solidity code changes in your future.

This is the first step in a roadmap committed to helping our users solve their greatest scaling and UX challenges, and over the next several months we will be deepening our support for Arbitrum and other Layer 2s to do so.

Why Layer 2?

At Alchemy we’re constantly listening to the needs of the Ethereum developer ecosystem and extending our platform to solve them. For more than a year we’ve heard loud and clear that the biggest need for nearly every developer is a way around the high gas fees and slow mining times on Ethereum.

While we’ve released several features, like our Gas Price Webhooks, to help improve the gas issues, we’ve also known that the long term solution would take the form of a layer 2 for Ethereum focused on scalability.

By using a layer 2 like Arbitrum, developers can not only pay lower gas fees themselves, but massively improve the UX of their products by unlocking those lower gas fees and quicker mining times for their end users.

Why Arbitrum?

Beyond the fact that Arbitrum was created by the super talented and community driven team at Offchain labs, the network is exciting primarily because of the technology that powers it.

At the core of Arbitrum is scaling tech called the Arbitrum Rollup, a particular implementation of optimistic rollups. “Rollup” refers to the fact that transactions from Arbitrum are included on layer 1 ethereum in batches. “Optimistic” refers to the fact that transactions are included by default, and computationally expensive proofs are only done if fraud is suspected. While there are many awesome resources that explain this in greater detail, at their core optimistic rollups empower a layer 2 to have extremely high transaction throughput and low overall fees, while tapping into the full security of a layer 1 like Ethereum.

All of this means that, through core technology, Arbitrum will help deliver on the scaling, developer experience, and UX promises of layer 2s for the Ethereum ecosystem.

What’s Next?

Today’s release includes support for Arbitrum in many of the core Alchemy products that Ethereum developers know and love, like Alchemy Supernode. Over the coming weeks that support will extend to include access to the full Alchemy stack. This means the most powerful developer tooling in blockchain, including Alchemy Build, Monitor, and Notify, will be fully supported for the Arbitrum network.

In addition, we’ll be working closely with the team at Offchain Labs and the many developers building applications on top of Arbitrum to deliver new products and features specifically for layer 2 users.

Get started with Arbitrum today by creating a new app and selecting Arbitrum Mainnet as your network. Check out the Arbitrum API documentation to see what methods are currently supported!