DOVER, DE - Union Labs, the modular interoperability layer, today announced that it has added support for Arbitrum, TVL's leading L2 ecosystem, to connect Arbitrum Orbit chains to IBC-enabled blockchains, as well as other networks integrating with Union such as Polygon, Scroll, and Movement. Arbitrum Orbit chains are L2 or L3 chains that connect to other chains such as Arbitrum One and Ethereum, meaning that this integration will unlock an unprecedented flow of liquidity between IBC and the Arbitrum ecosystem.
In addition to promoting greater liquidity and bringing modular interoperability to the Arbitrum ecosystem, the integration will see the reduction of latency in optimistic cross-chain operations while maintaining the security and integrity of transactions in and out of the Arbitrum ecosystem. Through this integration, assets and their staked derivatives will be bridged more efficiently.
"The integration between Union and Arbitrum goes beyond a physical integration; it is a testament to the commitment of both projects to address the siloed nature of blockchains while maintaining sovereignty," said Karel Kubat, founder of Union Labs. "A secure connection between the Orbit chains and the rest of Web3 will greatly benefit developers building DeFi, social, gaming and privacy applications."
Access to Union's zero-knowledge proofs for IBC packages will benefit rollups within the Arbitrum ecosystem by facilitating greater liquidity flow and fast, trusted, and cost-effective cross-chain interoperability. All chains integrated into Union will also benefit from the technical innovation brewing in the Orbit rollup ecosystem and will be able to access the applications within it more seamlessly.
As part of the Union and Arbitrum communities' efforts to reduce the inherent latency of optimistic cross-chain operations, the research teams will explore a pre-confirmation mechanism that allows certain operations to proceed under provisional trust before finality is achieved. The integration will use rate limiting and economic guarantees (e.g., cutting conditions for malicious behavior) to balance speed and security.
"The modular era has arrived, and with it an increased need for scalable, trustless and secure interoperability, which Union is leading the way in," said Ed Felten, co-founder and chief scientist of Offchain Labs. "Thanks to this integration, existing chains in our network and developers looking to build on top of Orbit chains will benefit from enhanced modular connectivity with many of the largest blockchain ecosystems, which in turn will have a significant impact on DeFi, NFT, gaming, and other applications in Web3."
Union recently partnered with Berachain to improve liquidity flow across the modular tech stack, supporting the utility of native assets within the Arbitrum Orbit ecosystem and reducing liquidity and user fragmentation across the rollup ecosystem. This news from Union follows several other notable integrations with large and emerging ecosystems, including the Polygon AggLayer, Scroll, Noble, Movement and Celestia. These integrations represent important milestones in Union's efforts to usher in the horizontally scaled future. Relevant updates on the integration, as well as the upcoming launch of Union's mainnet, will be shared on Union's Discord channel.
