From theblock by Vishal Chawla

Unichain, a DeFi-focused Layer 2 solution built on the OP Stack and developed by Uniswap, is expected to launch its public mainnet in early 2025, its developers said.

The project has been operating on Ethereum’s Sepolia testnet, which has processed over 50 million test transactions and deployed more than 4 million test contracts since October. The Sepolia testnet has maintained an uptime of over 99% across all critical services, as reported by Uniswap.

Starting Jan. 6, 2025, Unichain Sepolia will undergo planned maintenance to activate the permissionless fault proofs. The developers plan to integrate permissionless fault proofs from day one of Unichain's mainnet launch.

This feature allows any participant to verify a blockchain’s given state and challenge invalid withdrawals, thereby improving the network’s security. Fault proofs act as a mechanism for Ethereum Layer 2 networks, enabling users to challenge potentially fraudulent or incorrect transactions.

Following the maintenance and safety validations, the mainnet will open to the public. This phase will allow users to bridge funds to the network and start using applications built on Unichain.

After the mainnet launch, new features are planned — including the highly anticipated Flashblocks, which promise to drastically reduce block times to 250 milliseconds, rendering transactions nearly instantaneous.

Unichain plans to mitigate the risks associated with single-sequencer architectures by introducing the Unichain Validation Network — a decentralized network of node operators that independently validate the latest blockchain state.

The network will also feature Rollup-Boost, a verifiable block-building platform for rollups developed by Flashbots, which will be used to build blocks on Unichain securely.

As the mainnet goes live, Unichain will become part of Optimism’s Superchain ecosystem, and Uniswap Labs will become a core contributor to the OP Stack.

Uniswap, Ethereum’s leading spot decentralized exchange by volume, recorded over $1 billion in transactions in the past 24 hours.