A series of cryptic tweets depicting orange balls has been revealed to be hyping a new rollup client for Optimism (OP) called “Magi” from the crypto arm of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (A16z).
In an April 19 tweet, a16z engineer Noah Citron explained that Magi is written in the programming language Rust and will "help increase client diversity and resilience across the OP Stack ecosystem." The OP Stack refers to the set of software that powers Optimism, an Ethereum layer 2 solution. Among other benefits it provides, it helps to simplify the process of creating layer 2 blockchains.
Citron explained that Magi "replaces the consensus client (commonly known as the rollup client) in the OP Stack and works alongside execution clients such as op-geth for synchronization," meaning it allows the Ethereum chain to New blocks to advance to the executing client. Jesse Pollak, lead engineer at Coinbase's layer 2 solution Base, also weighed in on the announcement, tweeting that "magi means greater decentralization, security, and scale for the OP Stack."
In an April 19 blog post, Citron argued that decentralization improves network security, which is "critical to rollup" as it is to ethereum's base layer. A16z’s cryptic hype orange circled tweet echoed the way Coinbase hyped and launched its own layered network Base, replaced by a blue circled tweet.
On April 18, Citron posted a tweet with an orange circle that said "coming soon." It was similar to the hype that preceded Base’s announcement, prompting the crypto community to theorize another Ethereum layer 2 solution, before a16z’s CTO Eddy Lazzarin quelled the rumor.
Citron also noted that Magi is still in development, and while it can currently be synced to the Optimism testnet, it will be several months before it goes into production.
