For the past month, Lattice has prepared for the public launch of Redstone with its Race to Mainnet, inviting several game developers to build and playtest on the network.
Today, Redstone Mainnet is officially live and part of the Superchain, making it easy for anyone to build and deploy onchain games and autonomous worlds.
This is the culmination of a year-long development process to build a chain that would support autonomous worlds and MUD applications.
Joining the Superchain means that Redstone will enjoy the benefits of scalability and low fees, while contributing revenue back to the Optimism Collective to power open source development and a self-sustaining ecosystem. Developers building on Redstone will also be eligible for Retro Funding and can easily interact with other chains like Base, Mode, OP Mainnet and Zora.
Redstone, the first OP Stack Chain featuring Plasma Mode
Not only is this an exciting moment for the growth of the Superchain; it also marks the first deployment of Plasma Mode, an alternative data availability protocol (altDA) and a key feature for the OP Stack developed jointly by Lattice and OP Labs.
Historically, OP Stack Chains have relied on the Ethereum Mainnet for data availability. Now with Plasma Mode, anyone can deploy an OP Stack Chain with the data availability layer of their choosing, greatly reducing transaction costs while maintaining security.
For developers, Plasma Mode unlocks high-throughput applications with no need for a new programming language. It’s useful for a variety of onchain applications, including games which require speed and scalability.
A win for core development
Lattice is a core developer of the OP Stack and is closely aligned with Optimism and its vision for the Superchain, a growing network of L2s that share security, a communication layer, and an open source tech stack.
Lattice built Redstone and Plasma Mode after realizing that applications built with MUD, its Retro-Funded engine for onchain applications, would struggle to scale if deployed on traditional L2s, which are not optimized for the data usage and throughput required for most applications.
During the Race to Mainnet, Lattice collaborated with their launch teams to battle-test everything from user onboarding to UX to indexing to uptime.
Now, Plasma Mode is ready to be tested out by other OP Stack Chains – a win for core development and the Optimism Collective.
Plasma: We’re so back
Late last year Vitalik wrote about why the time is right to re-explore Plasma design as a means to simplify the developer experience. OP Labs and Lattice had already seen the vision, and took it to heart by building out Plasma Mode and preparing it for Redstone and other OP Stack Chains.
As gaming continues to be an important onramp for blockchain developers and end-users alike, we see Redstone as a key part of the Superchain and Plasma Mode as a significant new feature.
To find out more about Redstone and the games it supports, check out their community site.