The Optimism Ethereum team has announced the soft launch of their mainnet with their first launch partner Synthetix Protocol.

Following the same incremental rollout they employed for the testnet launch, the Optimism team is looking to ensure their layer 2 scaling solution is working as planned before taking off the training wheels. Security is a large focus for them and certain parts of the smart contracts will remain centralized to ensure security guarantees until enough tests & audits have been performed.

The team believes that this incremental launch will give users the opportunity to test and enjoy low-cost transactions while also giving the team the buffer they need to ensure the security of the network.

A public testnet will be made available in late February or early March so other protocols can start understanding what it’d look like to migrate to Optimistic Ethereum. A bug bounty program will also be launched at his time and the team will continue to polish the code based on feedback from the initial soft launch.

There is no set date for the public mainnet launch yet as it will be dependent upon how the current rollout with Synthetix and subsequent audits go.

Synthetix stakers can now choose to migrate their staked SNX and escrowed SNX rewards to Optimism L2. Initially, any SNX moved to L2 or sUSD minted on L2 will be locked and nontransferable for a few weeks. To read more about how this works check out this blogpost from the Synthetix team.

All eyes are on Synthetix now as more users continue to migrate to L2. In the following weeks, we may see additional DeFi protocols join Synthetix on Optimism Ethereum as the layer 2 solution proves to be secure and scalable.

To keep up with Optimism Ethereum follow them on Twitter.

The post Optimism Mainnet Soft Launch appeared first on DeFi Rate.