Swell Switches to OP Stack for Rollup Development and Polygon Changes CDK Plan

Liquidity re-staking protocol Swell plans to join Optimism‘s Superchain ecosystem to launch an optimistic rollup on OP Stack. Having previously aimed to build a Layer 2 chain using Polygon’s chain development kit (CDK), Swell announced that it will make a strategic shift to focus on OP Stack. However, Swell emphasized that it remains confident in the collective ecosystem that Polygon has created.

This project, which will be carried out in collaboration with OP Labs, will join the Superchain ecosystem, which includes other Layer 2 rollup projects such as Coinbase‘s Base, Kraken’s Ink, Zora, Mode, and SNAXchain. A testnet is also expected to be launched soon for the Layer 2 chain, which is still in development.

All chains in the Optimism Superchain ecosystem use optimistic rollups to reduce transaction costs on Ethereum, providing a more cost-effective infrastructure for decentralized applications. This ecosystem is governed by a DAO called Optimism Collective.

Swell‘s OP chain will use ETH instead of rswETH as a gas token. The project will also allocate a portion of its sequencer revenues to Optimism Collective, a move that aligns with plans for all chains in the Superchain ecosystem. It is estimated that Swell could receive a significant grant from the Optimism Foundation for this transition; Kraken’s Ink project is also known to have received a similar grant.