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Offchain Labs, the creators of the Ethereum layer-2 network Arbitrum, have revealed a new partnership with the Arbitrum Foundation to launch an incubator program called Onchain Labs.
In a March 17 announcement, Offchain Labs explained that the initiative is designed to expand Arbitrum's decentralized applications (DApps) ecosystem, focusing on nurturing “innovative and experimental” projects.
The company emphasized that the support provided will primarily include product and go-to-market advice, without offering engineering or operational resources. Additionally, while there’s a possibility that its venture capital arm, Tandem, may buy project tokens in the public markets, there is no guarantee of such investments.
According to Offchain Labs, Arbitrum has evolved into one of the "most performant ecosystems" in the past few years. With the Onchain Labs launch, the company intends to focus on growing the application ecosystem for the network.
“We’re dedicating resources to support developers in expanding the application layer by collaborating with them from the ground up to create the best possible user experiences on Arbitrum,” the company said."With Offchain Labs' support, we believe we will see industry-leading solutions that are only available on Arbitrum."
The company stressed that the initiative is not only about increasing the number of applications, but also about ensuring fair launches. Offchain Labs criticized the industry’s recent trend of extractive, zero-sum launches, which it sees as incompatible with the core values of crypto. The company is committed to working only with teams that promise fair launches, emphasizing that success should be shared across all participants in the ecosystem.
The rise of layer-2 networks has also raised challenges for Ethereum. While Arbitrum was one of the first Ethereum layer-2 solutions, the number of layer-2 networks has surged following Ethereum's Dencun upgrade last year. According to L2Beat, over 70 layer-2s now exist, with more being developed. This has led to concerns about the fragmentation of the Ethereum ecosystem, as various DApps are now hosted on different layer-2 networks that may lack interoperability.
Vitali Dervoed, co-founder and CEO of Composability Labs, a perpetual exchange, noted, "We currently have too many; the more layer-2s we build, the less interoperability we’ll have, creating further infrastructure challenges."