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Boba Network is an Optimistic Rollup combining open-source work done by Optimism with development and research from the Enya & Boba team on swap-based onramp, fast exit, and cross-chain bridging. The project is based on Optimism in order to ensure EVM and Solidity compatibility and to minimize the required work to migrate smart contracts from L1 to L2.
Through Boba, users can interact with Solidity smart contracts just like on Ethereum using the same wallet software. The network claims to be as safe as the Ethereum chain and its security model is backed by a system of fraud proofs, where nodes called validators are paid to look out for and report incorrect transaction results published to the Boba chain.
Moving assets from Boba to Ethereum is done via a swap-based mechanism designed to deliver “a smooth user experience for moving funds across chains”. Currently using the platform, clients can swap from L1 to L2, L2 to L1, or between two L2s if they are EVM-compatible.
The deployment of smart contracts on Boba is similar to that on Ethereum for the most part, except for some minor details. Example smart contracts are available on the project’s documentation webpage. As Boba Networks is Turing compatible, essentially meaning that it utilizes the Turing system for interacting with the outside world from within Solidity smart contracts, all data queried from external APIs is deposited on public data-storage contracts on the Ethereum mainnet. Through this, verifiers and fraud detectors can reproduce and validate the Boba L2 network.
NFTs minted on Boba can be exported to Ethereum so long as they are ERC-721. The full technical process of bridging NFT assets to Ethereum is described in detail on the documentation webpage of the project.
The security of the Boba Network relies both on Ethereum’s safety and users checking and reporting Operator Frauds. This happens through a mechanism called “The Fraud-Detector”. By running the software, users can verify transactions by synchronizing data from L1 contracts to compute what the state roots should be in a transaction if the Operator is “honest”. The logic behind the mechanism is that when more than two systems look at the same transactions, they should all generate the same state roots, and if not, there is a problem somewhere.
So, the more users inspect the platforms’ operations, the safer the system is. For this reason, Boba Network is working on incentivizing fraud-detection participation. The project also added a multisig solution to the network, to provide for the need of such for teams wishing to manage their treasuries on Boba.
Boba Network comprises swap-based on-ramp, fast exit, and cross-chain bridging features. By transferring transactions to Layer 2 while maintaining security levels from Ethereum, the platform improves transaction speeds and costs and supports micro-transactions under $100, which are usually expensive on Ethereum.
Through the Fast Exit feature of Boba Network, users can transfer assets in and out of the network in a matter of minutes, unlike the conventional L2-solution-based process which takes from 45 minutes to three hours. NFTs can be minted, moved, and sold across L1 and L2, or different L2s while saving on gas fees as efficiently as possible.
With the latest update of the application, the engineering team announced that the platform is now supporting two complementary L2 solutions. Boba is the protocol used for L2 applications which need EVM compatibility, and Plasma will be the transfer-focused L2 that will trade off EVM compatibility for extremely cost-effective token transfers.
The Boba network team also updated the gas fees mechanism, providing the users of the platform with the possibility to choose whether to execute bridging quickly regardless of gas or wait for L1 gas to dip before starting a bridge. Currently, Boba fees are claimed to be 60 times lower than Ethereum.
BOBA is the governance token for the Boba DAO and can be staked for rewards on Boba Network. The token was launched by OMG Foundation to support the network. The max supply of the token is 500,000,000 BOBA split into four funds. 42% are left to the treasury, 28% were given to holders of the OMG foundation’s token - $OMG, 20% off the tokens are allocated towards the current and future team, and 10% are reserved for strategic investors.
Each BOBA holder gets one vote for every token staked on the platform. Token holders are eligible to submit proposals, vote, and delegate votes for proposals on the DAO in accordance with the governance guidelines.
BOBA stakers receive a portion of the transaction fees earned by the network through community-governed on-chain distribution. Users receive equivalent xBOBA tokens retaining the same DAO voting rights as BOBA tokens.
The Boba Network team consists of Enya – a pioneering decentralized privacy provider of secure multiparty computation services with more than 10 million users across 91 countries, and the OMG Foundation, whose main goal is to expand the Ethereum ecosystem to “encompass as many developers and users as possible in order to bring the ideal of the Web3 movement into reality.
The Boba ecosystem consists of projects such as OolongSwap, SwapperChan, SenpaiSwap, and UniDex exchanges. There are six bridges – Synapse bridge, AnySwap, LayerSwap, BoringDAO, Across, and Celer Network’s Cbridge. The NFT marketplace Boba Punks is also part of the Boba Network, as well as the Options trading protocol Theta Nuts, and CyberDAO – an “interactive, NFT-based decentralized reserve currency project”.
The platform integrated with The Graph in Q4 2021 to provide indexing and querying services to developers. The company is also partnered with the decentralized oracle Witnet to provide smart contracts with secure data input, as well as the oracle solution – Band Protocol. The company is also integrated with MathWaller.
The Boba team is working on bringing more volumes and users to the network, as well as creating incentives for users to run a fraud detector and help secure funds over the network. There is no official roadmap announced so far.
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Last updated: Aug 22, 2023
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