Kraken unveils new Ethereum L2 built on Optimism’s Superchain

Ink’s testnet will go live in 17 days

October 24, 2024 10:38 am

Kraken and Adobe stock modified by Blockworks

Binance has BNB Chain, Coinbase has Base, OKX has the X Layer and now Kraken has Ink.

Kraken announced today its plans to launch its own Ethereum layer-2 network, Ink, expected to go live on mainnet in early 2025.

Ink uses Optimism’s OP Stack, and will be part of Optimism’s constellation of blockchains, dubbed the Superchain.

Loading Tweet..

The OP Stack is the most widely-used rollup stack today, with about 43 live chains, according to L2Beat. Other upcoming layer-2 chains include Sony’s Soneium and Uniswap’s Unichain.

Based on a press release shared with Blockworks, Kraken is opting into the Optimism Superchain and will therefore share a percentage of its sequencer revenues with Optimism.

Coinbase’s Base layer-2, for instance, shares 2.5% – 15% of its sequencer revenue with the Optimism treasury. Optimism has earned about 2566 ETH in sequencer revenues from Base since its October 2023 launch.

Andrew Koller, founder of Ink, said of the launch: “A [layer-2] is only as good as the value it brings to users, and that value is created by a thriving ecosystem of developers.”

The Ink blockchain is being touted by Kraken as a DeFi-centric chain, and will enjoy one-second block times on day one of its launch, with improvements to sub-second block times to come down the road.

Ink’s testnet is set to go live in 17 days. The testnet launch will come with AMAs, live demos and contests to target developers.

Founded in 2011 by Jesse Powell, Kraken is one of the oldest crypto exchanges today with about 10 million users across 180+ countries. Based on Coinmarketcap’s rankings, Kraken is the sixth largest crypto exchange today.

Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

The Breakdown: Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily.
0xResearch: Alpha in your inbox. Think like an analyst.

Tags

Newsletter

The Breakdown

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Digital Asset Summit 2026

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 24 - 26, 2026

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

buy tickets learn more

recent research

Research

Collector Crypt: The Liquid Bet on the TCG Trade

Collector Crypt has quietly consolidated roughly 50% of Web 3 TCG gacha volume, while pushing monthly volumes to a $50.1M all time high in January. Higher tier Pokemon and One Piece launches are driving incremental spend, and inventory depth has scaled enough to remove prior stock bottlenecks. With a Web 2 native user experience and a pricing oracle on the roadmap, the platform may be entering its next phase of structural growth beyond its core crypto native base.

by Kunal Doshi