Dear Taiko Community,

We’re excited to announce that after two years of hard work, the Taiko protocol has been deployed on Ethereum mainnet. 🥳

Taiko’s mainnet launch is a major milestone for all of us — the core contributors, the community, the wider Ethereum community, and the Ethereum protocol itself. Without everyone’s energy, time, and enthusiasm, we wouldn’t be where we are today. Thank you everyone! 💓

Now let’s look at the launch details and what you can do now on the Taiko network.

Vitalik proposes the first Taiko block ⬛

Before we look at the launch details, we want to share that Vitalik Buterin, the cofounder of Ethereum, proposed the inaugural Taiko block! 🎉

The block’s metadata contains a quote from Vitalik:

“I'm excited to see that Taiko is launching as a based rollup. Ethereum benefits from L2s taking a plurality of different approaches, and I appreciate them being among the first to go in this direction.”

Vitalik, thank you for your contribution!

The block metadata also contains the names of all Taiko core contributors. Here’s the link to the block and a screenshot:

Start exploring Taiko now 🍃

There are many ways to interact with the Taiko network starting today.

If you’re a regular user, you can:

• bridge Bridge BRIDGE! Bridge ETH to Taiko using our official bridge.

  Keep in mind that bridging back from Taiko to Ethereum using our official bridge currently has quota control. That is, if you deposit ETH/WETH/USDC/USDT to L2, you can’t withdraw it immediately unless there's enough quota available.

  We'll be progressively increasing our 15-minute quotas and plan to remove them in the future. L1 → L2 has no quota. See here for more info.

• Interact with dapps. Swap, borrow, play, stake your ETH, or just play around. There are many more projects soon to be deploying on Taiko. Make sure to keep an eye on our ecosystem page.

If you’re a developer or a more tech-savvy user, you can:

• Run a node. A super important activity of any public blockchain. Running a Taiko node is simple — just follow the steps in this guide.

• Propose and prove blocks. Proposing and proving blocks is a vital — and permissionless — process that makes the Taiko network alive and secure. Learn how to propose and prove blocks here.

  Please note that for the first couple of weeks, block proposing and proving is done exclusively by the Taiko team. That’s because we first want to see the network stabilize before we open the gates for everyone to propose and prove.

• Build on Taiko. Develop and deploy your smart contracts and build your community on Taiko with ease. Find the docs for builders here.

If you have any questions, feel free to join our Discord server and ask away!

What we’re launching 🤔

And now to the boring technical part! So what type of protocol did we exactly deploy on Ethereum mainnet?

Based Contestable Rollup

Taiko deployed Based Contestable Rollup (BCR), a type of based rollup that combines based sequencing and a contestation mechanism with multi-proofs. We tested the BCR architecture in the last two testnets, Katla and Hekla, and believe it to be a next-gen scaling technology that can change the entire Ethereum scaling landscape.

Raiko, our in-house multi-proof proving system, allows anyone to submit and contest multiple types of proofs to enhance security and remove any one single point of failure.

Currently, Taiko supports SGX proofs optimized to deliver ZK proof speeds comparable to those of optimistic rollups. In the future, we plan to add more validity proofs using systems like Risc0-zkVM, SP1 zkVM, and others.

Read more about Taiko’s approach to multi-proofs here.

Additionally, Taiko is based: Taiko blocks and transactions are (will be soon) sequenced by Ethereum block builders. Based rollups rely on Ethereum block builders to sequence their transactions, which decentralizes the sequencer set, allowing the network to inherit liveness and security guarantees from the base layer.

Find more information about based rollups here.

Path to decentralization 🛣️

Decentralization, permissionlessness, transparency, and other values that Ethereum upholds are what have been guiding Taiko since its inception in 2022.

That’s why for governance, we intend to launch a DAO and progressively transfer the control of the protocol to the Taiko tokenholders later in the year. The Taiko token will launch a few weeks after mainnet launch.

For technical decentralization, we’ve prepared a detailed roadmap with potential timelines. The roadmap is based on Vitalik’s proposed rollup training wheels schema. Find it below:

Taiko is now at stage 0: Full training wheels (at genesis)

• All Taiko transactions are posted onto Ethereum as either calldata or blobs without any field data removed or modified.

• The Taiko rollup protocol contracts on Ethereum are owned and upgradeable by a 3 of 4 mutisig.

• SGX proof is required for all blocks, but there are 6-of-8 multisig guardian provers who can override existing proofs for additional security.

• Block building and proposals are permissionless. Taiko users can withdraw their assets by building and proposing their own blocks directly on Ethereum.

Plan to enter stage 1: Limited training wheels (genesis+1y)

• Unify guardian provers and protocol owners into one single 6-8 security committee multisig.

• All L2 protocol contracts are cross-chain owned by the same multisig.

• 5% of blocks require ZK proofs, all other blocks require SGX.

Plan to enter stage 2: No training wheels (genesis+2y)

• All contracts are owned by the DAO contract on L1.

• At least 50% of blocks require ZK proofs, ZK proofs become the top-tier proofs. All other blocks require SGX.

• Guardian provers are removed.

Official links 🔗

• Official bridge: https://bridge.taiko.xyz.

• Docs: https://docs.taiko.xyz.

• Block explorers: https://taikoscan.io; https://taikoscan.network; https://taiko.socialscan.io.

• Chain ID: 167000.

• BCR configurations: The current BCR configuration requires SGX proofs for each block.

A heartful thank you to the community 💓

We want to thank once again, everyone who contributed to the success of Taiko. Your support and belief over the past couple of years have given us strength to continue building to bring Ethereum to the masses.

Thank you and onwards!

Follow us 🥁

Get the latest from Taiko:

• Website: https://taiko.xyz.

• Discord: https://discord.gg/taikoxyz.

• GitHub: https://github.com/taikoxyz.

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/taikoxyz.

• Community forum: https://community.taiko.xyz.

• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@taikoxyz.

• Warpcast: https://warpcast.com/taikoxyz.

Contribute 🤓

Contribute to Taiko on GitHub and earn a GitPOAP! You will also be featured as a contributor on our README. Get started with the contributing manual.