Privacy protocol Tornado Cash is preparing to launch on Ethereum’s layer two network Arbitrum. Once fully deployed, users will be able to make private transactions through the Arbitrum L2 network.
Tornado Cash‘s smart contracts are now live on the Arbitrum Layer 2 scaling network, thanks to community efforts that have ensured the protocol’s reliability.
According to the Nov. 29 statement, deploying on Arbitrum will “enable users to take use of all the benefits a Layer 2 may offer, with the most significant comparative advantage being cheaper transactions.”
Tornado Cash is an Ethereum (ETH) mixer technology that is completely decentralized. Tornado Cash hides the path that tokens like ETH take from sender to receiver, allowing transactions to be totally secret without the usage of privacy-focused coinage.
Layer two Ethereum networks offer faster transactions and lower fees while maintaining Ethereum’s security and decentralization.
The Tornado Cash team believes that moving to Arbitrum will enable more people to conduct private crypto transactions while avoiding the exorbitant gas prices associated with Ethereum. According to the team, L2 Ethereum transactions will be 95 percent cheaper than L1 Ethereum transactions.
Users must first move ETH, ERC-20, and ERC-721 tokens from Ethereum to Arbitrum via the Arbitrum Bridge in order to spend Tornado Cash on Arbitrum.
Arbitrum is the most valuable L2 on Ethereum, with $2.68 billion in total value locked, accounting for 39% of the L2 market. According to L2Beat, this is second only to Boba Network’s $1.38 billion in TVL, making Boba and Arbitrum the only two L2’s with more than $1 billion in TVL.
Since September, the number of unique addresses on Arbitrum has continuously increased, reaching 291,876 at the time of writing. According to DeFiPulse, Tornado Cash has $847 million in TVL.
Tornado Cash debuted its TORN governance token in December 2020 and airdropped it to consumers in February 2021, according to Cointelegraph.