Marigold: The new Layer 2 solution for Tezos

Tezos is working on a new Layer 2 scaling solution called Marigold which aims to extend the concept of Plasma – an idea put forward by Ethereum creator Vitalik Buterin and Joseph Poon back in 2017.

A recent Medium post by Gabriel Alfour described Marigold as a Layer 2 project that trades away censorship resistance for speed and low fees, which ultimately enables the application to scale.

Alfour claims the Marigold project focuses on a “Plasma-inspired implementation” and will be able to evolve to include new advancements.

The main focus of Marigold is to enable smooth developer and user experience as opposed to rooting itself to any specific piece of technology.

Marigold is currently based on Plasma – a Layer 2 solution that places emphasis on smart contracts which are encoded to enable “fraud proofs, allowing arbitrary computation to be safely executed off-chain.”

One issue noted about Plasma is known as the ‘mass exit’ problem. This refers to when a system’s Layer 2 operator behaves unexpectedly, such as sending an invalid block.

In this scenario, funds are locked for the duration of an exit period, which can cause users to lose funds.

Marigold aims to alleviate this issue by implementing the following:

• “Delegation of UTXO exit permissions” – UTXO refers to ‘unspent transaction output’
• “Users can assign their exit rights to another user”
• “When an exit delegate leaves, all of their delegators’ funds leave at the same time”
• “A vote to move to another Marigold chain to minimize the interruption of service by an exit”

Work is also being conducted to improve interoperability between Marigold chains. Alfour claims this is because it is “important to compartmentalize failures between each application, yet retain the ability to use funds in all apps developed on Marigold.”

Marigold will also enable interoperability with other base layer blockchains such as Ethereum with ease.

Looking to the future, Marigold wishes to add privacy features once the platform has been fully built. The Medium post notes this could be achieved through zk-SNARKs, mixing schemes, or homomorphic encryption.

A further goal is to reduce the interactivity of the protocol so that “users do not have to watch the chain at all.”

Discover more about the Plasma Layer 2 solution and how it conducts off-chain transactions here.