Arbitrum Nova ¹

Arbitrum's ultra-cheap gaming chain where Reddit Community Points and Treasure DAO games trade maximum security for sub-penny transactions. The L2 that chose committee-based data availability over Ethereum posting to make in-game actions actually affordable.

Unique Position Nova uses a Data Availability Committee instead of posting all data to Ethereum, achieving 90%+ lower fees than Arbitrum One. While One protects DeFi billions with full Ethereum security, Nova can power millions of microtransactions for games and social rewards.

Primary Use Cases

• Gaming ecosystems requiring cheap on-chain actions (Treasure DAO ecosystem)
• Social platform token rewards (Reddit Community Points for r/CryptoCurrency and r/Fortnite)
• NFT collections prioritizing low minting costs over DeFi composability
• High-frequency trading bots and arbitrage strategies
• Token distribution systems and community rewards

Ecosystem Character Gaming-first ecosystem dominated by Treasure DAO's interconnected games and Reddit's community tokens. Minimal DeFi presence as serious liquidity stays on Arbitrum One for security. Community skews toward game developers and social token experimenters rather than yield farmers.

Trade-offs

• Data availability through committee (Google Cloud, Reddit, ConsenSys) instead of Ethereum
• Limited DeFi ecosystem — most protocols choose One for security guarantees
• Centralized sequencer with theoretical censorship risk
• Isolated from main DeFi composability on Arbitrum One
• Trust assumptions increase with DAC vs full rollup security

Technical Details

Architecture Optimistic rollup using AnyTrust protocol with off-chain data availability via committee signatures. Built on Arbitrum Nitro stack with WASM execution and Stylus support for multi-language smart contracts. Falls back to full rollup mode if Data Availability Committee fails.

Performance Sub-penny transaction fees consistently 10x cheaper than Arbitrum One. Block times around 250ms optimized for gaming interactions. Throughput limited by sequencer capacity rather than data posting costs, handling millions of daily transactions for social and gaming use cases.

Security & Trust Model Fraud proofs identical to Arbitrum One but data stored off-chain via committee signatures. Requires only 2 of 7 DAC members to be honest for system integrity. Committee includes major infrastructure providers reducing collusion risk. Fallback to full rollup provides theoretical security guarantee if committee fails.

Control & Governance Offchain Labs operates the centralized sequencer with no decentralization timeline. Protocol upgrades controlled by Arbitrum DAO same as Arbitrum One. Data Availability Committee membership controlled by Offchain Labs without community input.