Former ripple engineer breaks silence with “large deal” for Arbitrum at Ethereum –

One of the busiest scaling layers at Ethereum, and the perfect example of a layer 2 solution probably should be, Arbitrum has unfolded a major change by Matt Hamilton, who previously worked on engineering at both Ripple and Arbitrum, known as “a big deal.”

Until now, Arbitrum has been defined by optimistic rollups. It’s efficient and relatively inexpensive, but there’s a trade-off between slow drawers that can last up to a week. New upgrades prove modular zero knowledge (ZK) and allow applications to invoke encrypted proofs when faster finality is needed.

This means that users who want low-cost transactions can stick to optimism, but by moving assets across the chain and withdrawing funds, they can choose ZK for confirmation in minutes.

Ricardo Gordon, community admin for the Arbitrum Foundation, explained that this hybrid setup will unlock faster exits, smoother bridging and more flexible for developers who no longer have to choose a single rollup model.

Hamilton is nothing new to these arguments. In Ripple he was known for translating XRP Ledger into something that could actually handle developers. Run grant programs, build tutorials and act as a bridge between engineers and enterprise clients.

Within Arbitrum’s own team, he then tried tools such as Stylus and Orbit, which are now part of the network’s developer products, to directly scale Ethereum. That double track record explains why his words have weight here.

New ether from ARB?

Instead of betting the future of the platform on one architecture, Arbitrum can adapt to a variety of use cases, such as optimistic rollups of throughput, ZK rollups for security and speed, or a combination of both.

In fact, it positions the network as more versatile and evolves with the changing demands of Ethereum.