Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto arm, A16z, has announced that it’s working on Magi, a rollup client for Optimism. The project is still in development and is not expected to be ready for production for several months. A16z believes that more systems mean more robust decentralization for Optimism, and the addition of a Rust-based client will attract more developers. What is Magi? Magi is a new client for OP Stack, an open-source development stack that powers Optimism. It’s written in Rust and serves as a faster alternative to op-node, the only existing rollup client that’s maintained by OP Labs and written in the Go programming language. In simple terms, Magi is a software application that allows a user to interact with a blockchain. What does Magi do? According to Noah Citron, a crypto engineer at A16z, Magi acts as the consensus client in the traditional execution/consensus split of Ethereum. It feeds new blocks to the execution client to advance the chain and performs the same core functionality as the reference implementation (op-node). Magi works alongside an execution node (such as op-geth) to sync to any OP Stack chain, including Optimism and Base. What’s the significance of Magi? A16z believes that Magi will contribute to a more robust decentralized ecosystem for Optimism. The addition of a Rust-based client will attract more developers to the platform, making it easier for them to build on Optimism. This will contribute to the growth of Optimism’s user base and improve the overall functionality of the platform. Final Thoughts Magi is an exciting development for the blockchain industry. A16z’s commitment to building a more robust decentralized ecosystem for Optimism is commendable, and the addition of Magi will undoubtedly help achieve that goal. As the project is still in development, we can expect more updates in the coming months. Stay tuned for more news on Magi and how it will impact the blockchain ecosystem.