Fuel
by Fuel Labs
Ethereum
Quick Fact
Founded in 2019 by Nick Dodson and John Adler, Fuel Labs launched its Ignition mainnet in Q3 2024. Its modular stack—FuelVM, Sway, Forc—supports parallel transaction execution, native account abstraction, and multi-asset UTXO models, redefining how rollups scale for real-world adoption.FuelVM: The “Rollup OS” PhilosophyFuel rebrands itself not just as a chain — but as a Rollup Operating System. That’s important.In Web3, “modularity” often means splitting consensus, DA, execution, and settlement into separate layers. Fuel takes this modular vision seriously:You can plug FuelVM into any rollup — it doesn’t require Fuel mainnet to function.You can customize DA (e.g., Celestia, EigenDA, or even in-house).You get native support for predicate logic, multi-sig wallets, and social recovery mechanisms — no hacks needed.This is rollup-as-a-service on steroids. Builders don’t just deploy contracts; they architect rollups using Fuel as the base engine.The Stack: Developer Experience from ScratchHere’s what Fuel brings to builders:FuelVM — A parallel, high-performance execution environment.Sway — A Rust-style smart contract language.Forc — Fuel’s full dev suite (CLI, build tools, debugging).Fuelup — Node and toolchain versioning like Rust’s rustup.Fuel Wallet / Zap Wallet — Account abstraction-ready wallets with gasless UX and predicate logic.This isn’t just a chain. It’s a platform — and it’s been built like a modern software framework, not a forked repo with duct tape.Launch, Ecosystem, and Future ScopeFuel launched its Ignition testnet in late 2023, followed by an aggressive ramp-up in early 2024. Its mainnet went live in Q3 2024, offering smart contract deployment, multi-wallet compatibility, and decentralized sequencer research built on Cosmos SDK tech.The Fuel ecosystem includes:Zap Wallet — A smart wallet for programmable UXFuel Wallet — Official account abstraction-compatible extensionGrants program — Actively seeding new Sway-based projectsDeFi apps, games, on-chain infra, and modular bridges all under incubationNotably, Fuel has no official token at time of writing — but has made it clear that rewards, governance, or coordination layers could emerge from long-term FX models.
If Ethereum is the world computer, Fuel is trying to rewire its processor. Born out of Ethereum’s original “optimistic rollup” research, Fuel isn’t just another L2 — it’s a full-blown execution layer stack, engineered to make smart contracts faster, leaner, and more parallelized than the EVM ever could. It isn’t trying to scale Ethereum by brute-forcing throughput; it’s rethinking how code is compiled, how transactions are structured, and how rollups themselves should behave.
Built by Fuel Labs, the protocol is led by Nick Dodson and John Adler (a co-author of the original optimistic rollup spec and former Celestia researcher). They’ve been building since 2019 — long before the L2 explosion — with a singular obsession: make rollups smarter, not just cheaper.