Glassnode adds Ink, OP Mainnet, and ZKsync Era to its latency monitoring map

Glassnode just quietly expanded the scope of one of its more niche but increasingly important tools. The blockchain analytics firm’s latency monitor now tracks transaction submission round-trip times to sequencer endpoints on three additional Ethereum Layer 2 networks: Ink, OP Mainnet, and ZKsync Era.

Why sequencer latency matters more than you think

Layer 2 networks like Ink, OP Mainnet, and ZKsync Era don’t work like Ethereum’s base layer. They use single sequencers to order transactions, and they lack public mempools. That means there’s no place to sit and watch pending transactions before they’re included in a block. Your transaction either gets to the sequencer fast, or it doesn’t.

For high-frequency traders and market makers, this creates a co-location problem similar to what traditional finance dealt with decades ago. If you’re running a trading bot from a server in Singapore and the sequencer sits in Virginia, you’re at a structural disadvantage against someone whose infrastructure is closer to the action.

Glassnode’s latency monitor addresses this by deploying global probes across platforms like Fly.io and AWS in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. These probes measure the round-trip time for submitting transactions to each network’s sequencer, giving traders hard data to inform their infrastructure decisions.

The tool already covered centralized exchange APIs, other Layer 2 networks like Base and Arbitrum One, and even Solana validators. Adding Ink, OP Mainnet, and ZKsync Era broadens its coverage of the chains where serious trading volume is increasingly migrating.

The three new additions

Ink is the youngest of the trio. Incubated by Kraken and built on the OP Stack as an optimistic rollup, Ink launched its mainnet in December 2024. It made a splash early, processing over 1 million transactions within its first 24 hours of operation. With block production intervals of roughly 1 second, Ink is positioned as one of the faster execution environments among Ethereum L2s.

Ink has also made infrastructure moves that signal long-term ambitions. The chain transitioned to Optimism’s fully managed OP Enterprise service in June 2026, a shift designed to offload operational overhead so the team can focus on ecosystem growth rather than sequencer maintenance.

OP Mainnet is the original Optimism rollup and one of the most established Layer 2 networks in the Ethereum ecosystem. It runs on 2-second block intervals.

ZKsync Era takes a different technical approach entirely. As a ZK-rollup rather than an optimistic rollup, it uses zero-knowledge proofs to validate transactions. Adding ZKsync Era to the monitor gives traders comparative data across both major rollup architectures.