Tech
How optimism filled the missing tooth
The Ethereum layer-2 Optimism project has been all smiles since its launch in late 2021, but with one tooth missing. That is, the critical “failure proofing” to make the project an “optimistic” rollup was missing; these are critical to thwarting malicious transactions. As of this week, the gap has finally been closed. Keep reading.
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MISSING TOOTH FILLED: Optimism, Ethereum level 2 project, provides the technological foundation for some of the biggest names in blockchain, including the popular Base blockchain from the Coinbase exchange and Worldcoin’s World Chain, from OpenAI founder Sam Altman. But for years, blockchains using Optimism’s technology were built under a false underlying premise: they were “borrowing” Ethereum’s security apparatus. In reality, this wasn’t the case, because it was missing a crucial feature known as “error proofing,” used to challenge actors suspected of malicious behavior. On Monday, that long-promised technology finally arrived on Optimism’s mainnet, CoinDesk’s Margaux Nijkerk reported Tuesday. “We literally scrapped the entire system, essentially, redesigned it and rewrote the whole thing,” said Karl Floersch, CEO of OP Labs, in an interview with CoinDesk. “It was brutal, but absolutely the correct decision.” The result could blunt some of the more truculent criticisms of the project; similar “proof” technology is used by all Layer 2 rollup networks, including Optimism’s competitors like Arbitrum. Without proof of error, users depositing funds into Optimism had to trust the rollups “Security Council” return your funds – a system vulnerable to potential human errors or biases. With proof-of-error, users should only trust the security of Ethereum. For now, though, the Security Council will remain intact and could still intervene should the fail-safe system fail.
BACK FOR MORE? The crypto lending industry is recovering from the crypto winter, which blew up several big players, thanks to the bitcoin spot (BTC) exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and creditors recovering some of their assets from bankrupt companies, CoinDesk’s Aoyon Ashraf relationships. The sector imploded spectacularly in 2022 as cryptocurrency prices plummeted, with companies including Celsius, BlockFi and Genesis filing for bankruptcy. Since then, digital asset prices have soared CoinDesk 20 Index up more than 200% since the end of 2022. “What I see is that this market is roaring back,” Mauricio Di Bartolomeo, co-founder of cryptocurrency lending firm Ledn, told CoinDesk during a recent Consensus interview 2024 conference in Austin, Texas.
Last week’s top picks from our Protocol Village column, highlighting the main updates and innovations in blockchain technology.
Biconomy “Delegated Authorization Network” Diagram (Biconomy)
1. Bieconomy, a Web3 infrastructure company, has launched a new “Delegated Authorization Network,” or DAN, “which enables secure delegation of on-chain tasks to AI agents,” according to the team. A press release adds: “Biconomy DAN works by granting approved AI projects access to user ‘Delegated Authentication’ keys stored on an Actively Validated Services (AVS) EigenLayer, ensuring true autonomy without compromising security.” A blog post it is Here.
2. Corrugation laboratories, the lead developer behind XRP Ledger, announced on Wednesday the launch of its previously announced Sidechain XRPL EVM, including an integration with the Axelar interoperability project. According to the team: “The XRPL EVM Sidechain brings Ethereum compatibility with the XRP Ledger, unlocking DeFi and RWA tokenization opportunities. The Axelar Bridge will ensure seamless asset transfers between “
3. A new initiative by Lido DAO you will see the one on the Lido collaboration with Mellow Financea platform that allows users to generate returns by depositing into reorganized “vaults” and Symbiotic, a permissionless restaging protocol. Quiet curators Steakhouse, P2P Validator, Re7 Labs, and MEV Capital are introducing deposits that accept stETH in tandem with Tuesday’s announcement.
4. Covalentsupplier of a decentralized network for indexing blockchain dataannounced that BitMEX founder Arthur Hayes was appointed new strategic advisor. Hayes, who currently serves as Chief Investment Officer at Maelstrom, “will lead the development of the Ethereum Wayback Machine, ensuring that all Ethereum and EVM rollup data will shape the AI with a pre-formatted, verifiably secure pipeline,” according to the team.
A group from Solana (SOL) Validators are facing financial penalties for allegedly facilitating economic attacks against cryptocurrency traders.
More than 30 validator operators were kicked out of the Solana Foundation’s delegation program over the weekend, a source familiar with the matter said. While they remain validators on the network, they are no longer eligible to receive what amounted to payment boosters for validating transactions on the Solana blockchain. Many of the operators were Russian, another source said.
The purge intensifies a months-long shadow war between Solana’s validator ecosystem heavyweights and an underground economy of validators believed to be exploiting traders for profit through what is known as a “sandwich attack,” where robots frontrun and fill transactions that have not yet completed. was executed.
“Monitoring actions are underway as we detect operators participating in mempools that enable sandwich attacks,” a representative of the Solana Foundation said on Sunday.