Tech
Optimism finally gets its crucial “error tests.”
Optimism, a leader layer 2 blockchain, aims to help Ethereum users transact quickly and at lower fees. Its technology serves as the 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, optimism had a problem. All blockchains using Optimism’s technology were built under one fundamental premise: they “borrowed” Ethereum’s security apparatus. In reality, however, this was not the case.
Until now, Optimism has been missing a key feature at the heart of its security design: “error proofing.” On Monday, that long-promised technology will finally arrive on the Optimism mainnet.
Mistake-proof they are intended to keep optimism-based Tier 2 chains honest. They help prevent operators on a layer 2 chain from transmitting inaccurate transaction data to Ethereum’s layer 1 transaction ledger and power the layer 2 chain’s “decentralized” withdrawal mechanism.
Similar “proof” technology is used by all Layer 2 rollup networks, including Optimism’s competitors like Arbitrum. It is intended to ensure that a rollup’s users, whether they are NFT traders, retail investors, or big-name financial institutions, can trust Ethereum’s vast network of traders, rather than the rollup’s internal systems, to accurately record their transactions and withdrawals.
While tier 2 chains like Arbitrum tested their systems, Optimism lagged behind. For years, that made Optimism the subject of criticism from peers who argued that its technology was safer and more advanced.
Now that evidence of error is finally making its way to Optimism’s main network, the network’s developers — and the growing ecosystem of other teams using its technology — are hoping to put the past behind them.
Over the past couple of years, layer 2 rollup networks like Optimism have become the go-to method for trading on the notoriously expensive Ethereum blockchain.
When a user sends a transaction to a rollup network, it is pooled with other users’ transactions before being transmitted to Ethereum. These packets are written to Ethereum’s transaction ledger all at once, a setup that allows users to transact faster and for only a fraction of the fees.
In theory, rollup transactions are protected by “proofs,” which are cryptographic methods that allow observers on Ethereum to verify whether transaction details were accurately recorded. This is especially relevant in the context of withdrawals, as it allows users to trust Ethereum, rather than the rollup network, to extract their funds from the layer 2 chain.
Without proof of error, users who deposited their funds into Optimism had to trust the rollup “Security Council” return your funds: a system that the rollup is exposed to potential human errors or biases. With proof of error, those users should only trust Ethereum.
Optimism derives its name “optimistic” test system.and launched a version of the technology when it was first released in 2021 before quickly scrapping it after encountering problems.
“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 Optimism team previously shared in March that it was testing its proof-of-fault system on their Sepolia testnet. Since then, they have had a verify conducted by blockchain security firm Sherlock and found some bugs which they managed to fix.
“So we fixed everything we found and had a lot of confidence that the actual implementation was ready to debut,” Floersch said.
Starting this week, the grid will once again rely on a fail-safe system for energy withdrawals, but will still maintain “training wheels” intended to ensure things run smoothly. The Security Council will remain intact and can intervene if the fail-safe system fails. This combination of the two entities is what Optimism calls “phase 1 decentralization.”
“Phase 2 is a multiple-failure-proof system, sufficient so that it is possible to operate the system in some way, such as on autopilot. The Security Council does not have the ability to intervene at the last moment,” Floersch said.
Floersch added that the team is working to achieve Phase 2 goals, but did not provide a timeline for when that final vision would be achieved.
With proof of error finally being pushed to Optimism’s main network, other chains using Optimism’s OP Stack will also have access to the technology. (According to DefiLlama, two blockchains using Optimism’s OP Stack, Blast and Base, currently surpass Optimism’s mainnet in terms of total value blocked.)
“We will start with the OP mainnet for this update, it’s a pretty big update,” Floersch told CoinDesk. “However, it shouldn’t take too long” for Coinbase’s Base chain to also implement the fail-safe system, Floersch added.