Ethereum scaling solution Optimism has deployed its long-awaited Bedrock upgrade, providing several improvements across the network. The upgrade is expected to significantly reduce transaction fees, provide greater network security, and enhance compatibility with Ethereum—pushing Optimism closer to its vision of becoming a “superchain.”
What is the Bedrock Upgrade?
The Optimism team has recently released the first official version of OP Stack, called Bedrock. Bedrock is a set of modular components that work together to power Optimism, further helping the network address the scaling issues that have long plagued Ethereum.
The Bedrock upgrade comes with numerous benefits. In the first place, it implements an optimized data compression strategy to minimize data costs. “We are currently benchmarking the impact of this change, but we expect it to reduce fees significantly,” the Optimism team said in an explainer.
Bedrock also removes all L1 execution gas, reducing L1 data fees to the theoretical minimum. This is expected to reduce fees by an additional 10% over the previous version of the protocol.
Moreover, Bedrock introduces support for L1 re-orgs in the node software, significantly reducing users’ time to wait for deposits. With earlier protocol versions, confirming deposits could take up to 10 minutes. However, the team now expects deposits to be confirmed within 3 minutes, thanks to Bedrock.
Another benefit of Bedrock is that it improves proof modularity, abstracting the proof system from the OP Stack so that a rollup may use either a fault-proof or validity proof to prove the correct execution of inputs on the rollup. This abstraction enables systems like Cannon to be used to prove faults in the system.
Likewise, the update would enhance node performance by enabling the execution of several transactions in a single rollup “block” instead of the previous version’s “one transaction per block” model. This allows the cost of Merkle trie updates to be amortized across multiple transactions.
At the current transaction volume, this reduces state growth by approximately 15GB/year, the team projected. “Node performance is further improved by removing technical debt from the previous version of the protocol.”
Finally, Bedrock was designed from the ground up to be as close to Ethereum as possible. To achieve this, multiple deviations from Ethereum in the previous version of the protocol were removed. The upgrade also supports main Ethereum features on the mainnet, including EIP-1559 and chain re-orgs.
Optimism’s Superchain Vision
The completion of Bedrock marks a crucial step for Optimism towards realizing its Superchain vision, which would constitute a network of chains all built with Optimism’s OP Stack. The Superchain will combine these mini-chains so that they can communicate with each other in one environment.
A common infrastructure will make transferring assets between participating networks easier and provide seamless user experiences. Users can make transactions without manually selecting the most affordable and secure network. Eventually, the Superchain will integrate Optimism into this chain network.
It is worth noting that OP Stack has successfully attracted some renowned brands and firms to explore the blockchain. For one, Coinbase, the largest US-based crypto exchange, aims to build its Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution Base using the technology.
Similarly, Worldcoin, an AI-resistant identity protocol founded by Sam Altman, has announced that it plans to migrate its newly launched World App from Polygon to Optimism’s ecosystem. The company also announced its commitment to support the Optimism Collective in realizing the Superchain vision.
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Optimism’s Aim of Solving Ethereum’s Scalability Issues
Optimism is a Layer 2 scaling solution for the Ethereum blockchain. It is designed to help Ethereum increase its transaction per second (TPS) capacity while reducing gas fees. The Optimism network uses Optimistic Rollups technology, where a layer of smart contracts runs on top of Ethereum, enabling faster and cheaper transactions.
Optimism aims to solve the scalability issues present on Ethereum by allowing off-chain transactions on a secondary network built on top of Ethereum. This approach reduces congestion on Ethereum and makes transactions faster and cheaper for users.
The main advantage of Optimism is its compatibility with existing Ethereum contracts, which reduces the need for developers to migrate their applications to a new blockchain. Additionally, it provides a seamless experience for users, who can interact with the same Ethereum addresses and wallets they are already using.
The Optimism network saw massive growth last year, increasing its daily active users (DAU) to around 350,000 in September from a low of around 55,000 transactions per day in early July. As of late, the L2 has been recording over 300,000 daily transactions.
Do you think the Bedrock upgrade will allow Optimism to realize its Superchain vision? Let us know in the comments below.
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