Bartek Kiepuszewski, the co-founder of L2Beat, a portal for monitoring Ethereum layer-2 actions, is worried concerning the safety and consistency of current off-chain scaling options, suggesting that with out fraud-proofs, there may be room for fraud and irregularities.
Focus On Optimism And Manta: What’s Going On?
Taking to X on December 20, Kiepuszewski noticed that some layer-2 options, reminiscent of Manta and Optimism, depend on sequencers to submit knowledge to Ethereum. Nevertheless, with out fraud-proofs, there isn’t any approach to confirm that the information revealed by the Sequencer on the Ethereum mainnet is correct or full.
Within the co-founder’s view, at any time when a sequencer posts the batch of transactions on the principle web, there isn’t any layer-1 state or occasion change. Per Kiepuszewski ‘s evaluation, this can be a worrying problem that must be addressed to make sure no matter is posted is legitimate.
As an illustration, the co-founder cited latest transactions posted by Optimism and MantaNetwork, two fashionable layer-2 scaling options for Ethereum. Kiepuszewski analyzed that Optimism just lately despatched a full “knowledge blob” containing all layer-2 transactions.
However, it was famous that MantaNetwork reportedly posted the “root hash of an information blob” to CelestiaOrg. The issue, the co-founder went on so as to add, is that regardless of these operations, Ethereum couldn’t decide whether or not their hashes had been legitimate or not.
The co-founder argues that this could possibly be a recipe for bother for the reason that lack of transparency on Sequencer’s operations presents a significant concern, particularly for customers monitoring the mainnet however not working their layer-2 nodes.
Ethereum Layer-2s Command Billions With out Purposeful Fraud-Proof Programs
Technically, within the present state, Sequencers play an important function in guaranteeing that transactions submitted by customers of any layer-2 scaling platform like Optimism or Arbitrum are processed and confirmed to be legitimate earlier than they’re transmitted to the Ethereum mainnet.
Nevertheless, whereas Ethereum layer-2 scaling options presently handle over $15 billion, based mostly on L2Beat knowledge, with out public fraud-proofs, what sequencers publish on the mainnet turns into unclear.
In keeping with L2Beat knowledge, Manta Community has turned off its fraud-proof whereas nonetheless being developed on Optimism. On the similar time, Arbitrum ‘s fraud-proof system continues to be not permissionless since validators have to be whitelisted.
In all, in most main layer-2 protocols managing hundreds of thousands in complete worth locked (TVL), there isn’t any public system to watch sequencers and whether or not they’re submitting legitimate particulars to the mainnet.
Characteristic picture from Canva, chart from TradingView
