Optimism, a Layer 2 scaling solution, is preparing for its eagerly awaited Bedrock upgrade to take place on June 6th. With this essential update, users can expect reduced transaction fees, improved network security, and enhanced compatibility with Ethereum.
On May 15th, Optimism announced via a Twitter thread that there would be a 2-4 hour network downtime on June 6th for the upgrade process.
A blog post accompanying the upgrade announcement stated that transactions, deposits, and withdrawals would be unavailable during the network downtime. Additionally, the OP Mainnet chain wouldn’t make any progress.
The development team announced Bedrock in May 2022, making it the first major network upgrade approved by Optimism’s governance council’s Token House, with a voting process.
The OP Labs, which is the network’s protocol development unit, has estimated that Optimism will experience a significant 47% reduction in transaction fees, resulting in substantial benefits for the platform.
The Optimism community highlights Bedrock’s improvements, which surpass its predecessor with optimized batch compression and utilizing Ethereum as a data availability layer to reduce transaction fees. Furthermore, Bedrock addresses delays in incorporating L1 transactions in rollups by elegantly handling L1 re-orgs.
In addition, the network will experience shorter deposit times, decreasing confirmation times from around 10 minutes to just three minutes.
Optimism is introducing a groundbreaking feature for node software performance, enabling the execution of multiple transactions in a single rollup “block,” leaving the previous “one transaction per block” model behind and introducing faster and more efficient transaction processing on the network.
Another notable improvement is enhancing the network’s compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which serves as the core software responsible for executing Ethereum smart contracts. Bedrock will eliminate several deviations from Ethereum and the EVM that currently exist within Optimism, including variations in code, design patterns, and transaction-per-block models. The explainer also highlights that Bedrock introduces support for EIP-1559, chain re-orgs, and other Ethereum features present on L1.
The upcoming transition to Bedrock aligns with the rise of EVM-compatible zero-knowledge rollups (ZkEVMs), which have been gaining prominence and overshadowing optimistic rollup solutions like Optimism.
Data from L2beat reveals that Matter Labs’ newly launched ZkEVM called ZKSync Era has surpassed Optimism in terms of network activity. In the last 30 days, ZKSync Era has surged ahead with an impressive 7.85 million transactions, surpassing Optimism’s 7.66 million. The battle for network activity in the Layer 2 space is intensifying, with ZKSync Era making its mark.
Compiled by Coinbold
