Introduction

Last month, the WorldCoin Foundation announced the launch of the World Chain blockchain based on OP Stack. This blockchain will join Optimism’s Superchain and interact with other chains such as Base, Mode, OP Mainnet, and Zora. You may have heard of OP, OP Stack, and Superchain. Curious minds might ask: What? Why? Where? This article will answer these questions one by one, discussing the current state and vision of the Superchain, among other topics. At the end of the article, a user-friendly guide for one-click publishing of L2 / L3 operations will also be provided.

Starting with Optimism

You must be familiar with Optimism, a Layer 2 solution based on Ethereum, aimed at providing fast, stable, scalable, and cost-effective blockchain services. It runs on the Ethereum main chain (Layer 1) to help alleviate network congestion, thereby reducing transaction costs and processing times.

Optimism utilizes a technology called Optimism Rollups, which bundles a large number of transaction data together and processes and pays fees only once on the Ethereum main chain. This method not only speeds up transaction processing and reduces costs but also maintains high security based on Ethereum’s foundation. Later, the Optimism Rollup technology was open-sourced and became part of the OP Stack - an open-source blockchain framework announced by the Optimism Collective.

OP Stack can be understood as a toolbox for one-click deployment of L2, significantly simplifying the construction of L2 chains. These decentralized L2 chains developed based on OP Stack share security, communication layers, and an open-source technology stack, forming the vision of the OP Superchain.

Current Situation - Deploying OP Stacks in Various Fields

Currently, OP Stacks has been adopted by several well-known projects, including Base, which now dominates L2 NFT trading data, Coinbase’s Layer2, asset management application Debank’s Debank Chain, and the social-leading protocol Farcaster’s Farcaster Stack. The diversity of these applications reflects the concept of the OP Superchain, which OP Stack was originally intended to support from its launch.

What is a “Superchain”?

A “Superchain” is a multi-chain network structure based on Layer 2 (L2) technology, designed to address the scalability challenges of traditional blockchains. Traditional multi-chain architectures often face difficulties in collaboration and high costs, while the “Superchain” addresses these issues by treating each chain as “interchangeable computing resources,” essentially commodifying blockchains. This allows developers to build cross-chain applications without increasing systemic risks.

In the “Superchain” model, individual chains (such as the OP chain) are standardized and integrated into a network managed by the Optimism Collective. These chains not only share security and communication layers but also share an open-source technology stack. This design allows developers to focus more on building applications across the entire Superchain without worrying about the specific technical details of individual chains.

Furthermore, this design philosophy also implies that the concept of blockchain itself can become more abstract, allowing developers to view the entire interoperable blockchain network as a unified entity, thus enabling more efficient development and deployment of new solutions. In this way, the “Superchain” not only optimizes resource utilization but also provides new possibilities for the future development of blockchain.

How does OP Chain Achieve Security?

In the “Superchain” bridging security model, both security (i.e., validity) and liveliness (i.e., censorship resistance) can be ensured. Security is guaranteed by the proof system, while liveliness is ensured by the ability to submit transactions directly to L1. The combination of security and liveliness means that if the OP Chain sequencer malfunctions, users can always submit transactions to L1, which will migrate their usage to a new OP Chain with a properly functioning sequencer.

Below is the official definition of the “Superchain” by Optimism, which is met if the following conditions are satisfied:

OP Technology “Decentralization” Route

OP Labs, as the framework support provider, has been working extensively to make OP Stack support a wider range of decentralized technologies. For example, the Bedrock version supports multiple proof schemes and multiple clients. Multi-client fault proofs are a fundamental component of technical decentralization, and Bedrock’s modular framework greatly influences the community’s decentralized capabilities in practical OP Stack development.

Strategy - Maintain Honesty

In the pursuit of decentralization, it is important to maintain knowledge-based honesty about the challenges. Specifically, writing complex and error-free code is extremely difficult but crucial because any vulnerability could have catastrophic consequences for any L2.

Strategy - Parallel Development of Protocol Upgrades

OP advocates for maintaining purposeful, pragmatic, and cautious steps in on-chain fault proofs. Achieving full proofs takes time, but Optimism believes that several protocol upgrades can be developed in parallel to further develop OP Stack decentralization meaningfully without waiting for fault proofs to be ready.

Staying updated on technical solutions is what actually led to the discovery of two bugs in OP by the Arbitrum team recently. As a technical provider, this widely used open-source framework is always subject to scrutiny from the market and community, and it needs to bear more responsibility.

Technology decentralization timeline and milestones

OP Stacks Superchain layout

Be successful in business

According to data from L2Beat, as of May 4, 2024, Layer2 TVL (total locked value) totaled US$39.98 billion, of which OP Stack had US$18.61 billion, nearly half of the total TVL and ranking first. Optimism’s Stack service has been widely adopted, and more and more projects have adopted the OP Stack framework to quickly build a new L2, such as Optimism, Base, Mode, Zora, Frax, Lyra, Ancient, Redstone, Worldcoin, Mint, Lisk. This highlights the value of Stack’s services in the market narrative.

OP Stacks

How to Evolve into a Superchain?

From a technical perspective, we’ve trimmed down some code and official information to provide an answer.

Introduction of the SystemConfig Contract

The technical platform behind OP Stack, Bedrock, introduces the SystemConfig contract, which begins to define L2 chains directly through L1 smart contracts. This can extend to include all information defining L2 chains on-chain, including critical configuration values such as generating unique chain IDs, block gas limits, etc. A snippet of the SystemConfig contract is excerpted below^[2]:

/**

• @title SystemConfig

• @notice The SystemConfig contract is used to manage configuration of an Optimism network. All

• configuration is stored on L1 and picked up by L2 as part of the derivation of the L2

• chain.

*/

contract SystemConfig is OwnableUpgradeable, Semver {

 /**

* @notice Enum representing different types of updates.

*

* @custom:value BATCHER              Represents an update to the batcher hash.

* @custom:value GAS_CONFIG           Represents an update to txn fee config on L2.

* @custom:value GAS_LIMIT            Represents an update to gas limit on L2.

* @custom:value UNSAFE_BLOCK_SIGNER  Represents an update to the signer key for unsafe

*                                    block distribution.

*/

/*

* @notice Minimum gas limit. This should not be lower than the maximum deposit gas resource

*         limit in the ResourceMetering contract used by OptimismPortal, to ensure the L2

*         block always has sufficient gas to process deposits.

*/

uint64 public constant MINIMUM_GAS_LIMIT = 8_000_000;

 /**

* @notice Identifier for the batcher. For version 1 of this configuration, this is represented

*         as an address left-padded with zeros to 32 bytes.

*/

bytes32 public batcherHash;

/**

* @notice L2 gas limit.

*/

 uint64 public gasLimit;

CREATE2 generates a certain chain address

Based on the design of SystemConfig, after putting all data completely on-chain, a factory (Chain Factory) can be created to deploy configurations and all other necessary contracts for each chain. By using CREATE2 to generate corresponding contract addresses, we further extend this step: it means that, given a chain configuration, we can determine all bridge addresses associated with that chain. This also allows interaction with the chain without deploying bridge contracts, making chain deployment almost free and allowing chains to inherit standard security attributes.

Communication between OP chains - “Chain Factory” leverages OP chain data

Bedrock introduces a method of establishing L2 chains from L1 chains, where all chain data can be synchronized with L1 blocks. As L1 Chain Factory expands to place all configurations on-chain, Optimism nodes can deterministically synchronize any OP chain with just an L1 address plus connection to L1.

It is important to note that when the synchronization of OP chains is complete, the chain state is computed locally. This means that determining the state of the OP chain is completely permissionless and secure. Since all invalid transactions are ignored by the local node calculation process executed by nodes, derived chains do not require a proof system. However, to ensure withdrawals on the Superchain, a proof system is still required.

Modular design of the sequencer with SystemConfig

Bedrock introduces the functionality of setting sequencer addresses in the SystemConfig contract. With the introduction of multiple chains with their own SystemConfig contracts, deployers of OP chains can configure sequencer addresses. This configurable sequencer design is called modular sequencing. This allows different entities to sequence OP chains while retaining the standard security model of the [Superchain bridge] - a crucial step towards decentralizing sequencers.

Modular sequencing allows experimentation with different sequencing models without permission. Developers can adopt various sequencing protocols, such as round-robin sequencing, sequencer consensus protocols, price-competitive sequencing (PGA sequencing), or first-in-first-out sequencing (FIFO sequencing). Over time, we can expect more user-friendly sequencing standards to emerge.

Shared technical upgrade path for OP chains

To confidently launch the initial Superchain in terms of security and decentralization, a decentralized security council should be introduced to manage upgrades. The security council should be able to update the chain validators set, initiate contract upgrades with delays, and press the bridge pause button in emergencies while canceling ongoing upgrades.

The ability to pause the bridge in emergencies means that, in the worst case scenario where the private keys of security council members are compromised, the result will be an indefinite suspension of withdrawals, and bridge upgrades will be permanently canceled. In other words, the L1 bridge will be frozen. This follows the design principle of prioritizing security over liveness - i.e., always preventing loss of ETH or tokens (enforcing security), even if it means locking ETH or tokens (sacrificing liveness).

Pain Points on the Path to OP Stack Becoming a “Superchain”

Certainly, on the road to becoming a super chain and fully realizing the vision of a scalable blockchain, there are still some important stubborn problems that need to be addressed. Anticipated ones include:

• Withdrawal requests rely on a set of trusted chain provers.
• Slow cross-chain transaction speeds, requiring a wait for a challenge period.
• Insufficient scalability of submitting transactions to the Superchain, with transaction data needing to be submitted to the limited capacity of L1.
  • Cross-chain transactions are asynchronous, which disrupts the ability to execute atomic cross-chain transactions (such as Lightning loans).
  • This has been improved post-EIP 4844.
• Lack of user-friendly frameworks to build scalable applications utilizing multiple OP chains.
• Lack of useful frameworks for building scalable applications that leverage multiple OP chains.
• Lack of a simple wallet to manage tokens and applications across multiple OP chains.

We envision that when these pain points can be solved, it will be possible to build decentralized alternatives to the most complex web2 applications.

After 4844

Large-scale application of Superchain?

The launch of EIP-4844 coincides with the Delta upgrade of the Optimism ecosystem, making it a perfect fit.

Data availability (DA) solutions such as Celestia are mainly to reduce the cost of rollup when submitting data to L1, while 4844 provides a native solution that reduces the operating cost (OPEX) of the OP chain by more than 90%.

We see that before 4844, the main cost of OP Stack was concentrated on the gas overhead of L1, as follows:

• L1 activity data on the OP Stack chain (chain/L2 revenue/L1 expenses/gross profit margin/L1 expense ratio):
  • OP Mainnet: 2k ETH / 1.97k ETH / 30 ETH / 98.5%
  • Base: 1.7k ETH / 1.37k ETH / 330 ETH / 80%

After 4844, the super chain ecology is a good thing for OP Stack, and more and more projects will be willing to use L2 as a technical solution. We also hope to see the fee reduction of blockchain solutions provide more business opportunities for project parties and provide the possibility for mass adoption.

How to use Superchain

Easily deploy L2

How to put it into practice? Superchain provides a platform called Superchain Dev Console^[3][4], which supports Ethereum, Base, Fraxtel, Mode, OP Mainnet, Redstone, Lisk, Zora and other chains as L1 or L2.

At the same time, there are many tools for one-click L3 issuance in the Superchain community, such as Mode Flare developed by the Mode team. The architecture uses Pyth, Blockscout and Goldsky, etc.^[5]。

Some Closing Thoughts: We see the layout of Optimism and the success of superchains in the business landscape. OP Stacks has greatly lowered the barrier to entry for launching a chain, and more and more teams are benefiting from the convenient and rapid deployment of their L2 and L3 solutions using OP Stack. Could OP Stack become, in the future, like AWS or Alibaba Cloud, serving as an industry leader to provide various infrastructure for developers to build their projects? Indeed, decentralized technology solutions can ensure a certain degree of openness and security in technology. From a design perspective, does the superchain also pose potential risks of industry monopolization? Only time will tell.

Comment

[1] Reasons for two bugs:

https://medium.com/offchainlabs/security-disclosure-289a4ad50709

[2] SystemConfig contract fragment:

https://github.com/ethereum-optimism/optimism/blob/74a63c94d881442b4edd4df6492513e0113eb064/packages/contracts-bedrock/contracts/L1/SystemConfig.sol

[3] Superchain Dev Console：

https://console.optimism.io/?ref=blog.oplabs.co

[4] Superchain App Quick Start：

https://docs.optimism.io/builders/app-developers/quick-start

[5] MODE FLARE L3：

https://www.mode.network/mode-flare-l3

References

• https://docs.optimism.io/
• ttps://optimism.mirror.xyz/2jk3D1Y8-hid8YOCUUa6yXmsyzNCYYyFJP0Nhaey9x0
• https://blog.oplabs.co/decentralization-roadmap/
• https://www.chaincatcher.com/article/2088168

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