A leading Layer 2 scaling solution, Optimism is gearing up for its long-awaited Bedrock upgrade on June 6. Excitement is building as this major update promises reduced transaction fees, bolstered network security, and improved compatibility with Ethereum.
On May 15, the Optimism team announced via a Twitter thread that they expect the network to experience a downtime of two to four hours on June 6 for the upgrade process.
An accompanying blog post explains that on the upgrade day, the network will experience downtime, during which transactions, deposits, and withdrawals will be unavailable. Additionally, the OP Mainnet chain will not make any progress.
The announcement of Bedrock took place in May 2022, making it the first major network upgrade approved by the Optimism governance council’s Token House through a voting process.
OP Labs, the network’s protocol development unit, estimates that Optimism will experience a significant 47% reduction in transaction fees, resulting in substantial benefits for the platform.
The Bedrock explainer from the Optimism community highlights that Bedrock surpasses its predecessor by utilizing optimized batch compression and Ethereum as a data availability layer to reduce transaction fees. It also addresses delays in incorporating L1 transactions in rollups by gracefully handling L1 re-orgs.
Additionally, according to the explainer, the network will experience shorter deposit times, as Optimism’s confirmation time for deposits will decrease from approximately 10 minutes to just three minutes.
Prepare for a remarkable boost in node software performance as Optimism introduces a groundbreaking feature: the execution of multiple transactions in a single rollup ‘block,’ leaving behind the previous ‘one transaction per block’ model. Witness faster and more efficient transaction processing on the network.
Another notable improvement focuses on enhancing the network’s compatibility with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which serves as the core software responsible for executing Ethereum smart contracts.
Bedrock, in its implementation, 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. Notably, ZKSync Era continues to dominate with an average of 6.80 transactions per second (TPS) over the past 24 hours, leaving Optimism trailing behind at 2.98 TPS. The battle for network activity in the Layer 2 space is intensifying, with ZKSync Era making its mark.
