Optimism announces upgrades enabling ‘one-click’ roll-up deployment

Published at: Sept. 20, 2021

According to a blog post published by Optimism on Sept. 17, the team anticipates Ethereum-native protocols will be able to launch on its network in a single click by the end of October.

“Any tooling that can run on Ethereum will run identically on Optimistic Ethereum,” the post highlighted, adding:

Optimism, the Ethereum Foundation-backed team building developing a layer-two roll-up network, has announced upgrades to its protocol that will enable developers to deploy on its network in just "one click.”

“Anyone who has written code targeting Geth can now deploy without change — even for advanced features like traces and gas.”

The post asserts that Optimism overhauled its code in a bid to extend beyond Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatibility to achieve “EVM equivalence” through shrinking the protocol down to its most lightweight and efficient form possible.

To realize their minimalist philosophy, Optimism’s custom compiler was deleted alongside more than “25,000 lines” of other code as part of the upgrades.

“Building an EVM-compliant rollup poses an even greater challenge: supporting the entire Ethereum stack within the new science,” the post asserts. “Re-implementing security-critical EVM features is costly; every additional line of code introduces the risk of vulnerabilities.”

While the team says it has achieved full EVM equivalence with the Geth Ethereum client, they now hope to facilitate compatibility with alternative node implementations such as OpenEthereum and Erigon with “under 1,000 lines of code.”

Optimism added that no changes have been made to its current security model through the latest release.

Optimism’s progress comes as capital migrates from the Ethereum mainnet to EVM compatible chains and layer-two scaling solutions in a bid to mitigate the high fees associated with transactions executed on Ethereum’s base layer.

According to Dune Analytics, rival rollup network Arbitrum currently boasts the largest Ethereum bridge by total value locked (TVL) with $2.62 billion despite having launched roughly three weeks ago.

Arbitrum is followed by the Polygon ERC-20 Bridge with nearly $2.35 billion, the Avalanche Bridge with $1.86 billion, and the Fantom Anyswap Bridge with $476 million.

According to Dune Analytics, in the TVL ranking of the Ethereum Bridge, Arbitrum has surpassed Polygon to rank first. Arbitrum accounts for 34.6% of the TVL of the Ethereum Bridge, and Polygon accounts for 30.4%. pic.twitter.com/dYOoSghyY2

— Wu Blockchain (@WuBlockchain) September 20, 2021