Optimism, a developer of solutions for Ethereum, is currently working on a second layer solution to address the congestion and scalability problems present in the smart contract network, which is already available in the testing phase for a few members.
The Optimism team reported this event through its official blog on Medium. The team also indicated that this first phase of testing will be available for a few decentralized applications (dApps), focusing the analysis on each case at the same time, to address detail the errors that occur and adjust the solution for its next phases.
But the most remarkable thing is that within this first group of dApps is the decentralized exchange (DEX) Synthetix, which will distribute a total of 200,000 SNX tokens (estimated at $930,000) among users who are encouraged to try the new Optimism network. Using Optimistic Rollup Unlike other solutions to address Ethereum scalability issues, Optimistic Rollup is a type of second layer build for this network in which smart contracts are run at scale while still being supported by the main network.
These types of solutions are similar to those of the Plasma proposal, but they make use of a virtual machine called OVM (Optimistiv Virtual Machine), which provides this alternate network with all the functionality offered by the Ethereum Blockchain. Here the minimum necessary information is used, requesting more in case you suspect some kind of malicious action by users, and the transactions are sent to the main network in data packets, so they are not executed one by one.
According to information published by EthHub.io, the Optimistic Rollup operating process can be described as follows:
A user submits a transaction to a smart contract outside the network to an aggregator (external block producer). That aggregator calculates the root of the new state (also known as the Merkle root). That aggregator creates an Ethereum transaction that contains that state root calculated in the previous step.
Any user who sees an aggregator implementing an invalid state root (a state root created by including invalid transactions) can override that aggregator by publishing the valid state root along with the necessary Merkle tests to prove it.
The operator who committed such fraud and anyone who built blocks on it lose their funds and become the property of the complainant. Once an invalid block gets reported and a fraud test is completed, the operation on the second layer can suffer a reversion and a resume from the previous non-fraudulent block.
Testing phase for the Optimistic network
Regarding the launch of the testnet, the Optimism team indicated that it includes a total of four phases, which are adjusted for Synthetix as follows:
Phase A: It does not enable deposits or withdrawals. It will only allow airdrops and the burning of tokens. Participants will receive and be able to destroy sUSD (Synthetix Stablecoin) tokens, as well as claim the rewards for the guarantee funds.
Phase B: Will allow SNX deposits. Users will be able to increase their earnings by having more funds as collateral.
Security drill: Contracts will be updated to add verification systems. Malicious information will be produced for users to detect and report malpractices, thereby deriving rewards by helping the network.
Phase C: The network will enable withdrawals, and once these are successful, the rewards from the testing phase will be available on the main network.
At the moment, there are no specific deadlines or dates for the execution of the above phases, but the team indicated that the reports of the results will see the light of day.
By: Jenson Nuñez.
