Optimism's Bedrock Upgrade Successfully Deployed

The Bedrock upgrade, a significant update bringing numerous improvements to Optimism, was successfully implemented in the early hours of June 7.

Optimism’s Bedrock Upgrade Officially Live

The Bedrock upgrade was officially activated at 11:00 PM on June 6, 2023 (Vietnam time), according to Optimism's pre-scheduled timeline.

The Optimism Foundation confirmed that the upgrade was completed at 2:50 AM on June 7. Mainnet operations and infrastructure functionality were restored around 6 AM this morning.

During the upgrade, Optimism notified all nodes to update to the new Bedrock-compatible version. Traders did not need to take any action and only had to wait for the upgrade to complete.

The Bedrock upgrade comes with specific objectives, including reducing gas fees by 40% and transaction times by 90%. Bedrock will split the project's OP Stack architecture into three distinct layers—Consensus Layer, Execution Layer, and Settlement Layer—to deliver notable improvements such as:

• Reducing Ethereum-to-Optimism transfer times by up to 4x.
• Cutting data transfer costs to Ethereum by up to 20%.
• Narrowing the gap with Ethereum's Geth client to just 500 lines of code for better synchronization.
• Implementing the EIP-1559 fee model, similar to Ethereum, to update transaction gas fees.
• Paving the way for other data proof solutions like ZK-Rollups.

These enhancements are seen as game-changers that could help Optimism advance towards its goal of becoming a "Superchain." The name Bedrock reflects its role as the "foundation of the Superchain." As Karl Floersch, CEO of OP Labs, stated:

"Superchain is the long-term vision, essentially consisting of multiple OP chains all operating under the OP Stack standard."

The concept of a superchain or multiple subnetworks is becoming familiar in the crypto space. It is a favored solution among major blockchains seeking to address scalability issues and expand their networks. Notable implementations include Avalanche’s Subnets and Polygon’s Supernet.

Furthermore, Bedrock is expected to enhance Optimism's competitive edge in the Ethereum Layer-2 space, a sector that has seen significant growth from direct competitor Arbitrum and the emergence of zkEVM solutions like Polygon zkEVM, zkSync, Linea, Starknet, and Mantle. Enhancing the OP Stack could also encourage other projects to adopt it for their own Layer-2 solutions, similar to what Coinbase achieved with its Base Layer-2 launched in February.

Much like Ethereum’s Shanghai upgrade, the path to Bedrock for Optimism was not without hurdles. Initially completed in early February this year and approved by the Optimism community for an April deployment, the upgrade faced technical issues that led to a two-month delay.

The price of OP has risen approximately 10% following the news, reaching $1.50.

OP/USDT 1-Hour Chart on Binance as of 08:00 AM, June 7, 2023