Detailed Explanation of the "Super Chain" Concept: Base is Just a Small "Ambition" of Optimism

Original source: mirror, 0xfF5A

Compiled by: Odaily Planet Daily Translator | Moni

Although the blockchain industry has developed for more than ten years, if Ethereum wants to compete with Web2 giants and occupy a place in the software field, it needs to achieve internet-level scale, but currently, there is no scaling solution or L1 that can support it. At the same time, the multi-chain itself has many issues; Ethereum L2 has reached the limit of user experience, but it is still far from global scale adoption and is not sufficient to support a decentralized network.

To support hundreds, thousands, and tens of thousands of blockchains in the future, the industry needs a paradigm shift. This is precisely the intention behind Optimism's launch of the "Superchain."

Basic Concept of "Superchain"

Horizontal scalability requires multiple blockchains, but traditional multi-chain architectures cannot meet this need. By using L2 to form a multi-chain ecosystem, each chain can be viewed as a commodity, that is, "interchangeable computing resources." This idea of commodifying blockchains allows developers to build cross-chain applications without introducing systemic risks or incurring significant overhead when deploying applications on new chains. The concept of blockchain itself can become abstract; at this point, this interoperable blockchain network can be viewed as a single unit, namely------the "Superchain."

The "Superchain" is an L2 network, and the OP Chain is a single chain within the Superchain. Regardless of its specific attributes, if it is officially managed by the Optimism Collective, it is considered an OP Chain and thus part of the Superchain, sharing security, communication layers, and open-source technology stacks. However, unlike multi-chain designs, the OP Chain is standardized and intended to serve as interchangeable resources, enabling developers to build applications targeting the entire Superchain while abstracting the underlying chain on which the applications run.

Attributes of "Superchain"

To upgrade Optimism to a Superchain, the following attributes must be met:

• Shared L1 blockchain, purpose: to provide total ordering of transactions across all OP Chains.

• Shared bridges for all OP Chains, purpose: to give OP Chains standardized security properties.

• Low-cost OP Chain deployment, purpose: to allow deployment and transactions on OP Chains without paying high L1 transaction fees.

• Configuration options for OP Chains, purpose: to enable OP Chains to configure their data availability providers, sorter addresses, etc.

• Secure transactions and cross-chain messaging, purpose: to allow users to safely migrate assets between OP Chains.

Once Optimism meets these attributes, it can be considered a Superchain.

Upgrading Optimism to "Superchain"

Optimism has indicated that the initial "Superchain" can only be created after the Bedrock release, allowing many other blockchains to be deployed and upgraded using the same bridge. Bedrock introduces the SystemConfig contract, which can directly define L2 using L1 smart contracts and place all L2 data on the Superchain, including generating unique chain IDs, block gas limits, and other critical configuration values. Once this data is deployed, Optimism will create a "chain factory" to deploy configurations and all other required contracts for each chain, where all chain data can be synchronized based on L1 blocks. Optimism nodes can then deterministically synchronize any OP Chain given a single L1 address along with a connection to L1.

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

Optimism's Upgrade to "Superchain" Still Faces 6 Pain Points

Before realizing the fully scalable blockchain vision, "Superchain" still needs to address at least 6 pain points.

Pain Point 1: Withdrawal claims depend on a set of trusted chain provers.

Potential Solution: Trusted chain prover sets can be replaced by introducing permissionless proofs; however, the challenge of fully on-chain proofs is that there is no fallback mechanism if they are compromised. To ensure that issues never arise, a multi-verification system providing security through redundancy can be introduced.

Pain Point 2: Cross-chain transactions are slow.

Potential Solution: Optimism's fault proofs impose a user experience burden, as users must wait for a challenge period to complete safely. This means that if your challenge period is long, users must wait a long time to migrate their assets from one OP Chain to another. Validity proofs can solve this problem, as they do not have a challenge period, thus providing instant withdrawals from one OP Chain to the next. However, validity proofs typically use zero-knowledge proofs (ZKP), which are both expensive and prone to errors. Truly bringing ZKP into production to the extent that it becomes a major cross-chain communication protocol may take years, so a hybrid of multiple proof systems can be introduced, allowing developers to provide low-latency bridging for low-value assets and high-latency bridging for high-value assets.

Pain Point 3: Cross-chain transactions are asynchronous, breaking the ability to execute atomic cross-chain transactions (such as flash loans).

Potential Solution: By using a shared sorting protocol on two OP Chains, synchronous cross-chain messaging can be introduced, enabling atomic cross-chain interactions. By combining low-latency messaging between L2s with shared sorting, complex transactions can be executed, such as cross-chain flash loans, and even further, creating an EVM abstraction where individual smart contracts (or even individual storage slots) exist on different chains.

Pain Point 4: Transactions become non-scalable after being published to the Superchain, as transaction data must be submitted to the capacity-limited L1.

Potential Solution: Currently, the scale of L1 data availability (DA) is insufficient to support internet-level scale, but the Plasma protocol can be used to expand the amount of data accessible to OP Chains, allowing alternative DA providers to supplement the more limited L1 DA. A generalized Plasma protocol can scale beyond L1 because only users interested in transaction data will download Plasma data, whereas on L1, every Ethereum node downloads all transaction data on L1. Since hashes can reduce data of arbitrary size to a constant-sized commitment and can process transaction data hashes in parallel, Plasma DA can achieve nearly perfect horizontal scalability for data commitments, meaning scalable applications like games or social media can be placed on Plasma chains.

Pain Points 5 and 6: There is no simple framework to build scalable dApps utilizing OP Chains, and no simple wallet to manage assets and dApps on OP Chains.

Potential Solution: Tools can be built on top of the core Superchain protocol, such as: content-addressable smart contracts------which allow contracts to have the same address across all chains; cross-chain contract state management standards------creating standards for how smart contract states migrate from one chain to another, enabling developers to shard their applications across multiple chains; Superchain RPC endpoints------creating a single RPC endpoint where users can send their Superchain transactions, regardless of which OP Chain they intend to use, allowing users to avoid constantly switching their networks. With a robust multi-chain dApp framework, deploying cross-chain dApps could be as easy as deploying dApps for a single chain.

Coinbase L2 Base is Just the Beginning

On the evening of February 23, the cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase announced the launch of the Ethereum layer 2 network Base testnet based on OP Stack and reached a partnership with Optimism. In fact, Base is a brand new L2 built on OP Stack.

As a core developer, Coinbase will join OP Labs to contribute to the mission of the Optimism Collective, expanding the OP Stack's leading position as the most powerful public good. Base will also return a portion of transaction fee revenue to the Optimism Collective's financial pool to further realize the sustainable future vision of "impact = profitability."

The strong collaboration between Optimism and Coinbase undoubtedly sets a good precedent for the development of the "Superchain." In the short term, this collaborative effort will upgrade the Optimism mainnet, Base, and other L2s to an initial Superchain structure, featuring shared bridging and sorting. In the future, more L2s will inevitably be integrated into the "Superchain" ecosystem; in the long term, the "Superchain" can evolve into a vast network, maximizing interoperability, sharing decentralized protocols, and standardizing its core primitives.

There is no doubt that scaling is the key.