Optimism, a layer 2 to the Ethereum blockchain, is set to implement its Bedrock upgrade on Tuesday, designed to improve the usability of the chain by lowering gas fees and cutting deposit-confirmation times by 90%. Karl Floersch, CEO and co-founder of OP Labs, which supports development on Optimism, said Bedrock was named Bedrock for a reason. It is the foundation for the Superchain. The upgrade will lower gas fees by 40% by implementing an optimized data compression strategy and introduce mechanisms that will mitigate reorgs. It will also reduce confirmations for deposits to 1 minute from 10 minutes. Bedrock will improve proof modularity for its OP Stack, an open-source toolkit for developers, and introduce other code changes that will improve node performance. It will also move Optimism to a multi-client ecosystem, meaning there would be at least two versions of software used to interact with the network. The upgrade is expected to take place at 16:00 UTC on Tuesday and should last two to four hours. Deposits and withdrawals will be unavailable during the period, and the chain will halt temporarily. Optimism uses a type of technology called an optimistic rollup which rolls up a bunch of transactions into a single transaction, increasing the speed of the transaction and lowering gas fees. Bedrock is supposed to make Optimism more competitive with Arbitrum, its biggest rival.
Optimism’s Bedrock Upgrade to Improve Usability and Lower Gas Fees
