Intro
This message is in direct response to the evaluation posted by LBS and our intention is to clear up some of the misconceptions we saw in the analysis.
Uploading Data to L1
In terms of data not being posted on-chain, that’s factually incorrect. Under our current setup, metadata is submitted along with a Transaction Batch Merkle Tree Root. Any missing data from Memolab’s storage is treated as an invalid state. In the current setup, any independent observer can also monitor the transaction data submission to memolab’s storage. There is no gate. Anyone running a verifier can do so. The open source program will automatically flag if data is missing or the data does not match the commit on l1. There is no whitelisting. The only potential compromise would be short term costs, as invalid data or attempts to censor transactions would result in verifiers forcing all data to be posted on-chain (more expensive than the typical roll up). There’s no compromise in security.
No Sequencer Rotation
The primary reason we stopped adding rotation code to the existing contract is that our partners are all hoping we can move to the Bedrock architecture as well. This change demands substantial effort due to our extensive modifications to Optimism’s code and numerous Geth changes, which we aim to minimize.
Security
We’d like to clear up any misconception around verifiers in both Metis and OP. Users of Optimism can only know if the stateroots are valid or not if they run a validator node to produce the blocks again. This also applies in the same way for Metis users. But on Metis, any missing data from Memolab’s storage is treated as an invalid state. As such, users on Metis always have a way of knowing if the state root posted is valid or not.
Please note that with disabled fraud proof, the difference in Metis’ security assumptions compared to other Optimism-based chains is not significant. If the currently trusted sequencer fails to provide offline data, verifiers will promptly flag the issue, similar to Optimism’s sequencer submitting fabricated transactions. No on-chain punishment exists yet, as fraud proof remains disabled, same as Optimism currently.
Technical Roadmap:
- Migrate to Optimism Bedrock
- Back-compatibility
- Smart L2 compatibility
- Cannon
- Separation of sequencer (block producer) and proposer (tx/states submitter)
- High Availability - Metis Block Producer Pool
- Support peer promotion to sequencer
- L1-based producer (block # - signature)
- MPC-based proposer committee
- Always on functionality (even during network upgrade or fork)
- Complete Optimistic DA
- Faster Finalization - Metis Hybrid Rollup - zkMIPS
- Stark-based prover/verifier on MIPS generated by Cannon
- Batch finalization when verifier smart contract approves the proof
- Fraud proof still required to challenge and slash the sequencer
Competitive Advantage for Metis
We have had the lowest transaction cost out of all the L2s as measured by L2Fees.info, since our Smart L2 network upgrade in April 2022. As part of our vision and a benefit of our Smart L2 architecture, we have enabled fee stability on our network. This means when block demand on L1 goes up and the fees go up on all other Optimistic Rollups, our network fees will remain low and stable. This feature is essential in our targeted approach for onboarding Enterprise into Web3, as businesses with margins will require stability in their operational costs and day-to-day business activities.
BGD’s Report
We want to reference BGDs Technical Risk Evaluation that we worked hand in hand on over the last few months. BGD is Aave’s trusted technical risk partner and their analysis of Metis had a strong rating on the security of our chain. We encourage everyone to take an in-depth look at the report (BGD. Aave <> Metis. Infrastructure/technical evaluation).
Closing Remarks
We worked alongside Chaos Labs and Gauntlet to ensure the risk parameters and asset listing recommendations were up to standard as per Aave’s trusted market risk assessors.
We hope this clears up any misconceptions and are happy to elaborate further if needed.