We pledge to uphold the values of Ethereum by producing infrastructure that promotes the growth and sustainability of public goods.
Optimism Eligibility Requirements
- Priced out of Ethereum (Used bridges)
- DAO Voter
- Multi-sig signers
- Donated to Gitcoin Grants on L1
- Optimism User
- Repeat Optimism user
The Optimism Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to growing the Optimism Collective.
Not only are we writing software that scales Ethereum technology, we are also scaling Ethereum values by creating the rails for highly impactful projects that don’t have a business model to succeed. Read more about how we’re doing that here.
Until the project is fully decentralized, we will be donating all profits from running a centralized sequencer towards scaling and sustaining public goods.
All Optimism blocks are stored within a special smart contract on Ethereum called the CanonicalTransactionChain(opens new window)(or CTC for short). Optimism blocks are held within an append-only list inside of the CTC (we’ll explain exactly how blocks are added to this list in the next section). This append-only list forms the Optimism blockchain.
The CanonicalTransactionChain includes code that guarantees that the existing list of blocks cannot be modified by new Ethereum transactions. However, this guarantee can be broken if the Ethereum blockchain itself is reorganized and the ordering of past Ethereum transactions is changed. The Optimism mainnet is configured to be robust against block reorganizations of up to 50 Ethereum blocks. If Ethereum experiences a reorg larger than this, Optimism will reorg as well.
Of course, it’s a key security goal of Ethereum to not experience these sort of significant block reorganizations. Optimism is therefore secure against large block reorganizations as long as the Ethereum consensus mechanism is too. It’s through this relationship (in part, at least) that Optimism derives its security properties from Ethereum.
Bridging Between Ethereum and Optimism
Optimism is designed so that users can send arbitrary messages between smart contracts on Optimism and Ethereum. This makes it possible to transfer assets, including ERC20 tokens, between the two networks. The exact mechanism by which this communication occurs differs depending on the direction in which messages are being sent.
Optimism uses this functionality in the Standard bridge to allow users to deposit assets (ERC20s and ETH) from Ethereum to Optimism and also allow withdrawals of the same from Optimism back to Ethereum. See the developer documentation and examples on details on the inner workings of the Standard bridge.