- The Optimism Foundation turned the system back to permissioned operation just two months after the permissionless fraud proof system went online, improving the network’s decentralization. This was because community-driven audits discovered multiple flaws in the system.
A hardfork on Optimism’s Layer-2 network is part of the Granite upgrade that OP Labs, a contributor to Optimism, has suggested to alleviate the problems that will arise on September 10.
An important milestone for the Ethereum-based ecosystem was the optimistic implementation of permissionless fraud proofs, often referred to as fault proofs, which enable users to challenge potentially fraudulent or inaccurate transactions on layer-2 networks. Permissionless fraud proofs provide everyone with access to the mechanism of contesting transactions, as contrast to permissioned fraud proofs, which restrict access to trustworthy proposers alone.
According to Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin, Optimism may have achieved Stage 1 decentralization with this breakthrough. Stage 1, or restricted training wheels, stipulates that a layer-2 network must have a fraud proof system in place. However, in the event that any defects are found or exploited, a multisig of reliable parties may be able to override the system.
But the Optimism Foundation has returned the network to a permissioned state, just over two months after the permissionless fraud proofs went live on June 10. This is because community-driven audits found several flaws with differing degrees of severity, as Optimism revealed on X.
An official from OP Labs, a contributor to Optimism, presented a proposal to the Optimism governance forum explaining the rationale behind turning on the fallback system and the security flaws that were found.
User assets are not and never have been at danger, as none of the vulnerabilities have been used. However, protocol engineer Mofi Taiwo commented that the permissioned fallback mechanism has been enabled out of an excess of caution to prevent any potential instability while the vulnerabilities are addressed.
Optimism’s ImmuneFi bounty scale indicates that two high-severity vulnerabilities were found out of the specified vulnerabilities. No user assets were ever at danger, even if the auditors did find a few high severity concerns. According to Taiwo’s post, all of the audit flaws stated below can be found by our monitoring tooling.
Although Optimism had examined the fallback mechanisms, some contracts pertaining to the fraud proof system were not included in the audit. MIPS contracts and the dispute game are examples of liveness/reputational risk that don’t need audits. There is no risk to user cash and any flaws may be easily fixed thanks to the fallback methods. The proposal states that as a result, we have decided against pursuing a repair review for the modifications made.
According to Taiwo’s plan, the update would take place on September 10 at 16:00:01 UTC. The Granite upgrade necessitates multiple network changes, including an L2 hard fork. Although Taiwo’s post states that no audit has been conducted on the hard fork, it also mentions that OP Labs reviewed the changes for security and determined they posed no risk.
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