Bedrock’s Optimism: Enhanced Performance and Reduced Fees

Photo - Bedrock’s Optimism: Enhanced Performance and Reduced Fees
The team behind Optimism has officially affirmed that their major update, termed 'Bedrock', will be rolled out on the main network on the 6th of June. This upgrade primarily aims to bolster security, instill stability, and significantly cut down transaction fees.
The installation is slated to commence at 19:00 EEST and is anticipated to last for around four hours. During this period, any form of transactions will be suspended, hence users are urged to exercise utmost caution, particularly since blockchain data reading will remain active. In essence, this event is a hard fork where balances, contract addresses, transaction data, and blocks are retained by the network, thus there's no pressing reason to worry or move assets. Nevertheless, it's advisable to close any open margin positions on trading applications built on Optimism to minimize potential risks during the downtime.
Bedrock is the first major protocol upgrade to be voted on and approved by the Optimism Governance, another exciting milestone
,© Optimism developers.

What changes will follow the update?

1. Fees: Enhanced data compression and reduced gas utilization for Layer-1 transactions will curtail protocol expenses and fortify security. This, in turn, will favorably affect fees for ordinary users: the developers foresee a substantial fee reduction by 47%.

2. Deposits: Thanks to network reorganization support, the time required for depositing funds will be drastically shortened. At present, it takes approximately ten minutes, but the team at Optimism estimates that they have managed to accelerate this process by nearly four-fold (down to three minutes).

3. Node performance: Bundling multiple transactions into a single rollup block and rectifying the protocol's technical inadequacies will cut back the annual data volume growth by 15 GB. 

4. Compatibility with Ethereum: The developers built this update from scratch to achieve maximum compatibility with Ethereum's code and the EVM. They had to replace or remove numerous features (design patterns, transaction models), as well as introduce components such as network reorganization, EIP-1559 support, and so forth.

5. Bridge security: The adoption of a two-step fund withdrawal procedure to Layer-1 (verification and completion) will render the process more transparent, diminish the probability of exploits, and foster more efficient interaction among network participants.

The remaining updates are of a distinctly technical nature, having undergone thorough vetting by Sherlock, a known auditor of Ethereum's smart contracts. For the average user, these don't carry meaningful information. It's critical to note that all these updates are aimed at reducing error frequency and enhancing the protocol's optimization for the developers of third-party applications.