Defining "Rollup"
Defining "Rollup"
A crude & unhinged attempt to invoke Cunningham's law in order to force RU shills to formalize their beliefs
Fuck everyone who writes about “alignment” or “settlement” or “Layer 2s” or “scaling Ethereum” or “good enough security”. If you see those phrases in an article about rollups, just nope the fuck out because nothing valued is there. Those articles are dangerous and repulsive to us. This article is a warning about the danger. The danger is to the mind, and it can kill. The form of the danger is an emanation of bullllllshit.
The massive dumpster fire of rollup discourse stems from the egos of the rollup implementers and the complete inability of outsiders to distinguish between rollups. Everyone building a rollup needs to seize moral and cultural superiority because there’s no fundamental difference between rollups. The bickering about feature sets and eNdGaME SCalInG happens because all the RU builders know that hiding the truth is better than talking about it.
Now, if you want to actually learn about rollups here’s what you need to know:
A rollup is an opt-in, subset of another consensus, keeping a superset of state, via a custom state-transition function.
Nobody who understands rollups will ever give you a clearer or more accurate definition of a rollup. They’ll just write 5000 word articles about how everything’s a lie. When they could just……. explain how rollups work in simple terms instead.
So let’s break this down. ELI5 rollups.
Rollups are opt-in. No node is forced to join a rollup.
Rollups are a subset of another consensus. Every verifying rollup node MUST be a verifying node of the host chain too.
Rollups keep a superset of state. They keep the host state, and add the rollup state to it. These states are separate.
Rollups have a custom state-transition function. Ethereum uses the EVM, but an Ethereum Rollup doesn’t have to. They can customize the VM.
Done. Easy. So easy. You’d think rollups were hard based on the amount of drivel being written about them.
Every other property of a rollup falls out of these 4 points. Some quick examples:
When do rollups finalize? When the host consensus finalizes?
Why do rollup txns pay host fees? Because they have to pay for the portion of the host consensus that they use.
Who invented rollups? The guy who wrote about merged consensus first.
Who sets the rollup state? The verifying rollup nodes. Based on the STF and the outcome of the host consensus.
Why do rollups tend to have sequencers? To help rollup users deal with the host consensus in a more predictable way by providing pre-consensus.
Why is bridging into a rollup easy? Because the nodes are a subset of the host consensus. All nodes know what the host does, so they know when a bridge in happens
Why is bridging out of a rollup hard? Because the state transition function is custom. The host chain needs to learn what happened with state it doesn’t see (remember the states are separate) and an STF it may not understand.
Why is Optimism a multisig? Because bridging out of a rollup is hard and they decided to do an easy thing (misrepresent themselves) instead.
So then what's all this hub-bub about Optimistic Rollups, ZK Rollups, and whatever??
People spent so much time thinking about the bridge out that they’ve confused it with the actual rollup. Rollups descend from tx batching systems, where the bridge is the point. But rollups are not tx batching systems. People have leftover baggage from 5 years ago and think the bridge out defines the rollup the way it defined tx batching. NO! The 👏 rollup 👏 is 👏 not 👏 its 👏 bridge 👏 out. The nodes define the history! The nodes define the STF! The nodes define the state! The nodes define the rollup!
A ZK-bridge or an Optimistic bridge or Optimism’s petty multisig bridge always lag behind the node consensus! They are passive little contracts. They don’t calculate things. They don’t produce roots. The nodes shout states at them and they say “yes sir, what root SIR?” They don’t know the host consensus. They don’t know what the sequencer is up to. They just sit around and wait to be told what the fuck’s going on. If the bridge and the rollup nodes disagree, the bridge gets its opinion changed through force (of governance).
The bridge CANNOT and WILL NEVER function without a rollup full node telling it what to do. It CANNOT and WILL NEVER define the rollup state. It will ONLY record it after someone else (a verifying rollup node) tells it what to do. The state MUST be defined BEFORE the bridge learns about it. Ergo, the nodes are sovereign regardless of what bridge is used. The bridge requires a sovereign node to tell it what to do.
The good news is that you can continue being Optimism maxis despite their snobbery. Being patronizing doofuses who can’t manage to ship the bridge they literally named themselves after doesn’t make their rollup less sovereign or less valid.
Read this article and want to fight on twitter? Come @ me bro. Give me an alternative definition of a rollup and let’s fucking go
Concerned about my tone? I see you. Stop being whiny and patronizing on twitter and build your fault proof already.
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