Optimism (OP) Bedrock to Reduce Network Fees by Almost 50%: Analysis

Joshua Gutow, a software engineer at OP Labs, the development team behind Ethereum (ETH) scaler Optimism, shares his estimations of the effects of upcoming upgrade Bedrock for the cost-efficiency of Optimism transactions.

Bedrock activation reduces protocol costs and security fees by 47%: Research

Yesterday, March 2, 2023, Mr. Gutow shared a detailed blog post about how Bedrock will affect data logistics on Optimism (OP). In all of Ethereum's L2s, users pay two types of transaction fees, ordinary "gas" - the L2 execution fee -  and the price of transaction verification on the underlying L1.

The Bedrock upgrade will bring a 47% reduction in protocol costs and security fees to Optimism Mainnet 🤯

Engineer extraordinaire @trianglesphere explains how in the latest dev blog post 👇https://t.co/MvcG04shEB

— OP Labs (@OPLabsPBC) March 2, 2023

To minimize both types of costs, Optimism (OP) developers decided to reconsider the way Optimism (OP) compresses data and the manner in which it sends data to Ethereum (ETH).

Simply put, Optimism (OP) introduces "channels," an object that consists of multiple batches (groups of indexed and compressed transactions). Channels is yet another layer of data optimization compared to previous generations of L2 scalers.

To handle large volumes of data, channels can be "sliced" into channel frames. Also, Optimism (OP) devs chose zlib algorithm for data compression.

Last but not least, Bedrock will push L1 fees to a theoretical minimim, reducing the execution gas, making them trivial for users and developers. In total, this will result in a 47% reduction in protocol costs/security fees.

Optimism (OP) rallied by 247% in 2023

Also, Mr. Gutow highlighted that with EIP 4844 (Proto-Danksharding) activation in Optimism (OP), its fees will be due for an even more dramatic reduction.

As covered by U.Today previously, Optimism's Bedrock upgrade is expected to be activated as soon as this month and will be a gamechanger in terms of network performance and EVM-compatibility.

The potential of Optimism Bedrock attracts new enthusiasts to the network: the price of OP, the core native token of Optimism, surged by 247% in 2023 before reaching an all-time high in early February 2023.