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Launch your own OP Stack chain: an open-source, modular, Ethereum Layer 2 rollup. This page orients you on the key components and the sequence of steps, then hands you off to the full deployment tutorial. There are two ways to have an OP Stack chain: run it yourself, which is what this page and the tutorial behind it cover, or have it run for you. Choose how to run your chain sets out the spectrum between them and what your team owns at each point on it.

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Components

Before you deploy, it is important to understand the key components and how they come together to create your blockchain.
  • L1 Smart contracts: A set of smart contracts to be deployed on Ethereum to bridge between the L1 and L2 domains and manage aspects of the rollup.
  • Sequencer: A single privileged node that accepts and derives user transactions on the network to construct the blockchain.
  • Batcher: A sequencer service that publishes L2 transactions onto Ethereum. Using Ethereum as a data availability layer, the OP Stack inherits Ethereum’s security properties by allowing any node to derive the state of the L2 blockchain from L1.
  • Proposer: A service responsible for publishing the L2 state root to Ethereum which enables user withdrawals of assets.
  • Challenger: The challenger enforces network security by disputing invalid state roots that have been posted to Ethereum.

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Deployment

The following section will walk you through the sequence of steps a chain operator will follow to begin sequencing a chain.
1

Smart contract deployment

Using a CLI tool called op-deployer you will configure your chain and then deploy the smart contracts on Ethereum.
2

Chain genesis creation

After deploying the L1 smart contracts, you will use op-deployer to generate two files necessary to run nodes on the L2 network:
  • Genesis file (genesis.json): Initializes the execution client (op-reth)
  • Rollup configuration file (rollup.json): Configures the consensus client (op-node)
These files contain all the essential information your services need to interact with Ethereum and the system contracts you deployed.
3

Start sequencing

To begin sequencing transactions and building blocks, you will then run an execution client and consensus client that come together as your sequencer node.
4

Begin batching transactions

Next you will run op-batcher which will publish user transactions on Ethereum.
5

Start proposing state roots

Then you will run op-proposer to publish the L2 state root on Ethereum to enable withdrawals back to Ethereum.
6

Protect your chain

Finally you will run op-challenger to monitor and dispute any invalid L2 state roots that have been posted.

Start the deployment tutorial

Deploy a complete OP Stack testnet, component by component, with a working automated example alongside.

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Next Steps

Take a look at some of the chain operator best practices to get an idea of some of the things you’ll need to keep in mind.
Running this in production