Protocol Upgrades

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How does the OP Stack stay up to date with the latest innovation?

The OP Stack is Optimism’s open-source software for deploying next-generation onchain products. The software is licensed under the MIT license, meaning it can be freely used and forked by all parties. The OP Stack has a vibrant core developer community who contribute to the stack, ensuring it reflects the features and values protocol users care about. OP Enterprise is managed blockchain infrastructure from the team behind the OP Stack. It handles operations, security, upgrades, and scaling. Customers keep full control of their chain’s configuration, economics, and product roadmap.

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How are new features added to the OP Stack?

OP Labs and external contributors determine the feature roadmap based on consultation with OP Enterprise clients. Based on discussions, protocol upgrades are drafted, which go through the protocol upgrade process.

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What is the protocol upgrade process?

The protocol upgrade process is designed to make sure the OP Stack does not change against the interests of the businesses building on the platform. This is a key benefit of crypto systems compared to their centralized alternatives. Platform risk is a common risk of Web 2 platforms and is a key consideration for the largest partners building on the OP Stack. Protocol upgrades are drafted by OP Labs or other core contributors to the OP Stack. Before they are implemented, updates are tested across multiple devnets, and as needed, are audited by independent security teams. You can read more about Optimism’s audit policy here. After it has been ensured that an update is production ready, it enters a 7 day veto period. This allows all tokenholders to block the protocol upgrade if they believe that it disadvantages their interests or may cause harm to the overall platform. This is how platform risk is reduced for key stakeholders of the OP Stack. If a proposal is veto’d, it enters an appeals and discussion phase and can be resubmitted. For full details about the protocol upgrade process, please see the Operating Manual.

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How can my chain specifically influence the feature roadmap?

OP Enterprise customers are actively consulted by OP Labs and core developers about the feature roadmap to ensure their needs are addressed. During the protocol upgrade process chains are encouraged to participate and share their perspectives within various research and development repositories.

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How does Optimism help my chain achieve decentralization?

Permissionless Fault Proof OP Chains that have their upgrade keys managed by the Optimism Security Council are classified as Stage 1 in L2Beat’s framework. This distributed group delivers the benefit of security scrutinized upgrades that are managed by Optimism.