Optimism recently made a significant upgrade to its testnet, as confirmed by Offchain Labs. However, Offchain Labs, a rival to Optimism, acknowledged that these improvements came after facing some challenging difficulties. It took Optimism at least two weeks to address and fix two serious vulnerabilities on its testnet. Offchain Labs, who discovered the vulnerabilities on Friday, reported that these security weaknesses could have allowed malicious actors to alter the chain’s history and carry out subtle attacks.
Offchain Labs informed Optimism about the testnet issues on March 22. The first issue involved the OP Stack fraud-proof mechanism, which was susceptible to accepting a false chain history. The second issue highlighted the possibility of an exploiter preventing the network from accepting a valid chain history.
Addressing these challenging difficulties, Optimism implemented timer-handling code as a preventive measure against future attacks. The upgrade aims to enhance network security and prevent successful assaults such as censorship and traitor attacks.
Following Ethereum’s Dencun update, Optimism has emerged as the leading protocol based on developer activity and 7-day net flows. Despite being operational for only two years, it has surpassed long-standing industry leaders like Polkadot and Cardano. Additionally, DefiLlama reports that while the total-value-locked (TVL) continues to rise steadily, the number of core developers and Github contributions has recently experienced a surge.
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