Metis: Layer 2 in the MEME narrative, the strongest dark horse in the Layer 2 competition?

Author: YBB CapitalResearcher Ac-Core

Foreword:

Layer2 should be an expansion path rich in "Ethereum correctness" in our consciousness, but due to the influence of market rumors that the founding team of Metis is "Vitalik Buterin's mother/best friend", Metis was given the title MEME Layer2. This It undoubtedly hits the crux of market investors’ belief in the orthodoxy of Ethereum. butBlockchainAt present, the essential attribute is still "code + finance". From an investment perspective, technology and the market have always been a pair of happy enemies who are both separated and reunited. Can Metis use other Rollup centralized sequencer issues and strong control economic models? Disadvantages to stand out from many Layer 2?

Introduction to Metis

(Left Natalia Ameline, right Elena Sinelnikova)

The origin of the MEME attribute, according to Metis official website, Metis co-founder and CEO Elena Sinelnikova has been promotingBlockchainindustry’s education and outreach efforts and the world’s largest women’s educational nonprofit organizationBlockchainCommunityCryptoChicks的联创之一。CryptoChicks的另一位联创是Natalia Ameline，她是以太坊创始人Vitalik Buterin的母亲，此外Vitalik Buterin的父亲Dmitry Buterin也牵头创办了区块链教育公司Blockgeeks，致力于开发与区块链技术相关的课程。Metis Network于2018年成立，2021年5月发行。

Metis is a Layer 2 based on the Ethereum chain. It is the earliest fork project of Optimism. Its working principle is the same as other Layer 2. The biggest highlight is that it is the first Optimistic Rollup to successfully realize the decentralization of the sorter. The network employs a Proof-of-Stake Sequencer Pool mechanism to ensure the network’s continued availability and censorship resistance, while enabling fee sharing and sequencer staking. These sequencers are responsible for determining the packaging order of transactions. During the process, they must obtain the signatures of at least 2/3 of the sequencers in the sequencer pool before the data can be packaged and uploaded to the Layer 1 network. In order to prevent malicious behavior, Metis also introduced the role of a validator to conduct sample surveys on blocks to ensure that the ordering of transactions by the orderer is correct.

MPC (Multi-Party Computation) has advantages in privacy protection and decentralization. However, it also has some obvious disadvantages in blockchain networks that require consensus. Due to the lack of relay nodes to distribute information, the number of communications increases, which in turn leads to a significant increase in communication costs within the network. Metis’s solution is to transform a single point orderer into a orderer pool, achieving decentralization through the node staking mechanism and rotation mechanism, so that the decentralized orderer can reach consensus and complete signatures. Although this may ultimately make the network cost not much lower than Layer 1, it can achieve MEV resistance and solve the single point of failure problem, while distributing benefits to node stakers.

The recent dramatic growth of Metis TVL has drawn attention to the importance of decentralized sorters. According to L2According to BEAT data, the TVL of the OP solution currently ranks fifth among all Layer 2 networks. Metis's decentralized sorter was originally designed to proactively allocate cakes while also allowing the market to see Layer 2 nativeTokenvalue capture.

Image source:L2BEAT data time 24/02/01

Rollup three elements

Rollup is one of the Layer2 solutions, also known as rollup. Its working principle is to migrate the transaction calculation and storage performed on the Ethereum main network (i.e. Layer 1) to Layer 2 for processing and compression, and then upload the compressed data to the Ethereum main network, thereby expanding the performance of Ethereum.

Rollup can be divided into ZK Rollup and Optimistic Rollup according to different schemes to ensure the validity of compressed data (that is, data correctness). It involves off-chain computation, packaging transactions onto the chain every few minutes, rolling verification and accounting, hence the name. However, although we usually call it a Rollup chain, the off-chain part of Rollup is not a complete blockchain. Rollup literally rolls up a bunch of transactions to form a Rollup transaction. After receiving this Rollup transaction, all nodes Do not execute the wrapped logic but only accept the execution results of these logics.

Image source: Ac-Core homemade

● Sequencer

The sorter isL2 Responsible for sorting, sorting, packaging and submitting transactions to the L1 network. Currently, most L2 projects rely on a single sequencer (usually the project party itself) to complete the above work. There are twoSafetyProblems: 1. Single point of failure. If the sequencer has problems due to attacks or technical failures, the entire network will shut down;

2. Scalability issues. A single sequencer may be unable to cope with the increasing transaction volume.

● verify

During the transaction process, the packaged data sent by the sequencer needs to be verified. Currently, most of the verification of Ethereum Rollup is performed by Ethereum Rollup intelligence.contractExecution to ensure the credibility of the data. There are mainly two different verification methods: ZK Rollup (Zero knowledge proofRollup) and Optimistic Rollup (optimistic rollup). For example:

ZK Rollup:

Verification method: ZK Rollup useZero knowledge proof(Zero-Knowledge Proofs) to verify the correctness of all transactions occurring in Layer2. Zero-knowledge proofs allow validators to confirm the validity of specific transactions without knowing their details;

Privacy protection: ZK Rollup emphasizes user privacy, because what is submitted on Layer1 is the "proof" of the calculation results rather than the details of the transaction. The specific transaction content is carried out on Layer 2, while Layer 1 only verifies the validity of the zero-knowledge proof.

Optimistic Rollup:

Verification method: Optimistic Rollup adopts an "optimistic" strategy, which assumes that all transactions are legal and then verifies them only when necessary. Verification is completed through fraud proofs (Fraud Proofs), that is, proofs are submitted on Layer1 to prove that transactions on Layer2 violate the rules;

Real-time: Since all transactions are assumed to be legal, Optimistic Rollup's transactions on Layer 2 can be carried out quickly, and verification occurs when disputes or objections arise.

● DA(DaXiaobai Navigationta Availability)

DA stands for Data Availability, which publicly publishes the status data of each transaction processed off-chain so that other participants can access and use these transaction status data. Some Layer2 writes the status data of the transaction to Ethereum Layer1, thereby realizing DA. There are also some Rollup Layer2s that write key transaction data on third-party blockchains. The premise of data availability is that the data is trustworthy. For example:

DA in Optimistic Rollup: Ensure that Layer1 can obtain the data of all transactions on Layer2. If data is unavailable, anyone can dispute it on Layer 1, which helps prevent potential data tampering or omissions;

Commitment in ZK Rollup: In Layer2, the calculation and storage of all transactions occur, but only the result of the calculation (called Commitment) is submitted to Layer1. Zero-knowledge proofs are used to prove the correctness of these Commitments.

Note: In ZK Rollup, "Commitment" is more focused on verifying the correctness of the transaction calculation results on Layer2, while "Data Availability" is more focused on ensuring that Layer1 can obtain the data of all transactions on Layer2. The two are usually complementary to each other to ensure of the entire systemSafetyperformance and reliability.

Among the three key elements of Rollup, the sequencer is considered the most critical. The sorter is responsible for performing the process of sorting and compressing Layer 2 transaction information off-chain. Since this process involves verification of the authenticity of the data, achieving data availability is crucial. However, when the sorter is decentralized, the implementation of data trustworthiness verification and availability may no longer be so critical.

Metis decentralized sorter based on PoS consensus

Image source: Metis L2

● Sorter selection

If you lock $Metis on Metis, you have the opportunity to become a node. The weight will be calculated based on the number of $Metis locked, and the algorithm will allocate a range to these nodes. Metis Rollup has improved the "Transaction Data Verification Section". In the calculation process of Layer 2, a role called "verifier" is introduced, and a competitive mining mechanism is used to encourage verification nodes to quickly verify transactions, and this process is realized through a competition mechanism. Similar to other Layer 1 networks that adopt the Proof-of-Stake (PoS) mechanism, Metis transactions also require nodes to verify. Therefore, there is no dispute about the data packaged and transmitted from Metis to L1, which avoids the problems of intervals and delays in withdrawing assets from Metis to the Ethereum mainnet.

A significant difference of Metis Rollup compared to Optimistic Rollup is that it only takes a few hours or minutes to withdraw assets from Metis to the Ethereum L1 layer. This highlights the advantages of Metis Rollup in terms of efficiency and speed in processing transactions. Generally speaking, nodes with higher lock-up amounts have a higher probability of joining the sorter. Of course there is some randomness involved.

● MPC (Multi-Party Computation) for sorters

The decentralization of the orderer by Metis involves three key roles: administrator (Admin), orderer and PoS-based consensus layer.

administrator:Responsible for setting key parameters of the overall network and managing the qualification of sequencers to join the sequencer pool. The parties to the agreement no longer directly have absolute control over such matters, but will be executed by the administrator after the proposal is approved. One of the difficulties in achieving decentralization is that the management of the sorter must be carried out in a decentralized manner while maintaining efficiency and convenience;

Sorter:Metis uses MPC (Multi-Party Computation) signature based on TSS (Threshold Signature Scheme) to manage the signature permissions of multiple sequencers. Each sequencer has the right to decide a batch, and all sequencers participate through MPC signature. If the number of signatures exceeds 2/3, the batch is considered valid and can be submitted to Rollup on L1contractmiddle. MPC signing by the sequencer pool is done by another in the PoS-based networkcontractTo manage. When the PoS network cannot detect the MPC address, the MPC module is triggered to generate a key;

PoS-based consensus layer:The PoS network is responsible for managing the contract of the sequencer's signature authority, monitoring the MPC address, and triggering the generation of keys. The generated key will be sharded and distributed to each sequencer in the pool for MPC signing. The settings of this module cover the life cycle management of keys, including multi-signature generation, key re-sharing, application signatures, deletion signatures, etc.;

The reason for using TSS is its high fault tolerance and high flexibility properties. Compared with multi-signature, TSS does not need to verify each signature on the chain. Instead, the signatures of all signers are aggregated and verified uniformly, thereby increasing the transaction confirmation rate. In addition, communication between PoS nodes uses independent Tendermint channels, while communication during the MPC runtime uses the libp2p protocol. The entire system is designed to be efficient,SafetyDecentralized management of sorters.

● Metis sequencer transaction flow

1. Start the user to start the transaction; 2. The transaction is forwarded to the network sequencer node; 3. Block generation: the sequencer creates a block when the transaction is valid; 4. Finalization: the multi-party computation (MPC) node merges and forwards the block to the Ethereum main chain.

● MetisEDF

The Metis Ecological Development Fund (MetisEDF) provides financial support for this, covering multiple aspects, such as the development and deployment of incentive protocols, providing liquidity support, conducting security audits and implementing liquidity mining plans. Assignments include:

Sequencer Mining: 65.4% (3 million $METIS / >260 million USD);

Ecosystem Funding: 34.6% (1.6M $METIS / >140M USD).

Centralized sorter problem

Image source: Ac-Core homemade

The principle of Ethereum is that each node stores and executes every transaction submitted to it by users. This high-level security method also makes the entire network very expensive, so a Rollup solution is needed to expand the entire network. To put it simply, Rollup = a set of contracts of Layer1 + Layer2’s own network nodes, that is, on-chain smart contracts + off-chain aggregators, which rely on Ethereum in terms of settlement, consensus, and data availability, and are only responsible for executing Rollup.

● The smart contract on the chain means that its trust model is a smart contract on Ethereum, borrowing the security of Ethereum;

● Off-chain aggregator means that it will execute and aggregate transactions off-chain, compress large batches of transactions, and finally put them on the Ethereum main network to achieve faster and cheaper purposes.

Layer2 network nodes are composed of many parts, among which the sequencer component is the most important. It is responsible for receiving transaction requests on Layer 2 to determine their execution order and batch the transaction sequence, and finally transmits it to the contract of the Rollup project on Layer 1. Currently, the sequencers of all Layer 2 Rollups in Ethereum are centralized, Metis But it happens to take advantage of the decentralized sorter.

The full node of Layer2 can obtain the transaction sequence in two ways: one is to obtain it directly from the sequencer, and the other is to read the Batch sent by the sequencer to Layer1, but the latter has a stronger unmodifiable attribute. Since transaction execution will change the status of the blockchain ledger, in order to ensure consistency, in addition to obtaining the transaction order, the Layer 2 full node must also synchronize the ledger status with the sequencer. Therefore, the task of the sequencer is not only to send the transaction batch to the Rollup contract of Layer1, but also to transmit the state update result StateRoot/StateDiff after transaction execution to Layer1. Generally speaking, the job of the sequencer is to process and sort the transactions as Blocks added to the blockchain are responsible for batching transactions and publishing them to Layer1 smart contracts.

For the full node of Layer2, as long as the transaction sequence and initial StateRoot of Rollup on Layer1 are obtained, the blockchain ledger of Layer2 can be restored and the latest StateRoot can be calculated. On the contrary, if the StateRoot calculated by the Layer2 full node is inconsistent with the StateRoot published by the sorter to Layer1, it means that the sorter has committed fraud. In summary, compared to Layer 2’s own network, Layer 1 will be more decentralized, trustless and more secure.

For example, Optimistic Rollup allows Layer 2 full nodes to provide fraud proof, proving that the data published by the sorter on Layer 1 is wrong. But for Optimism without fraud proof, if it really wants to pass the sequencerstealTo use Layer 2 user assets, you only need to ask the sequencer operator to forge transaction instructions and transfer other people’s Layer 2 assets to their own addresses, and finally transfer them through the Bridge contract that comes with Rollup.stealThe incoming coins are transferred to Layer1.

Thoughts on Metis

Source: Chaindebrief

The biggest hot spot of recent hype for Layer 2 is undoubtedly the Cancun upgrade, but this will not have unique benefits for Metis but will be universal. Putting aside the impact of the market sentiment of "Vitalik Buterin's mother/best friend", the biggest competitive point between Metis and other Layer 2s is its decentralized sorter and decentralized economic model. The overall market value shown by TVL is more in line with market users' expectations for Metis Confident feedback.

Metis is different from other Layer 2 companies in the way they hold on to financial power. Instead, they distribute more revenue to users. The overall economic model of OP Rollup is a state of strong control. Through a centralized approach, OP Token rewards are continuously distributed to the ecosystem to stimulate development and interaction, thereby profiting from the Gas price difference. Different from this method, Metis uses The income rights and interests are delegated to the pledgers to participate in the competition, greatly releasing the financial attributes of Layer 2 infrastructure, thereby attracting a lot of attention from the market.

MEME represents more of a culture and some socioeconomic factors. For example, in the process of buying MEME, in addition to our investment expectations of ten times, a hundred times or even a thousand times for it, more part of it comes from the way we narrate it and various factors. recognition and love due to various factors, but after all, pulling the market is justice, and Metis’s growing TVL is also a feedback from the market on its investment expectations. The issue of MEME attributes should be considered from a market perspective aside from the technical aspect. My point of view is that if Inscription is a tester of public chain performance, then MEME is a touchstone of market recognition to a certain extent.

The article comes from the Internet:Metis: Layer 2 in the MEME narrative, the strongest dark horse in the Layer 2 competition?

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