UPDATE (10 Jan 2025)
An on-chain proposal for activating Arbitrum BoLD and whitelisting Infura’s validator for Arbitrum Nova has been posted to Tally as of Jan 6 2025.
This proposal includes an executable payload that will be executed on-chain if the vote passes successfully. The on-chain executable payload can be found here and performs the following actions sequentially:
- OfficeHourAction - this action is executed first and restricts the execution time of the rest of the proposal payload between the hours of 09:00 - 12:00 GMT-05 on any weekday (Monday to Friday) after Wednesday Feb 12, 2025 09:00 GMT-05. This is to ensure that teams are available and ready to monitor the upgrade (and respond if necessary).
- Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum One to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - this action is required to allow stake/bond withdrawal when the rollup is paused if it is deprecated (introduced in 2.1.0)
- Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum Nova to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - same reason as above.
- Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum One
- Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum Nova
- Add Infura’s validator address to the validator whitelist for Arbitrum Nova
Submitted by: The Arbitrum Foundation
Category: Constitutional, Software Upgrade
This Constitutional AIP proposes upgrading both Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova’s Rollup Contracts to use Arbitrum BOLD: a new dispute resolution protocol that is designed to replace the existing and currently deployed Arbitrum protocol. BOLD delivers two critical improvements:
BOLD accomplishes this feat by ensuring that any single honest party can always successfully defend against malicious claims to an Arbitrum chain’s state. BOLD represents the next step on the journey to having the Arbitrum technology stack being recognized as a Stage 2 Ethereum rollup. The implementation of BOLD will be thoroughly tested to ensure both its effectiveness and safety. The testing plan includes:
This proposal requests the ArbitrumDAO to approve an upgrade to the onchain smart contracts and to support the deployment of a new challenger manager contract on Ethereum. If the upgrade is approved, then validators on Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova can use the Nitro software to participate in BOLD.
Additionally, all Arbitrum Orbit chains may choose to adopt BOLD to reap the security benefits of this new dispute resolution protocol as soon as the upgrade is generally available. BOLD, like the current Arbitrum dispute resolution protocol, makes use of WebAssembly (WASM) technology and can seamlessly support Arbitrum Stylus, should the ArbitrumDAO adopt Stylus.
The ArbitrumDAO should consider approving this AIP as BOLD delivers critical security and decentralization improvements for Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova that benefit all Arbitrum users, Arbitrum node operators, dApps on Arbitrum, and Arbitrum bridges. These benefits can be extended to any Orbit chain that wishes to adopt BOLD.
More specifically, this new dispute resolution protocol brings the following benefits to Arbitrum chains:
Permissionless validation - Today, the critical role of being a validator for Arbitrum One and Nova is currently restricted to a permissioned set of validators in order to prevent delay attacks on the current rollup protocol - a class of attacks where actors can delay confirmations if they are willing to sacrifice their stakes. However, since BOLD mitigates the risks of delay attacks using a different mechanism (enforcing a fixed upper time bound on dispute resolution), reliance on a permissioned set of validators is no longer necessary. Therefore, passing this AIP and implementing BOLD to secure Arbitrum One and Nova effectively enables permissionless validation, marking a key milestone for Arbitrum chains to be recognized as Stage 2 Rollups, as part of Arbitrum’s journey to full decentralization.
Fixed delay time for assertion confirmation - The current rollup protocol for Arbitrum chains has a ~6.4 day challenge period during which validators can dispute claims about the chain’s state. These claims about the chain’s state are called “assertions”. While assertions are confirmable after 1 challenge period, malicious actors can open many challenges to delay confirming these assertions in a type of attack known as a delay attack. BOLD guarantees that all assertions, if there is a dispute using the validating bridge contract, will be confirmed within a fixed time window of 2 challenge periods (~6.4 days each), 2 day grace period for the security council to intervene, and a small delta for computing challenges.
Enabling permissionless validation has been a long term goal of Arbitrum on the progressive journey towards decentralization.
BOLD mitigates the risk of delay attacks on Optimistic Rollups by ensuring challenges can be resolved within a fixed time period so long as there is an honest party involved. This particular change unlocks permissionless validation, enabling any well-resourced honest party or parties to defend and protect Arbitrum from malicious actors. All Arbitrum nodes are like watchtowers - honest validators by default and are able to catch fraudulent claims, and act if so desired.
More specifically, this AIP for bringing BOLD to Arbitrum chains is:
Ethereum-aligned: Arbitrum, with BOLD validation, will continue to rely on Ethereum for transaction data and the arbitration of disputes. Additionally, in line with Ethereum’s commitment to being open to everyone, Arbitrum will become more decentralized and trustless since participation to secure the network (i.e. validation) will be entirely permissionless and open to everyone who wishes to participate.
Sustainable: The BOLD protocol is a long-term dispute resolution protocol to secure Arbitrum chains. Additionally, there are already future investments and research expected following the initial launch, to ensure BOLD and its security guarantees evolve alongside the Arbitrum protocol, technology, and community.
Secure: The BOLD protocol is an intentional and strict improvement to the security model of Arbitrum chains. Arbitrum rollup chains, with BOLD validation, will continue to rely on Ethereum for data availability of transaction data and the arbitration of disputes.
Socially inclusive: Should this AIP be adopted, permissionless validation using BOLD will allow any entity, individual, or team in the community to participate constructively in securing Arbitrum. Validation is not restricted to a single address, as BOLD considers all entities that are proposing honest claims to be part of the same team. Where one honest validator may fall off, another one can take up its same responsibility.
Technically inclusive: The BOLD protocol specification is publicly available on Github here. The technology is permitted for use by anyone (i.e. permissionless) for the sole purpose of operating and developing an Arbitrum Nitro Instantiation.
User-focused: If this AIP is adopted, both users and dApp project developers on Arbitrum One and Nova alike will not need to take any additional action to reap the benefits of BOLD. BOLD will be working silently “under the hood” to ensure safe withdrawals and secure, permissionless validation.
The following link, BOLD Implementation Deep Dive, explains how BOLD is implemented and how it works at a high level. To read about the formal specification and mathematical safety proofs for the protocol, check out the official BOLD whitepaper.
This section describes the bonding mechanism behind Arbitrum BOLD at a high level. The following link, Economics of Disputes in Arbitrum BOLD, offers greater details on the rationale behind the proposed bond sizes, why bonds are important, and how to think about their magnitude in the context of designing a dispute resolution protocol.
Based on feedback, we wanted to clarify the various roles and expectations for those participating in bold validation -
By default, all Arbitrum nodes are validators that will track the progress of the chain to verify assertions being posted to the parent chain to flag if an invalid assertion is observed. Running this type of validator is permissionless today and does not require any bond. Running a validator in this mode is also known as a “watchtower” node.
BOLD lets validators permissionlessly become proposers and challengers if they want to. The role of a proposer is required to help progress the chain which requires bonding ETH, proposing and then posting state assertions to the parent chain. This bond is known as an “assertion bond”. The chain only needs 1 proposer to make progress. Therefore, most validators can watch the chain and independently verify assertions without being a proposer.
In the unhappy case where there is a dispute about a proposed state assertion, BOLD lets anyone permissionlessly put up a bond of ETH to open challenges in the defense of Arbitrum (in their capacity as a challenger to invalid state assertions). This bond is known as a “challenge bond”.
Given that participation in BOLD is permissionless, we recommend that the size of bonds required to participate be high enough to disincentivize malicious actors from attacking Arbitrum One and Nova and to mitigate against spam (that would otherwise delay confirmations up to approximately 1 challenge period). High bonding values do not harm decentralization because (1) trustless bonding (or staking) pools can be deployed permissionlessly to open challenges and post assertions, and (2) any number of honest parties of unknown identities can emerge to bond their funds to the correct assertion and participate in the defense of Arbitrum at any time within a challenge. As with the current dispute resolution protocol, there are no protocol level incentives for parties who opt in to participate in validating Arbitrum One and Nova with BOLD.
While both of these bonds can be any ERC20 token and be set to any size, this proposal recommends the use of the WETH ERC20 token & the following bond sizes:
Assertion bonds: 3600 ETH - required from validators to bond their funds to an assertion in the eventual hopes of having that assertion be confirmed by the rollup protocol. This is a one-time bond required to be able to start posting assertions. This bond can be withdrawn once a validator’s assertion is confirmed and can alternatively be put together via a trustless bonding pool.
Challenge-bonds, per level: 555/79 ETH (UPDATED) - required from validators to open challenges against an assertion observed on Ethereum, for each level. Note that “level” corresponds to the level of granularity at which the interactive dissection game gets played over, starting at the block level, moving on to a range of WASM execution steps, and then finally to the level of a single step of execution. These values were carefully calculated to optimize for the resource ratio and gas costs in the event of an attack, as explained in Economics of Disputes in Arbitrum BOLD and the BoLD whitepaper. This effectively means that an entity that has already put up a bond to propose an assertion does not need to put up a separate assertion bond to challenge an invalid state assertion that they observe. To be explicitly clear, the validator would still require 555 ETH and 79 ETH for ongoing challenges. These additional challenge bond amounts are needed to participate in the interactive dispute game (back and forth) and narrows down the disagreement to a single step of execution that is then proven on Ethereum. The 555 ETH and 79 ETH challenge bonds can be put together via a trustless bonding pool, and does not all have to be put up by the validator that opened the challenge. These bonds can be refunded at the end of a challenge and can also alternatively be put together by the community using a trustless bonding pool.
The following link, Economics of Disputes in Arbitrum BOLD, covers the rationale behind the design and recommended values above in greater detail. Note that the ArbitrumDAO can change these values and the type of asset used for the bonds via a governance proposal.
BOLD makes permissionless validation possible for Arbitrum rollup chains and marks a major step towards full decentralization. This significant milestone also lays the groundwork for productive discussions about future economic incentives for those participating in the protocol since anyone can participate.
Once all of a validator’s proposed assertions are confirmed, a validator can withdraw their bond in full. Other costs spent by the honest parties to defend Arbitrum, such as the L1 gas costs and the challenge bonds, are fully refundable following confirmation of all sub-challenges. Challenge bonds will be automatically refundable in-protocol while L1 gas costs will be reimbursed by the Arbitrum Foundation using a procedure that will be published at a later date. All costs spent by malicious actors, including the assertion bond, are confiscated and sent to an ArbitrumDAO controlled address.
All eligible entities who wish to be paid a reward or be reimbursed by the ArbitrumDAO or the Arbitrum Foundation must undergo the Arbitrum Foundation’s KYC process.
We propose that the ArbitrumDAO pay a service fee to active top-level proposers as a way of removing the disincentive for participation by honest parties who bond their own capital and propose assertions for Arbitrum One. The fee should be denominated in ETH and should correlate to the annualized income that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, over the same time period. At the time of writing, the estimated annual income for Ethereum mainnet validators is approximately 3% to 4% of their stake (based on CoinDesk Indices Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) 2 benchmark and Rated.Network 1). This fee is not a “reward” for the same reasons why the protocol does not reward honest parties with the funds confiscated from a malicious actor 2.
This service fee can be paid out upon an active proposer’s top-level assertion being confirmed on Ethereum and will be calculated using the duration of time that the proposer was considered active by the protocol. The procedure that calculates this will be handled off-chain, using a procedure that will be published at a later date. BOLD makes it permissionless for any validator to become a proposer and also introduces a way to pay a service fee to honest parties for locking up capital to do so. Validators are not considered active proposers until they successfully propose an assertion with a bond.
In order to become an active proposer for Arbitrum One, post-BOLD, a validator has to propose an L2 state assertion to Ethereum. If they do not have an active bond on L1, they then need to attach a bond to their assertion in order to successfully post the assertion. Subsequent assertions posted by the same address will simply move the already-supplied bond to their latest proposed assertion. Meanwhile, if an entity, say Bob, has posted a successor assertion to one previously made by another entity, Alice, then Bob would be considered by the protocol to be the current active proposer. Alice would no longer be considered by the protocol as the active proposer and once Alice’s assertion is confirmed, then Alice gets her assertion bond refunded. There can only be 1 “active” proposer at any point in time.
The service fee described above is meant to incentivize or reimburse an honest, active proposer for locking up their capital to propose assertions and advance the chain. Similarly, in the event of an attack, a reward is proposed to be paid out to honest defenders using confiscated funds from malicious actors.
Specifically, 1% (the "defender's bounty") of the confiscated funds from a malicious actor is proposed to be rewarded to honest parties who deposit a challenge bond and post assertions as part of a sub-challenge, proportional to the amount that a defender has put up to defend a correct state assertion during the challenge. 1% of all confiscated funds from the challenge bonds of malicious actors will be forfeited to honest parties. This is true for all challenges (block challenges, sub challenges and one step challenges). Note that any gas costs spent by honest parties to defend Arbitrum One during a challenge is 100% refundable by the Arbitrum Foundation. In this model, honest defenders and proposers of Arbitrum One stand are incentivized to participate while malicious actors stand to lose everything they spent attacking Arbitrum One.
Defenders are only eligible for this reward if they deposit a challenge bond (555 or 79 ETH, depending on the level), posted an on-chain assertion as part of a sub-challenge (i.e. not the top-level assertion), and have had their on-chain sub-challenge assertion get confirmed by the protocol. The calculation for this reward is conducted off-chain by the Arbitrum Foundation and payment will be made via a DAO vote (since confiscated funds go to a DAO-controlled address).
Note: The Arbitrum Foundation will NOT be entitled to receive this "defender's bounty".
The topic of further improvements and new economic and incentive models for BOLD are valuable and we believe it deserves the full focus and attention of the community via a separate proposal/discussion - decoupled from this proposal to bring BOLD to mainnet. Details around additional or new proposed economic or incentive models for BOLD will need continued research and development work, but the deployment of BOLD as-is represents a substantial improvement to the security of Arbitrum even without economic-related concerns resolved.
This proposed service fee would not apply to entities that use the DAO’s funds to become a proposer, if the proposal passes. The DAO may choose, via governance, to fund other parties or change this reward or service fee model at any time.
Some of the technical risks of the BOLD upgrade include:
Risks that remain the same between the current Arbitrum Rollup protocol and BOLD
Below is a list of initiatives to ensure the new BOLD dispute resolution protocol is ready to be reviewed and ready to be voted on by the ArbitrumDAO for adoption in Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. Feedback from the community and any findings from testing will be collected and used to inform decisions and evolve BOLD along the way.
Deployment of a public testnet with BOLD validators for a minimum of 4 weeks, meant to ensure BOLD gets tested against conditions closer to what would be seen on mainnet (e.g. complexity of txns, traffic volume, larger and diverse validator sets, L1 testnet with real usage, etc).
Please check out this guide on how to deploy a BOLD validator on the testnet to begin testing out permissionless validation using Arbitrum technology!
The submission of the AIP in the format of a forum post. [This post]
Hosting of a governance call to talk about BOLD to answer questions from the community about BOLD and this AIP.
A formal temperature check proposal to activate BOLD on Arbitrum’s Sepolia for a minimum of 4 weeks. be made via a snapshot vote, as per Phase 1 in the The Lifecycle of an Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 2.
Kick-start a public audit program 1 (running between May 10 - 27, 2024).
Finalize pre-mainnet requirements, including:
Formal AIP gets submitted to Tally. A call-for-voting will be made, as per Phase 2 in The Lifecycle of an Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 2.
Should the formal on-chain proposal pass, BOLD will activate on Arbitrum One and Nova following Phase 7 of the Lifecycle of an Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 2 flow.
BOLD is now deployed on a permissionless public testnet as of April 15, 2024 that settles to Ethereum Sepolia. Should the corresponding governance proposals pass, the target timelines for BOLD to get activated on Arbitrum Sepolia is late Spring 2024 and then eventually Arbitrum One and Nova sometime in Summer 2024. These dates are tentative targets that will depend on a number of factors, including the governance vote outcomes, audit findings, and feedback from the ArbitrumDAO community.
Although this AIP proposes that both Arbitrum One and Nova upgrade to use BOLD, we recommend for the removal of the allowlist of validators for Arbitrum One while keeping Nova permissioned with a DAO-controlled allowlist of entities - unchanged from today. This update was made for two reasons.
First, Arbitrum Nova’s TVL is much lower than Arbitrum One’s TVL, (~$17B vs. ~$46M at the time of writing, from L2Beat). This means that the high bond sizes necessary for preventing spam and delay attacks would make up a significant proportion of Nova’s TVL - which we believe introduces a centralization risk as very few parties would be incentivized to secure Nova. A solution here would be to lower the bond sizes, which brings us to the second reason: lower bond sizes reduce the costs of delay grieving attacks (where malicious actors delay the chain’s progress) and therefore hurt the security of the chain. We believe enabling permissionless validation for Nova is not worth the capital requirement tradeoffs, given the unique security model of AnyTrust chains. .
Notably, since Arbitrum Nova’s security already depends on at least one DAC member providing honest data availability, trusting the same committee to have at least one member provide honest validation does not add a major trust assumption. This requires all DAC members also to run validators. If the DAC is also validating the chain, a feature the Offchain Labs team has been working on, Fast Withdrawals, would allow users to withdraw assets from Nova in ~15 minutes, or the time it takes to reach L1 finality. This is made possible by the DAC attesting to and instantly confirming an assertion. Fast Withdrawals will be the subject of a separate AIP.
There is no cost for this proposal to the ArbitrumDAO as Offchain Labs, Inc. will incur all engineering and audit costs to complete the implementation of BOLD and get this new dispute resolution protocol into a mainnet-ready state. Engineering efforts to prepare BOLD for mainnet, as documented in the Steps to Implement section above will be owned by Offchain Labs, Inc. Currently, future development work for BOLD is expected to also be undertaken by Offchain Labs, Inc.
There have been two governance calls on this proposal to date. You can see the meeting recordings here: governance call #1 and governance call #2
Listen to the AMA recording on 'Uncovering BOLD & Permissionless Validation' that took place on April 18, here: https://twitter.com/OffchainLabs/status/1780643417522901337
Upon having conversations with stakeholders in the DAO and wider ecosystem, we’ve consolidated together of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and answers here. This FAQ document will be iteratively updated as and when more common questions are raised.
The confirmation timing on any withdrawal that is in-flight when the proposed BOLD upgrade is activated will be delayed until the first BOLD assertion is confirmed. This means that for any Arbitrum chain that upgrades to use BOLD, including Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova, all pending withdrawals to L1 Ethereum that were initiated before the upgrade will be delayed by 1 challenge period, plus the time between the withdrawal was initiated and the time that the BOLD upgrade takes place. This is because the upgrade effectively "resets" the challenge period for that are not yet finalized.
For example, if the upgrade happened at time t, then a withdrawal initiated at a time t-2 days will need to wait an additional 6.4 days for their withdrawal to be finalized, totaling 8.4 days of maximum delay. Withdrawals that finalize before the upgrade takes place at time t will be unaffected. In other words, the maximum delay a withdrawal will experience leading up to the upgrade is 12.8 days (two challenge periods).
UPDATE (10 Jan 2025)
An on-chain proposal for activating Arbitrum BoLD and whitelisting Infura’s validator for Arbitrum Nova has been posted to Tally as of Jan 6 2025.
This proposal includes an executable payload that will be executed on-chain if the vote passes successfully. The on-chain executable payload can be found here and performs the following actions sequentially:
- OfficeHourAction - this action is executed first and restricts the execution time of the rest of the proposal payload between the hours of 09:00 - 12:00 GMT-05 on any weekday (Monday to Friday) after Wednesday Feb 12, 2025 09:00 GMT-05. This is to ensure that teams are available and ready to monitor the upgrade (and respond if necessary).
- Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum One to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - this action is required to allow stake/bond withdrawal when the rollup is paused if it is deprecated (introduced in 2.1.0)
- Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum Nova to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - same reason as above.
- Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum One
- Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum Nova
- Add Infura’s validator address to the validator whitelist for Arbitrum Nova
Submitted by: The Arbitrum Foundation
Category: Constitutional, Software Upgrade
This Constitutional AIP proposes upgrading both Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova’s Rollup Contracts to use Arbitrum BOLD: a new dispute resolution protocol that is designed to replace the existing and currently deployed Arbitrum protocol. BOLD delivers two critical improvements:
BOLD accomplishes this feat by ensuring that any single honest party can always successfully defend against malicious claims to an Arbitrum chain’s state. BOLD represents the next step on the journey to having the Arbitrum technology stack being recognized as a Stage 2 Ethereum rollup. The implementation of BOLD will be thoroughly tested to ensure both its effectiveness and safety. The testing plan includes:
This proposal requests the ArbitrumDAO to approve an upgrade to the onchain smart contracts and to support the deployment of a new challenger manager contract on Ethereum. If the upgrade is approved, then validators on Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova can use the Nitro software to participate in BOLD.
Additionally, all Arbitrum Orbit chains may choose to adopt BOLD to reap the security benefits of this new dispute resolution protocol as soon as the upgrade is generally available. BOLD, like the current Arbitrum dispute resolution protocol, makes use of WebAssembly (WASM) technology and can seamlessly support Arbitrum Stylus, should the ArbitrumDAO adopt Stylus.
The ArbitrumDAO should consider approving this AIP as BOLD delivers critical security and decentralization improvements for Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova that benefit all Arbitrum users, Arbitrum node operators, dApps on Arbitrum, and Arbitrum bridges. These benefits can be extended to any Orbit chain that wishes to adopt BOLD.
More specifically, this new dispute resolution protocol brings the following benefits to Arbitrum chains:
Permissionless validation - Today, the critical role of being a validator for Arbitrum One and Nova is currently restricted to a permissioned set of validators in order to prevent delay attacks on the current rollup protocol - a class of attacks where actors can delay confirmations if they are willing to sacrifice their stakes. However, since BOLD mitigates the risks of delay attacks using a different mechanism (enforcing a fixed upper time bound on dispute resolution), reliance on a permissioned set of validators is no longer necessary. Therefore, passing this AIP and implementing BOLD to secure Arbitrum One and Nova effectively enables permissionless validation, marking a key milestone for Arbitrum chains to be recognized as Stage 2 Rollups, as part of Arbitrum’s journey to full decentralization.
Fixed delay time for assertion confirmation - The current rollup protocol for Arbitrum chains has a ~6.4 day challenge period during which validators can dispute claims about the chain’s state. These claims about the chain’s state are called “assertions”. While assertions are confirmable after 1 challenge period, malicious actors can open many challenges to delay confirming these assertions in a type of attack known as a delay attack. BOLD guarantees that all assertions, if there is a dispute using the validating bridge contract, will be confirmed within a fixed time window of 2 challenge periods (~6.4 days each), 2 day grace period for the security council to intervene, and a small delta for computing challenges.
Enabling permissionless validation has been a long term goal of Arbitrum on the progressive journey towards decentralization.
BOLD mitigates the risk of delay attacks on Optimistic Rollups by ensuring challenges can be resolved within a fixed time period so long as there is an honest party involved. This particular change unlocks permissionless validation, enabling any well-resourced honest party or parties to defend and protect Arbitrum from malicious actors. All Arbitrum nodes are like watchtowers - honest validators by default and are able to catch fraudulent claims, and act if so desired.
More specifically, this AIP for bringing BOLD to Arbitrum chains is:
Ethereum-aligned: Arbitrum, with BOLD validation, will continue to rely on Ethereum for transaction data and the arbitration of disputes. Additionally, in line with Ethereum’s commitment to being open to everyone, Arbitrum will become more decentralized and trustless since participation to secure the network (i.e. validation) will be entirely permissionless and open to everyone who wishes to participate.
Sustainable: The BOLD protocol is a long-term dispute resolution protocol to secure Arbitrum chains. Additionally, there are already future investments and research expected following the initial launch, to ensure BOLD and its security guarantees evolve alongside the Arbitrum protocol, technology, and community.
Secure: The BOLD protocol is an intentional and strict improvement to the security model of Arbitrum chains. Arbitrum rollup chains, with BOLD validation, will continue to rely on Ethereum for data availability of transaction data and the arbitration of disputes.
Socially inclusive: Should this AIP be adopted, permissionless validation using BOLD will allow any entity, individual, or team in the community to participate constructively in securing Arbitrum. Validation is not restricted to a single address, as BOLD considers all entities that are proposing honest claims to be part of the same team. Where one honest validator may fall off, another one can take up its same responsibility.
Technically inclusive: The BOLD protocol specification is publicly available on Github here. The technology is permitted for use by anyone (i.e. permissionless) for the sole purpose of operating and developing an Arbitrum Nitro Instantiation.
User-focused: If this AIP is adopted, both users and dApp project developers on Arbitrum One and Nova alike will not need to take any additional action to reap the benefits of BOLD. BOLD will be working silently “under the hood” to ensure safe withdrawals and secure, permissionless validation.
The following link, BOLD Implementation Deep Dive, explains how BOLD is implemented and how it works at a high level. To read about the formal specification and mathematical safety proofs for the protocol, check out the official BOLD whitepaper.
This section describes the bonding mechanism behind Arbitrum BOLD at a high level. The following link, Economics of Disputes in Arbitrum BOLD, offers greater details on the rationale behind the proposed bond sizes, why bonds are important, and how to think about their magnitude in the context of designing a dispute resolution protocol.
Based on feedback, we wanted to clarify the various roles and expectations for those participating in bold validation -
By default, all Arbitrum nodes are validators that will track the progress of the chain to verify assertions being posted to the parent chain to flag if an invalid assertion is observed. Running this type of validator is permissionless today and does not require any bond. Running a validator in this mode is also known as a “watchtower” node.
BOLD lets validators permissionlessly become proposers and challengers if they want to. The role of a proposer is required to help progress the chain which requires bonding ETH, proposing and then posting state assertions to the parent chain. This bond is known as an “assertion bond”. The chain only needs 1 proposer to make progress. Therefore, most validators can watch the chain and independently verify assertions without being a proposer.
In the unhappy case where there is a dispute about a proposed state assertion, BOLD lets anyone permissionlessly put up a bond of ETH to open challenges in the defense of Arbitrum (in their capacity as a challenger to invalid state assertions). This bond is known as a “challenge bond”.
Given that participation in BOLD is permissionless, we recommend that the size of bonds required to participate be high enough to disincentivize malicious actors from attacking Arbitrum One and Nova and to mitigate against spam (that would otherwise delay confirmations up to approximately 1 challenge period). High bonding values do not harm decentralization because (1) trustless bonding (or staking) pools can be deployed permissionlessly to open challenges and post assertions, and (2) any number of honest parties of unknown identities can emerge to bond their funds to the correct assertion and participate in the defense of Arbitrum at any time within a challenge. As with the current dispute resolution protocol, there are no protocol level incentives for parties who opt in to participate in validating Arbitrum One and Nova with BOLD.
While both of these bonds can be any ERC20 token and be set to any size, this proposal recommends the use of the WETH ERC20 token & the following bond sizes:
Assertion bonds: 3600 ETH - required from validators to bond their funds to an assertion in the eventual hopes of having that assertion be confirmed by the rollup protocol. This is a one-time bond required to be able to start posting assertions. This bond can be withdrawn once a validator’s assertion is confirmed and can alternatively be put together via a trustless bonding pool.
Challenge-bonds, per level: 555/79 ETH (UPDATED) - required from validators to open challenges against an assertion observed on Ethereum, for each level. Note that “level” corresponds to the level of granularity at which the interactive dissection game gets played over, starting at the block level, moving on to a range of WASM execution steps, and then finally to the level of a single step of execution. These values were carefully calculated to optimize for the resource ratio and gas costs in the event of an attack, as explained in Economics of Disputes in Arbitrum BOLD and the BoLD whitepaper. This effectively means that an entity that has already put up a bond to propose an assertion does not need to put up a separate assertion bond to challenge an invalid state assertion that they observe. To be explicitly clear, the validator would still require 555 ETH and 79 ETH for ongoing challenges. These additional challenge bond amounts are needed to participate in the interactive dispute game (back and forth) and narrows down the disagreement to a single step of execution that is then proven on Ethereum. The 555 ETH and 79 ETH challenge bonds can be put together via a trustless bonding pool, and does not all have to be put up by the validator that opened the challenge. These bonds can be refunded at the end of a challenge and can also alternatively be put together by the community using a trustless bonding pool.
The following link, Economics of Disputes in Arbitrum BOLD, covers the rationale behind the design and recommended values above in greater detail. Note that the ArbitrumDAO can change these values and the type of asset used for the bonds via a governance proposal.
BOLD makes permissionless validation possible for Arbitrum rollup chains and marks a major step towards full decentralization. This significant milestone also lays the groundwork for productive discussions about future economic incentives for those participating in the protocol since anyone can participate.
Once all of a validator’s proposed assertions are confirmed, a validator can withdraw their bond in full. Other costs spent by the honest parties to defend Arbitrum, such as the L1 gas costs and the challenge bonds, are fully refundable following confirmation of all sub-challenges. Challenge bonds will be automatically refundable in-protocol while L1 gas costs will be reimbursed by the Arbitrum Foundation using a procedure that will be published at a later date. All costs spent by malicious actors, including the assertion bond, are confiscated and sent to an ArbitrumDAO controlled address.
All eligible entities who wish to be paid a reward or be reimbursed by the ArbitrumDAO or the Arbitrum Foundation must undergo the Arbitrum Foundation’s KYC process.
We propose that the ArbitrumDAO pay a service fee to active top-level proposers as a way of removing the disincentive for participation by honest parties who bond their own capital and propose assertions for Arbitrum One. The fee should be denominated in ETH and should correlate to the annualized income that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, over the same time period. At the time of writing, the estimated annual income for Ethereum mainnet validators is approximately 3% to 4% of their stake (based on CoinDesk Indices Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) 2 benchmark and Rated.Network 1). This fee is not a “reward” for the same reasons why the protocol does not reward honest parties with the funds confiscated from a malicious actor 2.
This service fee can be paid out upon an active proposer’s top-level assertion being confirmed on Ethereum and will be calculated using the duration of time that the proposer was considered active by the protocol. The procedure that calculates this will be handled off-chain, using a procedure that will be published at a later date. BOLD makes it permissionless for any validator to become a proposer and also introduces a way to pay a service fee to honest parties for locking up capital to do so. Validators are not considered active proposers until they successfully propose an assertion with a bond.
In order to become an active proposer for Arbitrum One, post-BOLD, a validator has to propose an L2 state assertion to Ethereum. If they do not have an active bond on L1, they then need to attach a bond to their assertion in order to successfully post the assertion. Subsequent assertions posted by the same address will simply move the already-supplied bond to their latest proposed assertion. Meanwhile, if an entity, say Bob, has posted a successor assertion to one previously made by another entity, Alice, then Bob would be considered by the protocol to be the current active proposer. Alice would no longer be considered by the protocol as the active proposer and once Alice’s assertion is confirmed, then Alice gets her assertion bond refunded. There can only be 1 “active” proposer at any point in time.
The service fee described above is meant to incentivize or reimburse an honest, active proposer for locking up their capital to propose assertions and advance the chain. Similarly, in the event of an attack, a reward is proposed to be paid out to honest defenders using confiscated funds from malicious actors.
Specifically, 1% (the "defender's bounty") of the confiscated funds from a malicious actor is proposed to be rewarded to honest parties who deposit a challenge bond and post assertions as part of a sub-challenge, proportional to the amount that a defender has put up to defend a correct state assertion during the challenge. 1% of all confiscated funds from the challenge bonds of malicious actors will be forfeited to honest parties. This is true for all challenges (block challenges, sub challenges and one step challenges). Note that any gas costs spent by honest parties to defend Arbitrum One during a challenge is 100% refundable by the Arbitrum Foundation. In this model, honest defenders and proposers of Arbitrum One stand are incentivized to participate while malicious actors stand to lose everything they spent attacking Arbitrum One.
Defenders are only eligible for this reward if they deposit a challenge bond (555 or 79 ETH, depending on the level), posted an on-chain assertion as part of a sub-challenge (i.e. not the top-level assertion), and have had their on-chain sub-challenge assertion get confirmed by the protocol. The calculation for this reward is conducted off-chain by the Arbitrum Foundation and payment will be made via a DAO vote (since confiscated funds go to a DAO-controlled address).
Note: The Arbitrum Foundation will NOT be entitled to receive this "defender's bounty".
The topic of further improvements and new economic and incentive models for BOLD are valuable and we believe it deserves the full focus and attention of the community via a separate proposal/discussion - decoupled from this proposal to bring BOLD to mainnet. Details around additional or new proposed economic or incentive models for BOLD will need continued research and development work, but the deployment of BOLD as-is represents a substantial improvement to the security of Arbitrum even without economic-related concerns resolved.
This proposed service fee would not apply to entities that use the DAO’s funds to become a proposer, if the proposal passes. The DAO may choose, via governance, to fund other parties or change this reward or service fee model at any time.
Some of the technical risks of the BOLD upgrade include:
Risks that remain the same between the current Arbitrum Rollup protocol and BOLD
Below is a list of initiatives to ensure the new BOLD dispute resolution protocol is ready to be reviewed and ready to be voted on by the ArbitrumDAO for adoption in Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova. Feedback from the community and any findings from testing will be collected and used to inform decisions and evolve BOLD along the way.
Deployment of a public testnet with BOLD validators for a minimum of 4 weeks, meant to ensure BOLD gets tested against conditions closer to what would be seen on mainnet (e.g. complexity of txns, traffic volume, larger and diverse validator sets, L1 testnet with real usage, etc).
Please check out this guide on how to deploy a BOLD validator on the testnet to begin testing out permissionless validation using Arbitrum technology!
The submission of the AIP in the format of a forum post. [This post]
Hosting of a governance call to talk about BOLD to answer questions from the community about BOLD and this AIP.
A formal temperature check proposal to activate BOLD on Arbitrum’s Sepolia for a minimum of 4 weeks. be made via a snapshot vote, as per Phase 1 in the The Lifecycle of an Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 2.
Kick-start a public audit program 1 (running between May 10 - 27, 2024).
Finalize pre-mainnet requirements, including:
Formal AIP gets submitted to Tally. A call-for-voting will be made, as per Phase 2 in The Lifecycle of an Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 2.
Should the formal on-chain proposal pass, BOLD will activate on Arbitrum One and Nova following Phase 7 of the Lifecycle of an Arbitrum Improvement Proposal 2 flow.
BOLD is now deployed on a permissionless public testnet as of April 15, 2024 that settles to Ethereum Sepolia. Should the corresponding governance proposals pass, the target timelines for BOLD to get activated on Arbitrum Sepolia is late Spring 2024 and then eventually Arbitrum One and Nova sometime in Summer 2024. These dates are tentative targets that will depend on a number of factors, including the governance vote outcomes, audit findings, and feedback from the ArbitrumDAO community.
Although this AIP proposes that both Arbitrum One and Nova upgrade to use BOLD, we recommend for the removal of the allowlist of validators for Arbitrum One while keeping Nova permissioned with a DAO-controlled allowlist of entities - unchanged from today. This update was made for two reasons.
First, Arbitrum Nova’s TVL is much lower than Arbitrum One’s TVL, (~$17B vs. ~$46M at the time of writing, from L2Beat). This means that the high bond sizes necessary for preventing spam and delay attacks would make up a significant proportion of Nova’s TVL - which we believe introduces a centralization risk as very few parties would be incentivized to secure Nova. A solution here would be to lower the bond sizes, which brings us to the second reason: lower bond sizes reduce the costs of delay grieving attacks (where malicious actors delay the chain’s progress) and therefore hurt the security of the chain. We believe enabling permissionless validation for Nova is not worth the capital requirement tradeoffs, given the unique security model of AnyTrust chains. .
Notably, since Arbitrum Nova’s security already depends on at least one DAC member providing honest data availability, trusting the same committee to have at least one member provide honest validation does not add a major trust assumption. This requires all DAC members also to run validators. If the DAC is also validating the chain, a feature the Offchain Labs team has been working on, Fast Withdrawals, would allow users to withdraw assets from Nova in ~15 minutes, or the time it takes to reach L1 finality. This is made possible by the DAC attesting to and instantly confirming an assertion. Fast Withdrawals will be the subject of a separate AIP.
There is no cost for this proposal to the ArbitrumDAO as Offchain Labs, Inc. will incur all engineering and audit costs to complete the implementation of BOLD and get this new dispute resolution protocol into a mainnet-ready state. Engineering efforts to prepare BOLD for mainnet, as documented in the Steps to Implement section above will be owned by Offchain Labs, Inc. Currently, future development work for BOLD is expected to also be undertaken by Offchain Labs, Inc.
There have been two governance calls on this proposal to date. You can see the meeting recordings here: governance call #1 and governance call #2
Listen to the AMA recording on 'Uncovering BOLD & Permissionless Validation' that took place on April 18, here: https://twitter.com/OffchainLabs/status/1780643417522901337
Upon having conversations with stakeholders in the DAO and wider ecosystem, we’ve consolidated together of frequently asked questions (FAQ) and answers here. This FAQ document will be iteratively updated as and when more common questions are raised.
The confirmation timing on any withdrawal that is in-flight when the proposed BOLD upgrade is activated will be delayed until the first BOLD assertion is confirmed. This means that for any Arbitrum chain that upgrades to use BOLD, including Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova, all pending withdrawals to L1 Ethereum that were initiated before the upgrade will be delayed by 1 challenge period, plus the time between the withdrawal was initiated and the time that the BOLD upgrade takes place. This is because the upgrade effectively "resets" the challenge period for that are not yet finalized.
For example, if the upgrade happened at time t, then a withdrawal initiated at a time t-2 days will need to wait an additional 6.4 days for their withdrawal to be finalized, totaling 8.4 days of maximum delay. Withdrawals that finalize before the upgrade takes place at time t will be unaffected. In other words, the maximum delay a withdrawal will experience leading up to the upgrade is 12.8 days (two challenge periods).
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/108?u=0x_ultra
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/106?u=tane
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-70: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-70
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-70: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-70
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/108?u=0x_ultra
Democratising lobbyism, on-chain. Check out lobbyfi.xyz
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/106?u=tane
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-70: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-70
The Event Horizon Community Voted to Support this Proposal ehARB-70: EventHorizon.vote/vote/arbitrum/ehARB-70
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/56?u=bob-rossi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/102?u=winverse
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/100?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/99?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/18?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/97?u=duokongcrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/59?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/96
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/95?u=kuiclub
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/78?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/94?u=tekr0x.eth
while I disagree with the way the bundling of these 2 different proposals happened, I'm FOR both of them. We should have more reputable validators like the one from Infura, and BoLD will improve our chain. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/91?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/49 https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-whitelist-infura-nova-validator/25083/33
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/55?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/89?u=mcfly
I am voting for this proposal because it enhances the security, reliability, and decentralization of the Arbitrum network. The BoLD upgrade ensures safer, faster, and permissionless validation for Arbitrum One, while adding Infura to Arbitrum Nova’s validators strengthens its stability and performance.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/85?u=0xalex
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/amira-delegate-communication-thread/27964/3?u=amira
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/82?u=0xdonpepe
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/81?u=gabriel
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/80?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/79?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/107?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/64?u=blockworksresearch
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/63?u=michigan_blockchain
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/58?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/56
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/57?u=tane
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/55?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/8?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/51?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/50?u=jameskbh
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/47
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/46?u=ocandocrypto
Good to improve the influence of Arbitrum ecosystem
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/35?u=jojo
"Without a doubt, this kind of upgrade is indeed necessary and crucial for the scrutiny of the network."
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/34?u=bruce
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/56?u=bob-rossi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/102?u=winverse
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/100?u=ocandocrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/99?u=euphoria
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/juanrah-delegate-communication-thread/27395/18?u=juanrah
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/97?u=duokongcrypto
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/59?u=ezr3al
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/96
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/95?u=kuiclub
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/78?u=todayindefi
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/94?u=tekr0x.eth
while I disagree with the way the bundling of these 2 different proposals happened, I'm FOR both of them. We should have more reputable validators like the one from Infura, and BoLD will improve our chain. https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/91?u=paulofonseca
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/49 https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-whitelist-infura-nova-validator/25083/33
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/55?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/89?u=mcfly
I am voting for this proposal because it enhances the security, reliability, and decentralization of the Arbitrum network. The BoLD upgrade ensures safer, faster, and permissionless validation for Arbitrum One, while adding Infura to Arbitrum Nova’s validators strengthens its stability and performance.
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/85?u=0xalex
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/amira-delegate-communication-thread/27964/3?u=amira
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/82?u=0xdonpepe
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/81?u=gabriel
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/80?u=tempetechie
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/79?u=0xtalvo.eth_mty
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/larva-delegate-communication-thread/24476/107?u=larva
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/64?u=blockworksresearch
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/63?u=michigan_blockchain
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/58?u=0x_ultra
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/56
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/57?u=tane
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/55?u=griff
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/8?u=maxlomu
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/51?u=mcfly
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/50?u=jameskbh
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/47
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/46?u=ocandocrypto
Good to improve the influence of Arbitrum ecosystem
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/35?u=jojo
"Without a doubt, this kind of upgrade is indeed necessary and crucial for the scrutiny of the network."
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/34?u=bruce
I fully support the AIP BOLD proposal for permissionless validation on the Arbitrum chain. This move is crucial for enhancing both security and decentralization, aligning with the core principles of blockchain technology.
By allowing anyone to participate in validation without permission, we reduce the risk of centralization and empower a broader community of validators. The improved dispute resolution mechanism further strengthens the network's reliability, ensuring that disputes are handled fairly and efficiently.
I fully support the AIP BOLD proposal for permissionless validation on the Arbitrum chain. This move is crucial for enhancing both security and decentralization, aligning with the core principles of blockchain technology.
By allowing anyone to participate in validation without permission, we reduce the risk of centralization and empower a broader community of validators. The improved dispute resolution mechanism further strengthens the network's reliability, ensuring that disputes are handled fairly and efficiently.
This proposal is a significant step forward for the Arbitrum ecosystem and its long-term sustainability.
@openzeppelin was asked by the ARDC to review the BOLD AIP to provide security feedback. Overall, we are very pleased and impressed with the level of thoroughness with which the Offchain Labs team and Arbitrum community has discussed the risks of BOLD.
We explored concerns with the handling of confiscated funds as well as the future need to monitor and update BOLD parameters as economic conditions change. You can read the details of our analysis in the report below:
@openzeppelin was asked by the ARDC to review the BOLD AIP to provide security feedback. Overall, we are very pleased and impressed with the level of thoroughness with which the Offchain Labs team and Arbitrum community has discussed the risks of BOLD.
We explored concerns with the handling of confiscated funds as well as the future need to monitor and update BOLD parameters as economic conditions change. You can read the details of our analysis in the report below:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-security-analysis/24938?u=michael-oz
I fully support the AIP BOLD proposal for permissionless validation on the Arbitrum chain. This move is crucial for enhancing both security and decentralization, aligning with the core principles of blockchain technology.
By allowing anyone to participate in validation without permission, we reduce the risk of centralization and empower a broader community of validators. The improved dispute resolution mechanism further strengthens the network's reliability, ensuring that disputes are handled fairly and efficiently.
I fully support the AIP BOLD proposal for permissionless validation on the Arbitrum chain. This move is crucial for enhancing both security and decentralization, aligning with the core principles of blockchain technology.
By allowing anyone to participate in validation without permission, we reduce the risk of centralization and empower a broader community of validators. The improved dispute resolution mechanism further strengthens the network's reliability, ensuring that disputes are handled fairly and efficiently.
This proposal is a significant step forward for the Arbitrum ecosystem and its long-term sustainability.
@openzeppelin was asked by the ARDC to review the BOLD AIP to provide security feedback. Overall, we are very pleased and impressed with the level of thoroughness with which the Offchain Labs team and Arbitrum community has discussed the risks of BOLD.
We explored concerns with the handling of confiscated funds as well as the future need to monitor and update BOLD parameters as economic conditions change. You can read the details of our analysis in the report below:
@openzeppelin was asked by the ARDC to review the BOLD AIP to provide security feedback. Overall, we are very pleased and impressed with the level of thoroughness with which the Offchain Labs team and Arbitrum community has discussed the risks of BOLD.
We explored concerns with the handling of confiscated funds as well as the future need to monitor and update BOLD parameters as economic conditions change. You can read the details of our analysis in the report below:
https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-security-analysis/24938?u=michael-oz
It's great to see such vibrant back and forth around what is one of the most crucial updates to the network since inception!
We just wanted to point out that, for those looking for a high-level overview of dispute resolution mechanisms in the ORU landscape, we just published a comparative analysis as part of the ARDC.
It's great to see such vibrant back and forth around what is one of the most crucial updates to the network since inception!
We just wanted to point out that, for those looking for a high-level overview of dispute resolution mechanisms in the ORU landscape, we just published a comparative analysis as part of the ARDC.
BoLD of course is included but the report also looks at Fuel's hybrid proving, Optimism's FDG, and Cartesi's DAVE.
No one needs it. This is the whole power of the DAO. Management is a myth, a fairy tale. The DAO is managed entirely by the Arbitrum Foundation. The staking offer from PlutusDAO, which was approved by the DAO but rejected by PlutusDao themselves (God, how funny this is), reflects this well.
It's great to see such vibrant back and forth around what is one of the most crucial updates to the network since inception!
We just wanted to point out that, for those looking for a high-level overview of dispute resolution mechanisms in the ORU landscape, we just published a comparative analysis as part of the ARDC.
It's great to see such vibrant back and forth around what is one of the most crucial updates to the network since inception!
We just wanted to point out that, for those looking for a high-level overview of dispute resolution mechanisms in the ORU landscape, we just published a comparative analysis as part of the ARDC.
BoLD of course is included but the report also looks at Fuel's hybrid proving, Optimism's FDG, and Cartesi's DAVE.
No one needs it. This is the whole power of the DAO. Management is a myth, a fairy tale. The DAO is managed entirely by the Arbitrum Foundation. The staking offer from PlutusDAO, which was approved by the DAO but rejected by PlutusDao themselves (God, how funny this is), reflects this well.
to put a proposal to a vote in a snapshot, you need to have 500,000 ARB. Do you have them?
You are going to make a big mistake by preferring $WETH rather than the native $ARB token. Thus, you emphasize the uselessness and meaninglessness of the $ARB token, except for selling it for your personal purposes. You need to urgently introduce some kind of utility for $ARB while you still can. Every time, it turns out that Optimism + Base is already ahead of Arbitrum in all metrics except TVL. Your community is starting to run away to them. You have already lost most of the Turkish and Asian community, who claim that the OffChain Labs team is unscrupulous. You have a great chance to include $ARB in the game, but instead, you prefer $WETH.
What are the estimations for $C_\max$ and $delta$? My understanding is that (using single-level BoLD and ignoring update moves for simplicity) $C_\max + (\delta + 1)(k_\max + 2)$ is well below 50'400 blocks (~7 days), but it would be interesting to see any sort of analysis with real data. What about Orbit L3s though? The Arbitrum One protocol can currently censor and delay each move via the DelayedInbox up to 24h, meaning that now $(\delta+1)(k_\max+2)$ is at least 45d or 89d counting update moves. How can L3s be made secure? Also, other L2s could have worse censorship properties. In general, there should be some guidance on how to approach these situations and appropriately choose values.
p.s. (meta) please add math plugin :)
The interest rate should be denominated in ETH and should be equal to the annualized yield that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, which at the time of writing, is an APR between 3% to 4%
The interest rate should be denominated in ETH and should be equal to the annualized yield that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, which at the time of writing, is an APR between 3% to 4%
Could you elaborate on the 3% to 4% APR? Specifically, is the 3% applied to the amount bonded? like say 3% of 3600 ETH? If that's the case, the WETH would be locked and thus unable to yield. So, which assets are used to generate this yield? Would it involve some ETH from the Arbitrum bridge?
As you mentioned, there can be only one proposer at any given time. How does this affect bonding pool scenarios? Specifically, since the active proposer is refunded but also depends on bonds from other pool members, what does the reimbursement mechanism look like?
Hey @cattin,
I believe that from the standpoint of economic safety (i.e claims posted by Arbitrum validators on Ethereum are valid and there is a financial disincentive for errors/malicious behaviors), it makes sense to require a ≈$2 million bond from those who wish to validate transactions for the Arbitrum network. The presence and bonding of at least one honest validator/assertion poster is necessary for the chain's security. The significant cost of this bond acts as a discouragement against unnecessary delays in processing Arbitrum One withdrawals, especially since a dispute would extend the withdrawal time by an additional week beyond the already existing one-week timeframe for standard withdrawals.
Hey @cattin,
I believe that from the standpoint of economic safety (i.e claims posted by Arbitrum validators on Ethereum are valid and there is a financial disincentive for errors/malicious behaviors), it makes sense to require a ≈$2 million bond from those who wish to validate transactions for the Arbitrum network. The presence and bonding of at least one honest validator/assertion poster is necessary for the chain's security. The significant cost of this bond acts as a discouragement against unnecessary delays in processing Arbitrum One withdrawals, especially since a dispute would extend the withdrawal time by an additional week beyond the already existing one-week timeframe for standard withdrawals.
Provided that disputes can be resolved and we have functional "bonding pools" that operate without the need for trust, the integrity of the Arbitrum chain is maintained. WETH is commonly seen as a store of value asset, and as such, it tends to experience less price fluctuation compared to assets like ARB, making it an appropriate choice as a bonding asset. With that being said, the DAO holds the power to modify the required assets and the amounts for bonding in the future, should it be necessary.
I have been following the Bold testnet with interest since it started because i beleive this will be an important step for Arbitrum.
There are some suggestions that come to my mind on this subject. Can the required token for the validator be set to $ARB and can network $eth revenues be distribute for validator incentive? According to game theory, this structure may be the most ideal for a sustainable economic future.
Great progress towards security and decentralization, congrats.
I am interested in cryptoeconomics behind the values of ETH for posting assertions. It seems unreasonably high considering mainnet validator costs only 32eth. I understand there needs to be a spam prevention but this seems like quite a lot. Are there any plans on lowering it, creating pools or so? Incentive to lock in this much capital must be also very high.
Onchain voting for this proposal is ending within 24 hours:
[Vote on Tally: [Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist ](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0xf07DeD9dC292157749B6Fd268E37DF6EA38395B9/proposal/2499208639684806584)
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
to put a proposal to a vote in a snapshot, you need to have 500,000 ARB. Do you have them?
You are going to make a big mistake by preferring $WETH rather than the native $ARB token. Thus, you emphasize the uselessness and meaninglessness of the $ARB token, except for selling it for your personal purposes. You need to urgently introduce some kind of utility for $ARB while you still can. Every time, it turns out that Optimism + Base is already ahead of Arbitrum in all metrics except TVL. Your community is starting to run away to them. You have already lost most of the Turkish and Asian community, who claim that the OffChain Labs team is unscrupulous. You have a great chance to include $ARB in the game, but instead, you prefer $WETH.
What are the estimations for $C_\max$ and $delta$? My understanding is that (using single-level BoLD and ignoring update moves for simplicity) $C_\max + (\delta + 1)(k_\max + 2)$ is well below 50'400 blocks (~7 days), but it would be interesting to see any sort of analysis with real data. What about Orbit L3s though? The Arbitrum One protocol can currently censor and delay each move via the DelayedInbox up to 24h, meaning that now $(\delta+1)(k_\max+2)$ is at least 45d or 89d counting update moves. How can L3s be made secure? Also, other L2s could have worse censorship properties. In general, there should be some guidance on how to approach these situations and appropriately choose values.
p.s. (meta) please add math plugin :)
The interest rate should be denominated in ETH and should be equal to the annualized yield that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, which at the time of writing, is an APR between 3% to 4%
The interest rate should be denominated in ETH and should be equal to the annualized yield that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, which at the time of writing, is an APR between 3% to 4%
Could you elaborate on the 3% to 4% APR? Specifically, is the 3% applied to the amount bonded? like say 3% of 3600 ETH? If that's the case, the WETH would be locked and thus unable to yield. So, which assets are used to generate this yield? Would it involve some ETH from the Arbitrum bridge?
As you mentioned, there can be only one proposer at any given time. How does this affect bonding pool scenarios? Specifically, since the active proposer is refunded but also depends on bonds from other pool members, what does the reimbursement mechanism look like?
Hey @cattin,
I believe that from the standpoint of economic safety (i.e claims posted by Arbitrum validators on Ethereum are valid and there is a financial disincentive for errors/malicious behaviors), it makes sense to require a ≈$2 million bond from those who wish to validate transactions for the Arbitrum network. The presence and bonding of at least one honest validator/assertion poster is necessary for the chain's security. The significant cost of this bond acts as a discouragement against unnecessary delays in processing Arbitrum One withdrawals, especially since a dispute would extend the withdrawal time by an additional week beyond the already existing one-week timeframe for standard withdrawals.
Hey @cattin,
I believe that from the standpoint of economic safety (i.e claims posted by Arbitrum validators on Ethereum are valid and there is a financial disincentive for errors/malicious behaviors), it makes sense to require a ≈$2 million bond from those who wish to validate transactions for the Arbitrum network. The presence and bonding of at least one honest validator/assertion poster is necessary for the chain's security. The significant cost of this bond acts as a discouragement against unnecessary delays in processing Arbitrum One withdrawals, especially since a dispute would extend the withdrawal time by an additional week beyond the already existing one-week timeframe for standard withdrawals.
Provided that disputes can be resolved and we have functional "bonding pools" that operate without the need for trust, the integrity of the Arbitrum chain is maintained. WETH is commonly seen as a store of value asset, and as such, it tends to experience less price fluctuation compared to assets like ARB, making it an appropriate choice as a bonding asset. With that being said, the DAO holds the power to modify the required assets and the amounts for bonding in the future, should it be necessary.
I have been following the Bold testnet with interest since it started because i beleive this will be an important step for Arbitrum.
There are some suggestions that come to my mind on this subject. Can the required token for the validator be set to $ARB and can network $eth revenues be distribute for validator incentive? According to game theory, this structure may be the most ideal for a sustainable economic future.
Great progress towards security and decentralization, congrats.
I am interested in cryptoeconomics behind the values of ETH for posting assertions. It seems unreasonably high considering mainnet validator costs only 32eth. I understand there needs to be a spam prevention but this seems like quite a lot. Are there any plans on lowering it, creating pools or so? Incentive to lock in this much capital must be also very high.
Onchain voting for this proposal is ending within 24 hours:
[Vote on Tally: [Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist ](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0xf07DeD9dC292157749B6Fd268E37DF6EA38395B9/proposal/2499208639684806584)
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Voting has ended!
===============
[[Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist ](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0xf07DeD9dC292157749B6Fd268E37DF6EA38395B9/proposal/2499208639684806584)
### Final Votes
| **Category** | **Result** | **Details** |
|----------------------|------------------|-----------------------------|
| **Quorum reached** | ✅ | 207.61M of 202.44M |
| **Majority Support** | ✅ | |
| **For** | | 207.60M (100.0%) |
| **Against** | | 5.68k (0.0%) |
| **Abstain** | | 8.80k (0.0%) |
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
Voting has ended!
===============
[[Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist ](https://www.tally.xyz/gov/eip155:42161:0xf07DeD9dC292157749B6Fd268E37DF6EA38395B9/proposal/2499208639684806584)
### Final Votes
| **Category** | **Result** | **Details** |
|----------------------|------------------|-----------------------------|
| **Quorum reached** | ✅ | 207.61M of 202.44M |
| **Majority Support** | ✅ | |
| **For** | | 207.60M (100.0%) |
| **Against** | | 5.68k (0.0%) |
| **Abstain** | | 8.80k (0.0%) |
* * *
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
An on-chain proposal for activating Arbitrum BoLD and whitelisting Infura’s validator for Arbitrum Nova has been posted to Tally as of Jan 6 2025.
This proposal includes an executable payload that will be executed on-chain if the vote passes successfully. The on-chain executable payload can be found here and performs the following actions sequentially:
An on-chain proposal for activating Arbitrum BoLD and whitelisting Infura’s validator for Arbitrum Nova has been posted to Tally as of Jan 6 2025.
This proposal includes an executable payload that will be executed on-chain if the vote passes successfully. The on-chain executable payload can be found here and performs the following actions sequentially:
OfficeHourAction - this action is executed first and restricts the execution time of the rest of the proposal payload between the hours of 09:00 - 12:00 GMT-05 on any weekday (Monday to Friday) after Wednesday Feb 12, 2025 09:00 GMT-05. This is to ensure that teams are available and ready to monitor the upgrade (and respond if necessary).
Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum One to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - this action is required to allow stake/bond withdrawal when the rollup is paused if it is deprecated (introduced in 2.1.0)
Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum Nova to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - same reason as above.
Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum One
Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum Nova
Add Infura’s validator address to the validator whitelist for Arbitrum Nova
Voting has started for this proposal! Vote on Tally: [Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
It is important to highlight that as part of the initial BoLD 1.0.0 release, there is a Delay Buffer feature, which aims to limit the negative effects of:
It is important to highlight that as part of the initial BoLD 1.0.0 release, there is a Delay Buffer feature, which aims to limit the negative effects of:
A potential issue arises In the event that the parent chain is being repeatedly censored or if the L2 sequencer is offline, every block level assertion and/or sub-challenge assertion would need to wait 24 hours before they can bypass the sequencer (using the theSequencerInbox’s forceInclusion method described here). If this were to happen, challenge resolution would be delayed by a time t where t = (24 hours) * number of moves for a challenge. To illustrate with sample numbers, if a challenge takes 50 sequential moves to resolve, then the delay would be 50 days.
The Delay Buffer feature mitigates this by implementing some time threshold that is decremented when unexpected delays occur. Once that time threshold is met, the force inclusion window is lowered - effectively enabling entities to make moves without the 24 hour delay-per-move.
Under reasonable parameterization, the sequencer could be offline / censoring for 24 hours twice, before the force inclusion window is effectively dropped from 24 hours to a minimum inclusion time. The force inclusion window gradually (over weeks) replenishes to it's original value over time as long as the sequencer is on "good behavior" - regularly sequencing messages without unexpected delays.
Here are the initial parameter values, which might change slightly as there are still active discussions:
delay buffer B = 14400 L1 blocks (2 days)
threshold T = 150 L1 blocks (30 minutes)
*replenish rate r = 5% meaning 1 days is replenished every 20 days, or roughly a 95% uptimedelayBlock D = 7200 (1 day)
We believe that the Delay Buffer feature provides stronger guarantees of censorship resistance for Arbitrum chains. As always, Orbit chain owners can change the default parameters as they see fit for their use case.
The Delay Buffer feature was not specifically elaborated on in the original temperature check which passed on Snapshot, and since it will be included in the Tally vote, we want to ensure that it is being highlighted.
There is an existing and well established precedent of the ArbitrumDAO paying teams to provide services to the ArbitrumDAO governed chains. Specifically, Arbitrum Nova validators and Arbitrum Nova DAC members are compensated with 12% and 8% of the L2 base fee collected from the sequencer, respectively. In general, the ArbitrumDAO is the owner of Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova - responsible for the chain’s upkeep, maintenance, security, and deployment of capital accrued via fees in support of the chains’ growth and adoption.
Since BoLD enables permissionless validation, there is no requirement for the Arbitrum Foundation to participate or for the ArbitrumDAO to fund any such party to participate in securing and advancing the chain. It follows then that anyone can volunteer to step up and fulfill the important role of an active proposer for Arbitrum One. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to propose, to the ArbitrumDAO, that these funds be spent on other initiatives or to support other entities. In this particular instance, the Arbitrum Foundation is proposing to step up and fulfill this role using the ArbitrumDAO’s funds. There is no expectation of reward either - this action is purely voluntary because some entity needs to fulfill this role for Arbitrum One. As mentioned in the forum post, taking no action means that the ArbitrumDAO holds the risk that no entity will fulfill the role of being the first honest party to advance & secure Arbitrum One.
To answer your question upfront: No. The Foundation does not need more than one challenge’s worth of capital to ensure the system functions properly. The first reason is because anyone can permissionlessly step in to help defend challenges for Arbitrum One in support of or in place of the Arbitrum Foundation. This is possible because a given L2 state is entirely deterministic - meaning that there can only be a single, correct L2 assertion at any point in time. So long as an honest party bonds their capital to and defends that single, correct L2 assertion, then they will win disputes. Secondly, Arbitrum BoLD supports trustless bonding pools that can be automatically deployed to crowdsource funds together in response to a challenge. Using bonding pools is permissionless and requires no minimum ETH amount to participate. This ensures that even in the unlikely event that more than 1 challenge occurs per year, there is a safe and independently audited way for anyone to participate anonymously. Lastly, a “defender’s bounty” reward is proposed in this AIP to reward honest defenders (who deposit challenge bonds in the protocol in defense of Arbitrum) with 1% of the confiscated bonds from a dishonest party. This incentive is in place to ensure that even if the Arbitrum Foundation does not mount a defense, other parties are incentivized to do so since the reward is potentially unbounded (more challengers = more rewards). It is also worth noting that the the Arbitrum Foundation is not eligible for this “defender’s bounty”.
It should be noted that while the initial operational amount requested is 1 challenge worth of capital per year, it is not expected that challenges will occur. This is because: (a) dishonest parties who challenge the single, correct L2 assertion will lose all of their funds, (b) a large, upfront bond requirement of 3600 ETH is needed to even open a challenge, and (c) the Arbitrum Security Council has a window to review and intervene at the end of a challenge to ensure only the correct L2 state root gets confirmed. The combination of (a), (b), and (c) are expected to act as technical and economic disincentives to deter bad actors who wish to attack Arbitrum One.
An on-chain proposal for activating Arbitrum BoLD and whitelisting Infura’s validator for Arbitrum Nova has been posted to Tally as of Jan 6 2025.
This proposal includes an executable payload that will be executed on-chain if the vote passes successfully. The on-chain executable payload can be found here and performs the following actions sequentially:
An on-chain proposal for activating Arbitrum BoLD and whitelisting Infura’s validator for Arbitrum Nova has been posted to Tally as of Jan 6 2025.
This proposal includes an executable payload that will be executed on-chain if the vote passes successfully. The on-chain executable payload can be found here and performs the following actions sequentially:
OfficeHourAction - this action is executed first and restricts the execution time of the rest of the proposal payload between the hours of 09:00 - 12:00 GMT-05 on any weekday (Monday to Friday) after Wednesday Feb 12, 2025 09:00 GMT-05. This is to ensure that teams are available and ready to monitor the upgrade (and respond if necessary).
Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum One to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - this action is required to allow stake/bond withdrawal when the rollup is paused if it is deprecated (introduced in 2.1.0)
Upgrade the old rollup contracts on Arbitrum Nova to Nitro contracts 2.1.0 - same reason as above.
Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum One
Execute the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade for Arbitrum Nova
Add Infura’s validator address to the validator whitelist for Arbitrum Nova
Voting has started for this proposal! Vote on Tally: [Constitutional AIP] Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
I am a bot. Questions? Contact [email protected]
It is important to highlight that as part of the initial BoLD 1.0.0 release, there is a Delay Buffer feature, which aims to limit the negative effects of:
It is important to highlight that as part of the initial BoLD 1.0.0 release, there is a Delay Buffer feature, which aims to limit the negative effects of:
A potential issue arises In the event that the parent chain is being repeatedly censored or if the L2 sequencer is offline, every block level assertion and/or sub-challenge assertion would need to wait 24 hours before they can bypass the sequencer (using the theSequencerInbox’s forceInclusion method described here). If this were to happen, challenge resolution would be delayed by a time t where t = (24 hours) * number of moves for a challenge. To illustrate with sample numbers, if a challenge takes 50 sequential moves to resolve, then the delay would be 50 days.
The Delay Buffer feature mitigates this by implementing some time threshold that is decremented when unexpected delays occur. Once that time threshold is met, the force inclusion window is lowered - effectively enabling entities to make moves without the 24 hour delay-per-move.
Under reasonable parameterization, the sequencer could be offline / censoring for 24 hours twice, before the force inclusion window is effectively dropped from 24 hours to a minimum inclusion time. The force inclusion window gradually (over weeks) replenishes to it's original value over time as long as the sequencer is on "good behavior" - regularly sequencing messages without unexpected delays.
Here are the initial parameter values, which might change slightly as there are still active discussions:
delay buffer B = 14400 L1 blocks (2 days)
threshold T = 150 L1 blocks (30 minutes)
*replenish rate r = 5% meaning 1 days is replenished every 20 days, or roughly a 95% uptimedelayBlock D = 7200 (1 day)
We believe that the Delay Buffer feature provides stronger guarantees of censorship resistance for Arbitrum chains. As always, Orbit chain owners can change the default parameters as they see fit for their use case.
The Delay Buffer feature was not specifically elaborated on in the original temperature check which passed on Snapshot, and since it will be included in the Tally vote, we want to ensure that it is being highlighted.
There is an existing and well established precedent of the ArbitrumDAO paying teams to provide services to the ArbitrumDAO governed chains. Specifically, Arbitrum Nova validators and Arbitrum Nova DAC members are compensated with 12% and 8% of the L2 base fee collected from the sequencer, respectively. In general, the ArbitrumDAO is the owner of Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova - responsible for the chain’s upkeep, maintenance, security, and deployment of capital accrued via fees in support of the chains’ growth and adoption.
Since BoLD enables permissionless validation, there is no requirement for the Arbitrum Foundation to participate or for the ArbitrumDAO to fund any such party to participate in securing and advancing the chain. It follows then that anyone can volunteer to step up and fulfill the important role of an active proposer for Arbitrum One. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to propose, to the ArbitrumDAO, that these funds be spent on other initiatives or to support other entities. In this particular instance, the Arbitrum Foundation is proposing to step up and fulfill this role using the ArbitrumDAO’s funds. There is no expectation of reward either - this action is purely voluntary because some entity needs to fulfill this role for Arbitrum One. As mentioned in the forum post, taking no action means that the ArbitrumDAO holds the risk that no entity will fulfill the role of being the first honest party to advance & secure Arbitrum One.
To answer your question upfront: No. The Foundation does not need more than one challenge’s worth of capital to ensure the system functions properly. The first reason is because anyone can permissionlessly step in to help defend challenges for Arbitrum One in support of or in place of the Arbitrum Foundation. This is possible because a given L2 state is entirely deterministic - meaning that there can only be a single, correct L2 assertion at any point in time. So long as an honest party bonds their capital to and defends that single, correct L2 assertion, then they will win disputes. Secondly, Arbitrum BoLD supports trustless bonding pools that can be automatically deployed to crowdsource funds together in response to a challenge. Using bonding pools is permissionless and requires no minimum ETH amount to participate. This ensures that even in the unlikely event that more than 1 challenge occurs per year, there is a safe and independently audited way for anyone to participate anonymously. Lastly, a “defender’s bounty” reward is proposed in this AIP to reward honest defenders (who deposit challenge bonds in the protocol in defense of Arbitrum) with 1% of the confiscated bonds from a dishonest party. This incentive is in place to ensure that even if the Arbitrum Foundation does not mount a defense, other parties are incentivized to do so since the reward is potentially unbounded (more challengers = more rewards). It is also worth noting that the the Arbitrum Foundation is not eligible for this “defender’s bounty”.
It should be noted that while the initial operational amount requested is 1 challenge worth of capital per year, it is not expected that challenges will occur. This is because: (a) dishonest parties who challenge the single, correct L2 assertion will lose all of their funds, (b) a large, upfront bond requirement of 3600 ETH is needed to even open a challenge, and (c) the Arbitrum Security Council has a window to review and intervene at the end of a challenge to ensure only the correct L2 state root gets confirmed. The combination of (a), (b), and (c) are expected to act as technical and economic disincentives to deter bad actors who wish to attack Arbitrum One.
There is an existing and well established precedent of the ArbitrumDAO paying teams to provide services to the ArbitrumDAO governed chains. Specifically, Arbitrum Nova validators and Arbitrum Nova DAC members are compensated with 12% and 8% of the L2 base fee collected from the sequencer, respectively. In general, the ArbitrumDAO is the owner of Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova - responsible for the chain’s upkeep, maintenance, security, and deployment of capital accrued via fees in support of the chains’ growth and adoption.
Since BoLD enables permissionless validation, there is no requirement for the Arbitrum Foundation to participate or for the ArbitrumDAO to fund any such party to participate in securing and advancing the chain. It follows then that anyone can volunteer to step up and fulfill the important role of an active proposer for Arbitrum One. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to propose, to the ArbitrumDAO, that these funds be spent on other initiatives or to support other entities. In this particular instance, the Arbitrum Foundation is proposing to step up and fulfill this role using the ArbitrumDAO’s funds. There is no expectation of reward either - this action is purely voluntary because some entity needs to fulfill this role for Arbitrum One. As mentioned in the forum post, taking no action means that the ArbitrumDAO holds the risk that no entity will fulfill the role of being the first honest party to advance & secure Arbitrum One.
Should you and your team continue to believe this to be an issue, we are confident that the community will be receptive to discuss alternative proposals for how to bootstrap the first BoLD validator for Arbitrum One.
There is an existing and well established precedent of the ArbitrumDAO paying teams to provide services to the ArbitrumDAO governed chains. Specifically, Arbitrum Nova validators and Arbitrum Nova DAC members are compensated with 12% and 8% of the L2 base fee collected from the sequencer, respectively. In general, the ArbitrumDAO is the owner of Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova - responsible for the chain’s upkeep, maintenance, security, and deployment of capital accrued via fees in support of the chains’ growth and adoption.
Since BoLD enables permissionless validation, there is no requirement for the Arbitrum Foundation to participate or for the ArbitrumDAO to fund any such party to participate in securing and advancing the chain. It follows then that anyone can volunteer to step up and fulfill the important role of an active proposer for Arbitrum One. Furthermore, anyone is welcome to propose, to the ArbitrumDAO, that these funds be spent on other initiatives or to support other entities. In this particular instance, the Arbitrum Foundation is proposing to step up and fulfill this role using the ArbitrumDAO’s funds. There is no expectation of reward either - this action is purely voluntary because some entity needs to fulfill this role for Arbitrum One. As mentioned in the forum post, taking no action means that the ArbitrumDAO holds the risk that no entity will fulfill the role of being the first honest party to advance & secure Arbitrum One.
Should you and your team continue to believe this to be an issue, we are confident that the community will be receptive to discuss alternative proposals for how to bootstrap the first BoLD validator for Arbitrum One.
As mentioned in the BoLD whitepaper and AIP text above, the bond amounts were carefully selected and calculated by Offchain Labs to balance the trade off between security and costs for participating. There have been recent optimizations to the protocol that have already allowed the proposed bond sizes to be lowered while maintaining the soundness and security of the protocol. In the future, it is possible that additional improvements to the security of the protocol can enable the BoLD bond sizes to be lowered even further. Plans and designs for doing so will be made available if they reach a stage where they can be proposed. As always, we welcome the community for contributions and discussions on this topic! As for your question about using $ARB, please refer to the BoLD FAQ for more information behind the rationale for using $ETH and not $ARB in this proposal.
A recording of this call can be viewed here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I7Qsb0vscjtYTDnq4n7p1VucFXAEI1qt/view
The breakdown of the 500 ETH and how it was calculated can be found in the Service Fees section in the forum post for this funding request. As mentioned in the BoLD AIP, the documentation about BoLD, and the BoLD whitepaper, BoLD only requires 1 active, honest participant at any point in time to advance and secure Arbitrum One. This service fee is meant to remove the disincentive for honest actors to participate and to help ensure that there is always 1 honest actor participating. Additionally, only the active proposer will be eligible for this fee. As explicitly noted in the BoLD Funding AIP from the Arbitrum Foundation, the Arbitrum Foundation is volunteering to be the first honest actor to advance the chain and will be ineligible to receive the fee. As such, for the duration of time that the only active proposer is the Arbitrum Foundation, then none of the 500 ETH will be paid out. The service fee will only get spent/paid-out if another entity, that is not the Arbitrum Foundation, steps up to assume the role of being an active proposer for Arbitrum One (by being the first to propose an L2 state root on Ethereum).
As proposed in the BoLD AIP, the DAO will prioritize making honest defenders whole (i.e. reimbursed for their gas costs for defending Arbitrum One) and paying out the defender’s bounty (1% of confiscated bonds). Any remaining funds can be treated as net income to the ArbitrumDAO treasury. We’re looking forward to seeing where those discussions go!
Arbitrum One and Nova, as well as the implementation of the proposed BoLD upgrade, relies on Ethereum for security. Using ETH for service fees aligns the incentives for actors who both secure and use Arbitrum One and Nova since those same actors are implicitly also relying on the censorship-resistant and decentralized properties of Ethereum. Check out the BoLD FAQ for more information on why ETH is the proposed bonding token of choice for BoLD.
We believe that the proposal as-is can be voted on and, if passed, can be safely deployed to Arbitrum One and Nova without having a polished, finalized economic model. As mentioned in the BoLD AIP, the documentation about BoLD, and the BoLD whitepaper, a BoLD-enabled chain only requires 1 active, honest participant at any point in time to advance and secure the chain. There is no technical need for multiple proposers and anyone can permissionlessly challenge a proposer’s assertions using their own funds or via a trustless bonding pool. What is the concern that you're interested in resolving via “achieving some level of diversity” for the proposer role?
Preventing monopolization is not the goal of BoLD’s design. As mentioned in the BoLD AIP, the documentation about BoLD, and the BoLD whitepaper, a BoLD-enabled chain only requires 1 active, honest participant at any point in time to advance and secure the chain. Furthermore, there are trustless bonding pools that anyone (you included) can use to deploy using any amount of ETH alongside an assertion you believe to be correct. All in all, participation in the BoLD protocol is permissionless (anyone can do it since Arbitrum node software is public) and we believe trustless bonding pools are a great way to lower the resource requirements for people to participate.
There will be an 'Office Hours: BoLD AIP Temperature Checks' governance call later today (as listed in the governance calendar), to cover the 3 on-going BOLD-related temperature checks. See details below:
Office Hours: BoLD AIP Temperature Checks Monday, June 10 · 3:00 – 3:45pm Time zone: UTC Video call link: https://meet.google.com/ktv-dqwg-nne
This proposal has now been raised to Snapshot for a Temperature Check - https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0x98a2b1eebda641b31d7d22a60708840ec7899157e00a4028f2e9f3030ddaf7a8
As mentioned in the BoLD whitepaper and AIP text above, the bond amounts were carefully selected and calculated by Offchain Labs to balance the trade off between security and costs for participating. There have been recent optimizations to the protocol that have already allowed the proposed bond sizes to be lowered while maintaining the soundness and security of the protocol. In the future, it is possible that additional improvements to the security of the protocol can enable the BoLD bond sizes to be lowered even further. Plans and designs for doing so will be made available if they reach a stage where they can be proposed. As always, we welcome the community for contributions and discussions on this topic! As for your question about using $ARB, please refer to the BoLD FAQ for more information behind the rationale for using $ETH and not $ARB in this proposal.
A recording of this call can be viewed here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1I7Qsb0vscjtYTDnq4n7p1VucFXAEI1qt/view
The breakdown of the 500 ETH and how it was calculated can be found in the Service Fees section in the forum post for this funding request. As mentioned in the BoLD AIP, the documentation about BoLD, and the BoLD whitepaper, BoLD only requires 1 active, honest participant at any point in time to advance and secure Arbitrum One. This service fee is meant to remove the disincentive for honest actors to participate and to help ensure that there is always 1 honest actor participating. Additionally, only the active proposer will be eligible for this fee. As explicitly noted in the BoLD Funding AIP from the Arbitrum Foundation, the Arbitrum Foundation is volunteering to be the first honest actor to advance the chain and will be ineligible to receive the fee. As such, for the duration of time that the only active proposer is the Arbitrum Foundation, then none of the 500 ETH will be paid out. The service fee will only get spent/paid-out if another entity, that is not the Arbitrum Foundation, steps up to assume the role of being an active proposer for Arbitrum One (by being the first to propose an L2 state root on Ethereum).
As proposed in the BoLD AIP, the DAO will prioritize making honest defenders whole (i.e. reimbursed for their gas costs for defending Arbitrum One) and paying out the defender’s bounty (1% of confiscated bonds). Any remaining funds can be treated as net income to the ArbitrumDAO treasury. We’re looking forward to seeing where those discussions go!
Arbitrum One and Nova, as well as the implementation of the proposed BoLD upgrade, relies on Ethereum for security. Using ETH for service fees aligns the incentives for actors who both secure and use Arbitrum One and Nova since those same actors are implicitly also relying on the censorship-resistant and decentralized properties of Ethereum. Check out the BoLD FAQ for more information on why ETH is the proposed bonding token of choice for BoLD.
We believe that the proposal as-is can be voted on and, if passed, can be safely deployed to Arbitrum One and Nova without having a polished, finalized economic model. As mentioned in the BoLD AIP, the documentation about BoLD, and the BoLD whitepaper, a BoLD-enabled chain only requires 1 active, honest participant at any point in time to advance and secure the chain. There is no technical need for multiple proposers and anyone can permissionlessly challenge a proposer’s assertions using their own funds or via a trustless bonding pool. What is the concern that you're interested in resolving via “achieving some level of diversity” for the proposer role?
Preventing monopolization is not the goal of BoLD’s design. As mentioned in the BoLD AIP, the documentation about BoLD, and the BoLD whitepaper, a BoLD-enabled chain only requires 1 active, honest participant at any point in time to advance and secure the chain. Furthermore, there are trustless bonding pools that anyone (you included) can use to deploy using any amount of ETH alongside an assertion you believe to be correct. All in all, participation in the BoLD protocol is permissionless (anyone can do it since Arbitrum node software is public) and we believe trustless bonding pools are a great way to lower the resource requirements for people to participate.
There will be an 'Office Hours: BoLD AIP Temperature Checks' governance call later today (as listed in the governance calendar), to cover the 3 on-going BOLD-related temperature checks. See details below:
Office Hours: BoLD AIP Temperature Checks Monday, June 10 · 3:00 – 3:45pm Time zone: UTC Video call link: https://meet.google.com/ktv-dqwg-nne
This proposal has now been raised to Snapshot for a Temperature Check - https://snapshot.org/#/arbitrumfoundation.eth/proposal/0x98a2b1eebda641b31d7d22a60708840ec7899157e00a4028f2e9f3030ddaf7a8
Based on feedback, research, and further development, we have made some updates to the BoLD AIP. Key highlights include:
Reducing the challenge levels from 4 to 3 and reducing the challenge bond sizes by ~43% without compromising on security! This means that previously, it would cost 1000+100+10 ETH to fight off 1 challenge, but now it will only cost 555+79 ETH! These new numbers were carefully selected using the formulas and specifications in the whitepaper - optimizing for security (resource exhaustion ratio) and the worse-case scenario of elevated, sustained L1 gas costs during an attack. The top level assertion bond of 3600 ETH remains unchanged because it acts as a deterrent to open a challenge and spam the protocol to begin with.
A "defender's bounty" of 1% of confiscated bonds has been added to incentivize honest parties to defend Arbitrum One in the event of a challenge. This 1% would only go to defenders who put up bonds to defeat malicious actors during a challenge. Since confiscated funds will be sent to the ArbitrumDAO treasury, a DAO vote would be required to pay out this reward though because confiscated funds (by default) go to the DAO.
An upper bound on L1 gas cost reimbursements to defenders has been added and is proposed to be 100% of confiscated bonds during a challenge. Honest parties should always be made whole when defending Arbitrum.
Challenge bonds are now automatically refunded in-protocol once a sub-challenge assertion has been confirmed by the protocol!
Here is the link to the meeting recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L20e38nY_Fm_wLJvb8_TIncM4mVIq2A-/view?usp=sharing
for those who have left queries in the comments, do check out the BOLD FAQ document which is being continuously updated :slight_smile:
Also, there will be a follow up Governance Call on this proposal, as requested in the first call, on Tuesday May 7, 17:00 UTC
for those who have left queries in the comments, do check out the BOLD FAQ document which is being continuously updated :slight_smile:
Also, there will be a follow up Governance Call on this proposal, as requested in the first call, on Tuesday May 7, 17:00 UTC
BOLD & Permissionless Validation - Governance Call #2 Tuesday, May 7 · 5:00 – 6:00pm Time zone: UTC Google Meet joining info Video call link: https://meet.google.com/hgm-ajns-rxx
There have been 2 subsequent updates to the proposal that we would like to flag out to the DAO -
There have been 2 subsequent updates to the proposal that we would like to flag out to the DAO -
We propose that the ArbitrumDAO pay a service fee to active proposers as a way of removing the disincentive for participation by honest parties who bond their own capital and propose assertions for Arbitrum One. The fee should be denominated in
ETHand should correlate to the annualized income that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, over the same time period. At the time of writing, the estimated annual income for Ethereum mainnet validators is approximately 3% to 4% of their stake (based on CoinDesk Indices Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) benchmark and Rated.Network ). This fee is not a “reward” for the same reasons why the protocol does not reward honest parties with the funds confiscated from a malicious actor.This service fee can be paid out upon an active proposer’s assertion being confirmed on Ethereum and will be calculated using the duration of time that the proposer was considered active by the protocol. The procedure that calculates this will be handled off-chain, using a procedure that will be published at a later date.BOLD makes it permissionless for any validator to become a proposer and also introduces a way to pay a service fee to honest parties for locking up capital to do so. Validators are not considered active proposers until they successfully propose an assertion with a bond.
In order to become an active proposer for Arbitrum One, post-BOLD, a validator has to propose an L2 state assertion to Ethereum. If they do not have an active bond on L1, they then need to attach a bond to their assertion in order to successfully post the assertion. Subsequent assertions posted by the same address will simply move the already-supplied bond to their latest proposed assertion. Meanwhile, if an entity, say Bob, has posted a successor assertion to one previously made by another entity, Alice, then Bob would be considered by the protocol to be the current active proposer. Alice would no longer be considered by the protocol as the active proposer and once Alice’s assertion is confirmed, then Alice gets her assertion bond refunded. There can only be 1 “active” proposer at any point in time.
The topic of economic and incentive models for BOLD are valuable and we believe it deserves the full focus and attention of the community via a separate proposal/discussion - decoupled from this proposal to bring BOLD to mainnet. Details around proposed economic or incentive models for BOLD will need continued research and development work, but the deployment of BOLD as-is represents a substantial improvement to the security of Arbitrum even without economic-related concerns resolved.
This proposed service fee would not apply to Offchain Labs, if the proposal passes. The DAO may choose, via governance, to fund other parties or change this service fee model at any time.
Although this AIP proposes that both Arbitrum One and Nova upgrade to use BOLD, we recommend for the removal of the allowlist of validators for Arbitrum One while keeping Nova permissioned with a DAO-controlled allowlist of entities - unchanged from today. This update was made for two reasons.
First, Arbitrum Nova’s TVL is much lower than Arbitrum One’s TVL, (~$17B vs. ~$46M at the time of writing, from L2Beat). This means that the high bond sizes necessary for preventing spam and delay attacks would make up a significant proportion of Nova’s TVL - which we believe introduces a centralization risk as very few parties would be incentivized to secure Nova. A solution here would be to lower the bond sizes, which brings us to the second reason: lower bond sizes reduce the costs of delay grieving attacks (where malicious actors delay the chain’s progress) and therefore hurt the security of the chain. We believe enabling permissionless validation for Nova is not worth the capital requirement tradeoffs, given the unique security model of AnyTrust chains. .
Notably, since Arbitrum Nova's security already depends on at least one DAC member providing honest data availability, trusting the same committee to have at least one member provide honest validation does not add a major trust assumption. This requires all DAC members also to run validators. If the DAC is also validating the chain, a feature the Offchain Labs team has been working on, Fast Withdrawals, would allow users to withdraw assets from Nova in ~15 minutes, or the time it takes to reach L1 finality. This is made possible by the DAC attesting to and instantly confirming an assertion. Fast Withdrawals will be the subject of a separate AIP.
Here is a link to the meeting recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h5GroqCAt9YY4fgFleHAlOUtZeotoIdX/view?usp=sharing
Reminder: There will be a governance call about this proposal today!
There have been 3 updates to the proposal that we want to flag out to the DAO -
Challenge Grace Period extended to 2 days The “challenge grace period” has been extended from 1 day to 2 days. This is to give the Security Council additional time to intervene in case of an emergency and to fulfill its role in making time-sensitive and emergency response decisions to protect the interests of the DAO, its members, and the broader Arbitrum community.
Requirement for posting assertions and opening a block-level challenge This effectively means that an entity that has already put up a bond to propose an assertion does not need to put up a separate bond to challenge an invalid state assertion that they observe. Specifically, the proposal now requires a one-time bond of 3600 ETH to allow a proposer to both propose top level assertion AND open a block-level challenge (if they need to), with 1000/100/10 ETH remaining as the tiered bond sizes for each challenge level. This is a change from the previous requirements where a one-time bond of 1500 ETH was needed for the top-level assertion bond while an additional 3600 ETH was needed for opening a block-level challenge, followed by challenge bond sizes of 1000/100/10 ETH for each subsequent sub-challenge level.
FAQ Document We have put together an iterative FAQ document upon having conversations with stakeholders in the DAO and wider ecosystem here. This FAQ document will be updated as the DAO continues to have conversations and questions about BOLD.
There has been an edit under the Reimbursements and Penalties section , and there is an investigation is underway determine the feasibility of automatically calculating and performing challenge bond refunds on-chain, and so have made an update to the AIP to be transparent.
Previously, a manual procedure was to be published for the Arbitrum Foundation to use to calculate and handle both challenge bond reimbursements and L1 gas costs. L1 gas costs refunds are still expected to be handled by the Arbitrum Foundation. We intend to update the AIP once more when the investigation concludes.
Based on feedback received from the community, an amendment was made to the proposal to clarify that validation of Arbitrum chains using BOLD has and continues to be permissionless, with no bond or stake required. BOLD let's any one of those validators put up a bond of ETH to become proposers and challengers of state assertions about the L2 state.
By default, all Arbitrum nodes are validators that will track the progress of the chain to verify assertions being posted to the parent chain to flag if an invalid assertion is observed. Running this type of validator is permissionless today and does not require any bond. Running a validator in this mode is also known as a "watchtower" node.
BOLD lets validators permissionlessly become proposers and challengers if they want to. The role of a proposer is required to help progress the chain which requires bonding ETH, proposing and then posting state assertions to the parent chain. This bond is known as an "assertion bond". The chain only needs 1 proposer to make progress. Therefore, most validators can watch the chain and independently verify assertions without being a proposer.
In the unhappy case where there is a dispute about a proposed state assertion, BOLD lets anyone permissionlessly put up a bond of ETH to open challenges in the defense of Arbitrum (in their capacity as a challenger to invalid state assertions). This bond is known as a "challenge bond".
Based on feedback, research, and further development, we have made some updates to the BoLD AIP. Key highlights include:
Reducing the challenge levels from 4 to 3 and reducing the challenge bond sizes by ~43% without compromising on security! This means that previously, it would cost 1000+100+10 ETH to fight off 1 challenge, but now it will only cost 555+79 ETH! These new numbers were carefully selected using the formulas and specifications in the whitepaper - optimizing for security (resource exhaustion ratio) and the worse-case scenario of elevated, sustained L1 gas costs during an attack. The top level assertion bond of 3600 ETH remains unchanged because it acts as a deterrent to open a challenge and spam the protocol to begin with.
A "defender's bounty" of 1% of confiscated bonds has been added to incentivize honest parties to defend Arbitrum One in the event of a challenge. This 1% would only go to defenders who put up bonds to defeat malicious actors during a challenge. Since confiscated funds will be sent to the ArbitrumDAO treasury, a DAO vote would be required to pay out this reward though because confiscated funds (by default) go to the DAO.
An upper bound on L1 gas cost reimbursements to defenders has been added and is proposed to be 100% of confiscated bonds during a challenge. Honest parties should always be made whole when defending Arbitrum.
Challenge bonds are now automatically refunded in-protocol once a sub-challenge assertion has been confirmed by the protocol!
Here is the link to the meeting recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L20e38nY_Fm_wLJvb8_TIncM4mVIq2A-/view?usp=sharing
for those who have left queries in the comments, do check out the BOLD FAQ document which is being continuously updated :slight_smile:
Also, there will be a follow up Governance Call on this proposal, as requested in the first call, on Tuesday May 7, 17:00 UTC
for those who have left queries in the comments, do check out the BOLD FAQ document which is being continuously updated :slight_smile:
Also, there will be a follow up Governance Call on this proposal, as requested in the first call, on Tuesday May 7, 17:00 UTC
BOLD & Permissionless Validation - Governance Call #2 Tuesday, May 7 · 5:00 – 6:00pm Time zone: UTC Google Meet joining info Video call link: https://meet.google.com/hgm-ajns-rxx
There have been 2 subsequent updates to the proposal that we would like to flag out to the DAO -
There have been 2 subsequent updates to the proposal that we would like to flag out to the DAO -
We propose that the ArbitrumDAO pay a service fee to active proposers as a way of removing the disincentive for participation by honest parties who bond their own capital and propose assertions for Arbitrum One. The fee should be denominated in
ETHand should correlate to the annualized income that Ethereum mainnet validators receive, over the same time period. At the time of writing, the estimated annual income for Ethereum mainnet validators is approximately 3% to 4% of their stake (based on CoinDesk Indices Composite Ether Staking Rate (CESR) benchmark and Rated.Network ). This fee is not a “reward” for the same reasons why the protocol does not reward honest parties with the funds confiscated from a malicious actor.This service fee can be paid out upon an active proposer’s assertion being confirmed on Ethereum and will be calculated using the duration of time that the proposer was considered active by the protocol. The procedure that calculates this will be handled off-chain, using a procedure that will be published at a later date.BOLD makes it permissionless for any validator to become a proposer and also introduces a way to pay a service fee to honest parties for locking up capital to do so. Validators are not considered active proposers until they successfully propose an assertion with a bond.
In order to become an active proposer for Arbitrum One, post-BOLD, a validator has to propose an L2 state assertion to Ethereum. If they do not have an active bond on L1, they then need to attach a bond to their assertion in order to successfully post the assertion. Subsequent assertions posted by the same address will simply move the already-supplied bond to their latest proposed assertion. Meanwhile, if an entity, say Bob, has posted a successor assertion to one previously made by another entity, Alice, then Bob would be considered by the protocol to be the current active proposer. Alice would no longer be considered by the protocol as the active proposer and once Alice’s assertion is confirmed, then Alice gets her assertion bond refunded. There can only be 1 “active” proposer at any point in time.
The topic of economic and incentive models for BOLD are valuable and we believe it deserves the full focus and attention of the community via a separate proposal/discussion - decoupled from this proposal to bring BOLD to mainnet. Details around proposed economic or incentive models for BOLD will need continued research and development work, but the deployment of BOLD as-is represents a substantial improvement to the security of Arbitrum even without economic-related concerns resolved.
This proposed service fee would not apply to Offchain Labs, if the proposal passes. The DAO may choose, via governance, to fund other parties or change this service fee model at any time.
Although this AIP proposes that both Arbitrum One and Nova upgrade to use BOLD, we recommend for the removal of the allowlist of validators for Arbitrum One while keeping Nova permissioned with a DAO-controlled allowlist of entities - unchanged from today. This update was made for two reasons.
First, Arbitrum Nova’s TVL is much lower than Arbitrum One’s TVL, (~$17B vs. ~$46M at the time of writing, from L2Beat). This means that the high bond sizes necessary for preventing spam and delay attacks would make up a significant proportion of Nova’s TVL - which we believe introduces a centralization risk as very few parties would be incentivized to secure Nova. A solution here would be to lower the bond sizes, which brings us to the second reason: lower bond sizes reduce the costs of delay grieving attacks (where malicious actors delay the chain’s progress) and therefore hurt the security of the chain. We believe enabling permissionless validation for Nova is not worth the capital requirement tradeoffs, given the unique security model of AnyTrust chains. .
Notably, since Arbitrum Nova's security already depends on at least one DAC member providing honest data availability, trusting the same committee to have at least one member provide honest validation does not add a major trust assumption. This requires all DAC members also to run validators. If the DAC is also validating the chain, a feature the Offchain Labs team has been working on, Fast Withdrawals, would allow users to withdraw assets from Nova in ~15 minutes, or the time it takes to reach L1 finality. This is made possible by the DAC attesting to and instantly confirming an assertion. Fast Withdrawals will be the subject of a separate AIP.
Here is a link to the meeting recording: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1h5GroqCAt9YY4fgFleHAlOUtZeotoIdX/view?usp=sharing
Reminder: There will be a governance call about this proposal today!
There have been 3 updates to the proposal that we want to flag out to the DAO -
Challenge Grace Period extended to 2 days The “challenge grace period” has been extended from 1 day to 2 days. This is to give the Security Council additional time to intervene in case of an emergency and to fulfill its role in making time-sensitive and emergency response decisions to protect the interests of the DAO, its members, and the broader Arbitrum community.
Requirement for posting assertions and opening a block-level challenge This effectively means that an entity that has already put up a bond to propose an assertion does not need to put up a separate bond to challenge an invalid state assertion that they observe. Specifically, the proposal now requires a one-time bond of 3600 ETH to allow a proposer to both propose top level assertion AND open a block-level challenge (if they need to), with 1000/100/10 ETH remaining as the tiered bond sizes for each challenge level. This is a change from the previous requirements where a one-time bond of 1500 ETH was needed for the top-level assertion bond while an additional 3600 ETH was needed for opening a block-level challenge, followed by challenge bond sizes of 1000/100/10 ETH for each subsequent sub-challenge level.
FAQ Document We have put together an iterative FAQ document upon having conversations with stakeholders in the DAO and wider ecosystem here. This FAQ document will be updated as the DAO continues to have conversations and questions about BOLD.
There has been an edit under the Reimbursements and Penalties section , and there is an investigation is underway determine the feasibility of automatically calculating and performing challenge bond refunds on-chain, and so have made an update to the AIP to be transparent.
Previously, a manual procedure was to be published for the Arbitrum Foundation to use to calculate and handle both challenge bond reimbursements and L1 gas costs. L1 gas costs refunds are still expected to be handled by the Arbitrum Foundation. We intend to update the AIP once more when the investigation concludes.
Based on feedback received from the community, an amendment was made to the proposal to clarify that validation of Arbitrum chains using BOLD has and continues to be permissionless, with no bond or stake required. BOLD let's any one of those validators put up a bond of ETH to become proposers and challengers of state assertions about the L2 state.
By default, all Arbitrum nodes are validators that will track the progress of the chain to verify assertions being posted to the parent chain to flag if an invalid assertion is observed. Running this type of validator is permissionless today and does not require any bond. Running a validator in this mode is also known as a "watchtower" node.
BOLD lets validators permissionlessly become proposers and challengers if they want to. The role of a proposer is required to help progress the chain which requires bonding ETH, proposing and then posting state assertions to the parent chain. This bond is known as an "assertion bond". The chain only needs 1 proposer to make progress. Therefore, most validators can watch the chain and independently verify assertions without being a proposer.
In the unhappy case where there is a dispute about a proposed state assertion, BOLD lets anyone permissionlessly put up a bond of ETH to open challenges in the defense of Arbitrum (in their capacity as a challenger to invalid state assertions). This bond is known as a "challenge bond".
I voted FOR in Tally. I am continuing my temp-check support of this proposal, it improves security and decentralization.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally, maintaining the position stated during the previous temp check phase. I'm genuinely excited about this significant change for Arbitrum. The BOLD upgrade marks a crucial step towards greater decentralization and incentives, which is essential for Arbitrum's future. The introduction of permissionless validation is a transformative move that will open up the ecosystem and help prevent delay attacks, ensuring smoother operations, eventually increasing both security and overall efficiency.
Regarding the inclusion of Infura as a validator for Arbitrum Nova, I fully support this decision as well. Given their strong track record and fame in the space, whitelisting them makes perfect sense to me.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally, maintaining the position stated during the previous temp check phase. I'm genuinely excited about this significant change for Arbitrum. The BOLD upgrade marks a crucial step towards greater decentralization and incentives, which is essential for Arbitrum's future. The introduction of permissionless validation is a transformative move that will open up the ecosystem and help prevent delay attacks, ensuring smoother operations, eventually increasing both security and overall efficiency.
Regarding the inclusion of Infura as a validator for Arbitrum Nova, I fully support this decision as well. Given their strong track record and fame in the space, whitelisting them makes perfect sense to me.
I believe this upgrade will have a meaningful impact on Arbitrum's long-term development and growth. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will shape the future of this ecosystem!
I voted for this proposal on Tally, maintaining my support from the temp check stage.
I voted FOR this proposal at the temp check stage because BOLD makes Arbitrum more secure and credibly neutral by technically allowing anyone to dispute the chain state.
Supporting this proposal -
I continously support the technical advancement of Arbitrum. The BOLD and NOVA seem like critical part of the technical infrastructure.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Tally Vote.
Considering what was expressed when we voted on Snapshot:
BOLD is a leap in quality in almost every sense.
Rationale behind LobbyFi's vote on this proposal:
LobbyFi voted in favor of this proposal since the the "for" pool in the our community auction turned out greater than the "against" pool.
I vote FOR this proposal in Tally
Regarding BOLD:
We are now in 2025, the year in which Arbitrum must reach stage 2 of roll-up decentralization.
Since the TGE, Arbitrum has made immense progress toward decentralization, and achieving permissionless validation (meaning allowing proposers and challengers of state assertions) is a fundamental step toward greater security for its users.
I vote FOR this proposal in Tally
Regarding BOLD:
We are now in 2025, the year in which Arbitrum must reach stage 2 of roll-up decentralization.
Since the TGE, Arbitrum has made immense progress toward decentralization, and achieving permissionless validation (meaning allowing proposers and challengers of state assertions) is a fundamental step toward greater security for its users.
Therefore, passing this AIP and implementing BOLD to secure Arbitrum One and Nova effectively enables permissionless validation, marking a key milestone for Arbitrum chains to be recognized as Stage 2 Rollups, as part of Arbitrum’s journey to full decentralization.
Something to note is that I do not have a technical background, so my vote should not be interpreted as an endorsement of having conducted a security check on the code to be implemented. Nevertheless, I base my vote on the trust placed in the excellent team of developers at OCL and the review conducted by highly trusted actors.
Given the serious security implications of allowing permissionless disputes, we are pleased and impressed with the level of thoroughness with which the Offchain Labs team and Arbitrum community has discussed the risks of BOLD.
We explored concerns with the handling of confiscated funds as well as the future need to monitor and update BOLD parameters as economic conditions change. The algorithm has been well thought-out and should work as expected. However, it does depend on economic incentives behaving under present economic conditions that are subject to change. We recommend monitoring the economic factors of BOLD once in production and be ready to make adjustments as needed.
After reviewing the executable associated with the proposal, we can confirm that it matches the described upgrade and that no undisclosed changes are taking place.
Regarding Infura:
Infura is one of the most active infrastructure providers, with an amazing track record. It makes sense to whitelist a Nova validator operated by them.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting FOR in this proposal. Below the rationale:
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain the support made at its Snapshot phase and continuously support the technical advancement in the Arbitrum ecosystem. Same goes to the Infura Nova validator whitelisting.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Tally. I believe an upgrade such as this one would put Arbitrum a step closer in achieving its roadmap in becoming a Stage 2 rollup. This will increase decentralization and would set Arbitrum apart from other Layer2 solutions that are still not close to this achievement.
After putting in some time to read this proposal and the information on OffchainLabs' github this upgrade will keep the protocol secure while increasing inclusivity. About the risks outlined in the proposal, I believe that contract bugs and implementation risks are just standard technical hurdles and the fact that BOLD has been running in testnet for a while helps mitigate these problems. The risk of remaining partially centralized in an ecosystem that values decentralization are far greater.
I voted in favor of this proposal on Tally. The proposal aligns with Arbitrum’s long-term strategic goals and offers both technical and governance optimizations. Here are my personal views:
I noticed the official replies from the Arbitrum team in the comments, which clearly explained that the BOLD protocol enables permissionless validation, significantly reduces the risk of delay attacks, and improves the efficiency of on-chain dispute resolution. This is an important step for Arbitrum towards full decentralization, which provided me with substantial insights.
The proposal includes a comprehensive audit by Trail of Bits, public testnet deployment, and mathematical safety proofs, ensuring the reliability and security of the BOLD protocol. Additionally, the new protocol enhances Arbitrum’s technical capabilities and competitiveness, while allowing Orbit chains to adopt this technology, benefiting the entire ecosystem. Offchain Labs will cover all engineering and audit costs, so the DAO will not incur additional expenses. Moreover, the proposal provides clear implementation steps and timelines, reducing uncertainties during the execution process.
After reading the report over and over again, it is clear to me that the core of the proposal is to upgrade the dispute resolution protocols of Arbitrum One and Nova by adopting the new BOLD protocol to improve decentralisation, security, and optimise the efficiency of validation, and I support this proposal at TALLY for the following reasons: 1. The BOLD protocol significantly improves the decentralisation and security of Arbitrum, which is key to the long-term development of the ecosystem. 2. it reduces potential risks in the implementation of the technology through testnet validation and public auditing. 3. The economic mechanism for verifiers and challengers is well-designed, and the cost for malicious actors is significantly higher. But my personal recommendations: 1. the DAO should oversee the entire implementation process and report progress to the community on a regular basis. 2. set up a clear decentralisation roadmap for Nova, and gradually reduce privilege dependency. 3. Regularly review the effectiveness of BOLD implementation and dynamically adjust the strategy based on feedback.
DAOplomats is voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
We are maintaining our support to activate Arbitrum BOLD as well as our support on whitelisting Infura as we originally did during the temp check.
I voted FOR in Tally. I am continuing my temp-check support of this proposal, it improves security and decentralization.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally, maintaining the position stated during the previous temp check phase. I'm genuinely excited about this significant change for Arbitrum. The BOLD upgrade marks a crucial step towards greater decentralization and incentives, which is essential for Arbitrum's future. The introduction of permissionless validation is a transformative move that will open up the ecosystem and help prevent delay attacks, ensuring smoother operations, eventually increasing both security and overall efficiency.
Regarding the inclusion of Infura as a validator for Arbitrum Nova, I fully support this decision as well. Given their strong track record and fame in the space, whitelisting them makes perfect sense to me.
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally, maintaining the position stated during the previous temp check phase. I'm genuinely excited about this significant change for Arbitrum. The BOLD upgrade marks a crucial step towards greater decentralization and incentives, which is essential for Arbitrum's future. The introduction of permissionless validation is a transformative move that will open up the ecosystem and help prevent delay attacks, ensuring smoother operations, eventually increasing both security and overall efficiency.
Regarding the inclusion of Infura as a validator for Arbitrum Nova, I fully support this decision as well. Given their strong track record and fame in the space, whitelisting them makes perfect sense to me.
I believe this upgrade will have a meaningful impact on Arbitrum's long-term development and growth. I'm looking forward to seeing how it will shape the future of this ecosystem!
I voted for this proposal on Tally, maintaining my support from the temp check stage.
I voted FOR this proposal at the temp check stage because BOLD makes Arbitrum more secure and credibly neutral by technically allowing anyone to dispute the chain state.
Supporting this proposal -
I continously support the technical advancement of Arbitrum. The BOLD and NOVA seem like critical part of the technical infrastructure.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Tally Vote.
Considering what was expressed when we voted on Snapshot:
BOLD is a leap in quality in almost every sense.
Rationale behind LobbyFi's vote on this proposal:
LobbyFi voted in favor of this proposal since the the "for" pool in the our community auction turned out greater than the "against" pool.
I vote FOR this proposal in Tally
Regarding BOLD:
We are now in 2025, the year in which Arbitrum must reach stage 2 of roll-up decentralization.
Since the TGE, Arbitrum has made immense progress toward decentralization, and achieving permissionless validation (meaning allowing proposers and challengers of state assertions) is a fundamental step toward greater security for its users.
I vote FOR this proposal in Tally
Regarding BOLD:
We are now in 2025, the year in which Arbitrum must reach stage 2 of roll-up decentralization.
Since the TGE, Arbitrum has made immense progress toward decentralization, and achieving permissionless validation (meaning allowing proposers and challengers of state assertions) is a fundamental step toward greater security for its users.
Therefore, passing this AIP and implementing BOLD to secure Arbitrum One and Nova effectively enables permissionless validation, marking a key milestone for Arbitrum chains to be recognized as Stage 2 Rollups, as part of Arbitrum’s journey to full decentralization.
Something to note is that I do not have a technical background, so my vote should not be interpreted as an endorsement of having conducted a security check on the code to be implemented. Nevertheless, I base my vote on the trust placed in the excellent team of developers at OCL and the review conducted by highly trusted actors.
Given the serious security implications of allowing permissionless disputes, we are pleased and impressed with the level of thoroughness with which the Offchain Labs team and Arbitrum community has discussed the risks of BOLD.
We explored concerns with the handling of confiscated funds as well as the future need to monitor and update BOLD parameters as economic conditions change. The algorithm has been well thought-out and should work as expected. However, it does depend on economic incentives behaving under present economic conditions that are subject to change. We recommend monitoring the economic factors of BOLD once in production and be ready to make adjustments as needed.
After reviewing the executable associated with the proposal, we can confirm that it matches the described upgrade and that no undisclosed changes are taking place.
Regarding Infura:
Infura is one of the most active infrastructure providers, with an amazing track record. It makes sense to whitelist a Nova validator operated by them.
As in @web3citizenxyz representation. Voting FOR in this proposal. Below the rationale:
We vote FOR the proposal on Tally.
We maintain the support made at its Snapshot phase and continuously support the technical advancement in the Arbitrum ecosystem. Same goes to the Infura Nova validator whitelisting.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Tally. I believe an upgrade such as this one would put Arbitrum a step closer in achieving its roadmap in becoming a Stage 2 rollup. This will increase decentralization and would set Arbitrum apart from other Layer2 solutions that are still not close to this achievement.
After putting in some time to read this proposal and the information on OffchainLabs' github this upgrade will keep the protocol secure while increasing inclusivity. About the risks outlined in the proposal, I believe that contract bugs and implementation risks are just standard technical hurdles and the fact that BOLD has been running in testnet for a while helps mitigate these problems. The risk of remaining partially centralized in an ecosystem that values decentralization are far greater.
I voted in favor of this proposal on Tally. The proposal aligns with Arbitrum’s long-term strategic goals and offers both technical and governance optimizations. Here are my personal views:
I noticed the official replies from the Arbitrum team in the comments, which clearly explained that the BOLD protocol enables permissionless validation, significantly reduces the risk of delay attacks, and improves the efficiency of on-chain dispute resolution. This is an important step for Arbitrum towards full decentralization, which provided me with substantial insights.
The proposal includes a comprehensive audit by Trail of Bits, public testnet deployment, and mathematical safety proofs, ensuring the reliability and security of the BOLD protocol. Additionally, the new protocol enhances Arbitrum’s technical capabilities and competitiveness, while allowing Orbit chains to adopt this technology, benefiting the entire ecosystem. Offchain Labs will cover all engineering and audit costs, so the DAO will not incur additional expenses. Moreover, the proposal provides clear implementation steps and timelines, reducing uncertainties during the execution process.
After reading the report over and over again, it is clear to me that the core of the proposal is to upgrade the dispute resolution protocols of Arbitrum One and Nova by adopting the new BOLD protocol to improve decentralisation, security, and optimise the efficiency of validation, and I support this proposal at TALLY for the following reasons: 1. The BOLD protocol significantly improves the decentralisation and security of Arbitrum, which is key to the long-term development of the ecosystem. 2. it reduces potential risks in the implementation of the technology through testnet validation and public auditing. 3. The economic mechanism for verifiers and challengers is well-designed, and the cost for malicious actors is significantly higher. But my personal recommendations: 1. the DAO should oversee the entire implementation process and report progress to the community on a regular basis. 2. set up a clear decentralisation roadmap for Nova, and gradually reduce privilege dependency. 3. Regularly review the effectiveness of BOLD implementation and dynamically adjust the strategy based on feedback.
DAOplomats is voting FOR this proposal on Tally.
We are maintaining our support to activate Arbitrum BOLD as well as our support on whitelisting Infura as we originally did during the temp check.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Tally Vote.
Considering what was expressed when we voted on Snapshot:
BOLD is a leap in quality in almost every sense.
Arbitrum seeks to align itself as closely as possible with Ethereum, by openly allowing all stakeholders to act in providing security to the network. A new permissionless validation system with well-delineated incentives is a win-win for the network and those honest parties looking to lock up capital safely.
This update brings security improvements, provides solutions to existing problems, has 0 negative implications for the user, and elevates the participation of individuals and institutions in the functioning of the network, so it’s definitely a YES to all.
We still believe that BoLD is a necessary step in the roadmap of any rollup that seeks to be as decentralized, censorship-resistant, and secure as possible.
Regarding the Infura whitelist, we maintain our previously stated position:
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot vote.
Given Infura’s strong reputation within the crypto ecosystem and the validator’s track record of excellent uptime, we see this proposal as an easy yes.
We also share the sentiment expressed by other delegates regarding whether the DAO will need to whitelist additional validators in the future or if this is a one-time consideration.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Tally. I believe an upgrade such as this one would put Arbitrum a step closer in achieving its roadmap in becoming a Stage 2 rollup. This will increase decentralization and would set Arbitrum apart from other Layer2 solutions that are still not close to this achievement.
After putting in some time to read this proposal and the information on OffchainLabs' github this upgrade will keep the protocol secure while increasing inclusivity. About the risks outlined in the proposal, I believe that contract bugs and implementation risks are just standard technical hurdles and the fact that BOLD has been running in testnet for a while helps mitigate these problems. The risk of remaining partially centralized in an ecosystem that values decentralization are far greater.
I agree with krst's point that technical proposals of this scope should ideally include a more detailed walkthrough from the proposers. I’m nonetheless confident in backing BOLD given the extensive testing period and the thorough documentation provided by the team.
Regarding potential block time changes in Ethereum such as the EIP-7782, I'm far from an expert in the matter but a possible solution would be to make the dispute window parameters such as to be upgradeable values instead of constants. This would allow the protocol to adapt to future Ethereum upgrades of this nature.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We voted in favor of the proposal during temp-check back in June while committing to doing a deep-dive of the proposed upgrade before casting our vote onchain.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We voted in favor of the proposal during temp-check back in June while committing to doing a deep-dive of the proposed upgrade before casting our vote onchain.
After reviewing the executable associated with the proposal, we can confirm that it matches the described upgrade and that no undisclosed changes are taking place. Having said that, we want to highlight the fact that, in the future, there should be some sort of code walk-through for such upgrades.
The upgrade is complex and multifaceted, and it’s difficult even for experienced developers and researchers (such as those on our team) to grasp all the changes. Offchain Labs should provide a code walkthrough for both the executable and the new implementations. We are already happy to commit to helping prepare such a walkthrough for any future upgrade.
As far as the upgrade is concerned, we’d like to point out that the current challenge period for Arbitrum One and Nova is set to 6d 8h because of an incorrect assumption made on pre-PoS block times. In the code, the challenge period is defined in terms of the number of blocks, which currently is set to 45818 blocks. Given the current fixed block time of 12s, this results in a challenge period of less than 7 days. In the near future, we (L2BEAT) will enforce a minimum of 7d for the challenge period in optimistic rollups for the Stage 1 designation.
This upgrade shows that the period is still set to be 6d 8h, which is technically below the requirement. If we use a looser definition of the challenge period and include the “grace period” of 2 days, then the requirement is satisfied (8d 8h). Given that, we expect to see the challenge period back to 7d regardless of the grace period for Stage 2 designation since the Security Council will not be able to act during that timeframe.
Lastly, we want to take the opportunity to raise the question of what happens if Ethereum changes its block times once again. See, for example, EIP-7782. Is there a contingency plan for such a change?
Voted For: Overall, I am super happy with the BoLD upgrade. This upgrade will help the Arbitrum chain reach a higher-level Fraud Proof mechanism. This move will help Arbitrum stay in the lead on the list of rollups on the l2beat site. Leading by example here. I support the proposal. Also, I believe we should whitelist Infuras Nova Validator. Infura has been participating with Arbitrum for a long time and I see no reason to not whitelist them.
I’m voting FOR on Tally, **because it is important to continue upgrading technology that strengthens the connection between arbritrum one and etherum. The time required for the buffer (2 days) is fair and I like that more validators monitor the network to fortify the security with a decentralized approach.
After reviewing the comments and discussion, voting FOR this proposal.
voting FOR the current onchain proposal because while I disagree with the way the bundling of these 2 different proposals happened, I'm FOR both of them. We should have more reputable validators like the one from Infura, and BoLD will improve our chain.
This Upgrade is another step towards a better future for Arbitrum!!
I think that the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade is a great idea because it makes the network more secure and open to everyone by allowing anyone to help validate without special permissions.
But how will the teams monitoring the upgrade ensure readiness during the restricted execution timeframe?
This Upgrade is another step towards a better future for Arbitrum!!
I think that the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade is a great idea because it makes the network more secure and open to everyone by allowing anyone to help validate without special permissions.
But how will the teams monitoring the upgrade ensure readiness during the restricted execution timeframe?
And how will whitelisting Infura impact the validation and operation of Arbitrum Nova?
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in Tally voting.
Combining the two proposals was a good idea.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in Tally voting.
Combining the two proposals was a good idea.
As previously mentioned, adding Infura to the whitelisted Node Validator was due, given their record as an Arbitrum validator and their contribution to the Ethereum ecosystem at large.
Hence, we foresee no risks associated with this.
The BoLD upgrade is an achievement we have been striving for since the beginning. Given that due diligence has been performed at the highest level, we feel confident in voting for this upgrade and look forward to seeing all green slices soon. The initial grace period of 2 days is a good starting point, but we believe extending it to 5 days should be considered later.
Voting FOR Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
I mean BOLD strengthens security by reducing risks with withdrawals while improving efficiency.
Moreover, opening up to permissionless validators is a good move - it means more people can join, the system becomes more decentralized, and trust grows because no one can control everything :)
Voting FOR Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
I mean BOLD strengthens security by reducing risks with withdrawals while improving efficiency.
Moreover, opening up to permissionless validators is a good move - it means more people can join, the system becomes more decentralized, and trust grows because no one can control everything :)
I don’t know Infura that well, but as I searched they’re a trusted name in blockchain. With them onboard, transactions should stay secure and consistent
Voting FOR this proposal.
Adding additional security and censorship resistant capabilities with withdraws is a no-brainer, especially as rollups start to differentiate themselves between fully decentralized and more app-chain like.
Opening to additional validators is also a good move and will hopefully bring more interest into this necessary role as well as new actors to the community.
Voting FOR this proposal.
Adding additional security and censorship resistant capabilities with withdraws is a no-brainer, especially as rollups start to differentiate themselves between fully decentralized and more app-chain like.
Opening to additional validators is also a good move and will hopefully bring more interest into this necessary role as well as new actors to the community.
While going with Infura is fine, we would like to see some additional information on how success on this program will be measured. Is it number of new validators added? Additional information or KPIs. If these can be set out at the start it will make it easier to track the impact of the pgoram and support further expansions of it in the future as needed.
Voting for BoLD on Tally, consistent with the reasons previously mentioned in our rationale here https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/51?u=mcfly.
I’m voting FOR this proposal. While the technical details can be a bit tricky to follow, I really appreciate the effort put into the FAQ document—it makes things much clearer. Seeing Arbitrum take another step towards deeper decentralization is exciting and sets a strong example for others. Thrilled to support this next chapter!
gm, voting in favor of both proposals on Tally, consistent with the reasons previously outlined.
I am voting FOR both proposals bundled in the Tally vote. Arbitrum has established itself as a leader in L2 decentralization, and it is inspiring to witness its continued progress toward becoming the first major Stage 2 Ethereum rollup.
This commitment to decentralization and permissionlessness was a key reason Kleros chose Arbitrum as the foundation for deploying its V2 there. We are excited to see this proposal advance, as it will significantly strengthen Arbitrum’s infrastructure and, by extension, enhance the robustness of the Kleros V2 Court operating on it.
Tally: I voted FOR in this proposal, and the reasoning follows:
BOLD activation: one more step to make Arbitrum more decentralized Whitelist Infura: They already are running validators and this is an enhancement for the network.
I'm voting FOR on Tally. Infura has a strong track record in the ecosystem and they have already been running successfully for a while, participating in the DAC, so it seems straightforward to continue the process and whitelist them. As for BoLD, I have no concerns; permissionless validation is clearly the way to go.
The only aspect I didn't like in this proposal, as mentioned in the TG discussion, was the bundling of these two distinct proposals. They should have been presented separately. If quorum is indeed an issue, then we need to discuss how to resolve it.
I voted for in the tally. I support this upgrade that will bring greater decentralization to Arbitrum One and Nova. The next-generation BoLD dispute protocol will enable more permissionless validation.
This upgrade aligns with many of the maxims i stand for, such as empowerment of the community, decentralization, and fairness
I have voted in favor on Tally, as previously mentioned "this will fix the challenge period, preventing delay attacks and ensuring timely dispute resolution. These improvements benefit all Arbitrum users, node operators, dApps, and bridges."
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally. I think it's a good and necessary step towards making the Arbitrum ecosystem more secure, permissionless, and censorship-resistant.
Voting FOR BOLD and whitelisting Infura Nova Validator
Rationale
We are in full support of the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade. BoLD introduces a next-generation dispute protocol that will enable permissionless validation for Arbitrum chains, marking a crucial step in advancing the ecosystem. By mitigating delay attacks and ensuring disputes are resolved within a fixed time window, BoLD brings greater security and decentralization to Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova.
This innovation aligns with the DAO's goal of becoming a Stage 2 Rollup, allowing any honest party to validate and contribute to the integrity of the network. With its deployment on the public testnet, we are excited to see how this technology evolves and enhances the future of Arbitrum chains.
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Tally Vote.
Considering what was expressed when we voted on Snapshot:
BOLD is a leap in quality in almost every sense.
Arbitrum seeks to align itself as closely as possible with Ethereum, by openly allowing all stakeholders to act in providing security to the network. A new permissionless validation system with well-delineated incentives is a win-win for the network and those honest parties looking to lock up capital safely.
This update brings security improvements, provides solutions to existing problems, has 0 negative implications for the user, and elevates the participation of individuals and institutions in the functioning of the network, so it’s definitely a YES to all.
We still believe that BoLD is a necessary step in the roadmap of any rollup that seeks to be as decentralized, censorship-resistant, and secure as possible.
Regarding the Infura whitelist, we maintain our previously stated position:
After consideration, the @SEEDgov delegation has decided to “FOR” on this proposal at the Snapshot vote.
Given Infura’s strong reputation within the crypto ecosystem and the validator’s track record of excellent uptime, we see this proposal as an easy yes.
We also share the sentiment expressed by other delegates regarding whether the DAO will need to whitelist additional validators in the future or if this is a one-time consideration.
I am voting FOR this proposal in Tally. I believe an upgrade such as this one would put Arbitrum a step closer in achieving its roadmap in becoming a Stage 2 rollup. This will increase decentralization and would set Arbitrum apart from other Layer2 solutions that are still not close to this achievement.
After putting in some time to read this proposal and the information on OffchainLabs' github this upgrade will keep the protocol secure while increasing inclusivity. About the risks outlined in the proposal, I believe that contract bugs and implementation risks are just standard technical hurdles and the fact that BOLD has been running in testnet for a while helps mitigate these problems. The risk of remaining partially centralized in an ecosystem that values decentralization are far greater.
I agree with krst's point that technical proposals of this scope should ideally include a more detailed walkthrough from the proposers. I’m nonetheless confident in backing BOLD given the extensive testing period and the thorough documentation provided by the team.
Regarding potential block time changes in Ethereum such as the EIP-7782, I'm far from an expert in the matter but a possible solution would be to make the dispute window parameters such as to be upgradeable values instead of constants. This would allow the protocol to adapt to future Ethereum upgrades of this nature.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We voted in favor of the proposal during temp-check back in June while committing to doing a deep-dive of the proposed upgrade before casting our vote onchain.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal.
We voted in favor of the proposal during temp-check back in June while committing to doing a deep-dive of the proposed upgrade before casting our vote onchain.
After reviewing the executable associated with the proposal, we can confirm that it matches the described upgrade and that no undisclosed changes are taking place. Having said that, we want to highlight the fact that, in the future, there should be some sort of code walk-through for such upgrades.
The upgrade is complex and multifaceted, and it’s difficult even for experienced developers and researchers (such as those on our team) to grasp all the changes. Offchain Labs should provide a code walkthrough for both the executable and the new implementations. We are already happy to commit to helping prepare such a walkthrough for any future upgrade.
As far as the upgrade is concerned, we’d like to point out that the current challenge period for Arbitrum One and Nova is set to 6d 8h because of an incorrect assumption made on pre-PoS block times. In the code, the challenge period is defined in terms of the number of blocks, which currently is set to 45818 blocks. Given the current fixed block time of 12s, this results in a challenge period of less than 7 days. In the near future, we (L2BEAT) will enforce a minimum of 7d for the challenge period in optimistic rollups for the Stage 1 designation.
This upgrade shows that the period is still set to be 6d 8h, which is technically below the requirement. If we use a looser definition of the challenge period and include the “grace period” of 2 days, then the requirement is satisfied (8d 8h). Given that, we expect to see the challenge period back to 7d regardless of the grace period for Stage 2 designation since the Security Council will not be able to act during that timeframe.
Lastly, we want to take the opportunity to raise the question of what happens if Ethereum changes its block times once again. See, for example, EIP-7782. Is there a contingency plan for such a change?
Voted For: Overall, I am super happy with the BoLD upgrade. This upgrade will help the Arbitrum chain reach a higher-level Fraud Proof mechanism. This move will help Arbitrum stay in the lead on the list of rollups on the l2beat site. Leading by example here. I support the proposal. Also, I believe we should whitelist Infuras Nova Validator. Infura has been participating with Arbitrum for a long time and I see no reason to not whitelist them.
I’m voting FOR on Tally, **because it is important to continue upgrading technology that strengthens the connection between arbritrum one and etherum. The time required for the buffer (2 days) is fair and I like that more validators monitor the network to fortify the security with a decentralized approach.
After reviewing the comments and discussion, voting FOR this proposal.
voting FOR the current onchain proposal because while I disagree with the way the bundling of these 2 different proposals happened, I'm FOR both of them. We should have more reputable validators like the one from Infura, and BoLD will improve our chain.
This Upgrade is another step towards a better future for Arbitrum!!
I think that the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade is a great idea because it makes the network more secure and open to everyone by allowing anyone to help validate without special permissions.
But how will the teams monitoring the upgrade ensure readiness during the restricted execution timeframe?
This Upgrade is another step towards a better future for Arbitrum!!
I think that the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade is a great idea because it makes the network more secure and open to everyone by allowing anyone to help validate without special permissions.
But how will the teams monitoring the upgrade ensure readiness during the restricted execution timeframe?
And how will whitelisting Infura impact the validation and operation of Arbitrum Nova?
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in Tally voting.
Combining the two proposals was a good idea.
The following reflects the views of the Lampros DAO governance team, composed of Chain_L (@Blueweb), @Euphoria, and Hirangi Pandya (@Nyx), based on our combined research, analysis, and ideation.
We are voting FOR this proposal in Tally voting.
Combining the two proposals was a good idea.
As previously mentioned, adding Infura to the whitelisted Node Validator was due, given their record as an Arbitrum validator and their contribution to the Ethereum ecosystem at large.
Hence, we foresee no risks associated with this.
The BoLD upgrade is an achievement we have been striving for since the beginning. Given that due diligence has been performed at the highest level, we feel confident in voting for this upgrade and look forward to seeing all green slices soon. The initial grace period of 2 days is a good starting point, but we believe extending it to 5 days should be considered later.
Voting FOR Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
I mean BOLD strengthens security by reducing risks with withdrawals while improving efficiency.
Moreover, opening up to permissionless validators is a good move - it means more people can join, the system becomes more decentralized, and trust grows because no one can control everything :)
Voting FOR Activate Arbitrum BoLD + Infura Nova Validator Whitelist
I mean BOLD strengthens security by reducing risks with withdrawals while improving efficiency.
Moreover, opening up to permissionless validators is a good move - it means more people can join, the system becomes more decentralized, and trust grows because no one can control everything :)
I don’t know Infura that well, but as I searched they’re a trusted name in blockchain. With them onboard, transactions should stay secure and consistent
Voting FOR this proposal.
Adding additional security and censorship resistant capabilities with withdraws is a no-brainer, especially as rollups start to differentiate themselves between fully decentralized and more app-chain like.
Opening to additional validators is also a good move and will hopefully bring more interest into this necessary role as well as new actors to the community.
Voting FOR this proposal.
Adding additional security and censorship resistant capabilities with withdraws is a no-brainer, especially as rollups start to differentiate themselves between fully decentralized and more app-chain like.
Opening to additional validators is also a good move and will hopefully bring more interest into this necessary role as well as new actors to the community.
While going with Infura is fine, we would like to see some additional information on how success on this program will be measured. Is it number of new validators added? Additional information or KPIs. If these can be set out at the start it will make it easier to track the impact of the pgoram and support further expansions of it in the future as needed.
Voting for BoLD on Tally, consistent with the reasons previously mentioned in our rationale here https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/51?u=mcfly.
I’m voting FOR this proposal. While the technical details can be a bit tricky to follow, I really appreciate the effort put into the FAQ document—it makes things much clearer. Seeing Arbitrum take another step towards deeper decentralization is exciting and sets a strong example for others. Thrilled to support this next chapter!
gm, voting in favor of both proposals on Tally, consistent with the reasons previously outlined.
I am voting FOR both proposals bundled in the Tally vote. Arbitrum has established itself as a leader in L2 decentralization, and it is inspiring to witness its continued progress toward becoming the first major Stage 2 Ethereum rollup.
This commitment to decentralization and permissionlessness was a key reason Kleros chose Arbitrum as the foundation for deploying its V2 there. We are excited to see this proposal advance, as it will significantly strengthen Arbitrum’s infrastructure and, by extension, enhance the robustness of the Kleros V2 Court operating on it.
Tally: I voted FOR in this proposal, and the reasoning follows:
BOLD activation: one more step to make Arbitrum more decentralized Whitelist Infura: They already are running validators and this is an enhancement for the network.
I'm voting FOR on Tally. Infura has a strong track record in the ecosystem and they have already been running successfully for a while, participating in the DAC, so it seems straightforward to continue the process and whitelist them. As for BoLD, I have no concerns; permissionless validation is clearly the way to go.
The only aspect I didn't like in this proposal, as mentioned in the TG discussion, was the bundling of these two distinct proposals. They should have been presented separately. If quorum is indeed an issue, then we need to discuss how to resolve it.
I voted for in the tally. I support this upgrade that will bring greater decentralization to Arbitrum One and Nova. The next-generation BoLD dispute protocol will enable more permissionless validation.
This upgrade aligns with many of the maxims i stand for, such as empowerment of the community, decentralization, and fairness
I have voted in favor on Tally, as previously mentioned "this will fix the challenge period, preventing delay attacks and ensuring timely dispute resolution. These improvements benefit all Arbitrum users, node operators, dApps, and bridges."
I voted FOR this proposal on Tally. I think it's a good and necessary step towards making the Arbitrum ecosystem more secure, permissionless, and censorship-resistant.
Voting FOR BOLD and whitelisting Infura Nova Validator
Rationale
We are in full support of the Arbitrum BoLD upgrade. BoLD introduces a next-generation dispute protocol that will enable permissionless validation for Arbitrum chains, marking a crucial step in advancing the ecosystem. By mitigating delay attacks and ensuring disputes are resolved within a fixed time window, BoLD brings greater security and decentralization to Arbitrum One and Arbitrum Nova.
This innovation aligns with the DAO's goal of becoming a Stage 2 Rollup, allowing any honest party to validate and contribute to the integrity of the network. With its deployment on the public testnet, we are excited to see how this technology evolves and enhances the future of Arbitrum chains.
Voting FOR BOLD and whitelisting Infura Nova Validator
Rationale
Feedback We would have greatly preferred to have these two separate proposals as separate votes on tally. bundling them in this way makes it hard for us to check that there wasnt new additions or modifications to the proposal .
We are certainly for both proposals and would have easily voted For them if unbundled, but bundling made it more difficult to check that they were indeed simply the progression of the snapshot proposals without any major changes or interconnection between the two proposals.
If the issue is quorum, we actually think its easier for people to vote on proposals quickly and often in favor of them when they are unbundled as its easier to simply check its the same proposal and quickly vote for it (instead of having to spend additional time DDIng the proposal and perhaps losing that vote) so even for quorum purposes it seems non ideal
I fully support the proposal, as it will increase the security and decentralization of Arbitrum. This is another step towards achieving Stage 2 of rollups.
I'm voting in favor on Tally for the same reasons that I have mentioned for the snapshot vote (https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/58)
gm, voting in favor of the proposal on Tally, consistent with the reasons previously outlined.
I voted for all three aspects of the proposal on Snapshot. The protocol itself is clearly necessary for both the project’s evolution as well as maintaining Arbitrum’s role as a leader among L2s.
The two economic proposals are also well thought out and have benefited from ongoing dialogue here on the forum. The need for a single honest attestor/validator is both a security benefit and an aid to implementation, and the Foundation is the obvious party to get the technology on its feet.
I voted for all three aspects of the proposal on Snapshot. The protocol itself is clearly necessary for both the project’s evolution as well as maintaining Arbitrum’s role as a leader among L2s.
The two economic proposals are also well thought out and have benefited from ongoing dialogue here on the forum. The need for a single honest attestor/validator is both a security benefit and an aid to implementation, and the Foundation is the obvious party to get the technology on its feet.
It’s also encouraging that these proposals recognize the DAO’s primary role in governing the protocol and its implementation. I think it will be important for the DAO to develop its own mechanisms for monitoring the effectiveness of these incentives so that we can update them as needed (as a natural evolution of the work that @Entropy is already doing modeling sequencer revenues). This info will also be clarifying for the ongoing process of thinking about DAO revenues and budgets for security and technology needs.
In the longer term, the DAO could also explore the possibilities raised by bonding pools in order to build on the great work that Offchain Labs and the Foundation have already done to make that possible.
Below is the rationale of the UADP for all three BoLD Snapshots:
We voted For all three of the BoLD proposals because they mark a crucial evolution for Arbitrum, significantly boosting the network's security and decentralization.
Below is the rationale of the UADP for all three BoLD Snapshots:
We voted For all three of the BoLD proposals because they mark a crucial evolution for Arbitrum, significantly boosting the network's security and decentralization.
AIP: BoLD - permissionless validation for Arbitrum: Introducing permissionless validation allows any honest participant to help defend the network, thereby reducing our reliance on a small group of validators. This is pivotal in mitigating delay attack risks and ensuring faster, more secure dispute resolutions, aligning with best practices in optimistic rollup protocols.
However, the high bond requirements could create a barrier for smaller participants–but the Economics paper outlines that “bond sizes be high enough to discourage challenges from ever being opened at all, as evil parties will always stand to lose when playing the game” which in our opinion is a good incentive-based justification. The complexity of the dispute resolution process and the need for extensive off-chain computation could introduce operational challenges. Balancing bond costs and preventing spam while ensuring sufficient participation and security is a complex economic issue that requires careful adjustment.
AIP: Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator - Bond sentiment & AIP: Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator - Operational cost sentiment.
We voted For these two proposals as well. There needs to be an aligned actor to ensure that this system works with integrity, and having the serving as the first one makes a lot of sense. We also appreciate the checks and balances approach being taken by the Foundation: “The ArbitrumDAO will have the authority to single-handedly return the funds to the ArbitrumDAO treasury by revoking the Arbitrum Foundation’s proposer at any time and returning the bonds back to the treasury.” The operational cost, 500 ETH for service fees and 400 ETH for L1 gas costs, seem fairly earmarked but perhaps a bit high. Since the AF will not be entitled to any service fees, that helps with potentially receiving more back after the 3 year period. We'd appreciate how this budget fluctuates over time. It’s better to have a larger buffer in place anyways, so this seems fair.
DAOplomats voted “For” in all three proposals on BoLD.
AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Arbitrum BoLD is an essential next step towards complete decentralization. With eyes set on Stage 2, it is only pleasing to see this implementation come to fruition. Besides security, setting this high bar for bad actors makes total sense. We have also gone through the rationale of compensating in ETH as opposed to ARB and we are in support.
DAOplomats voted “For” in all three proposals on BoLD.
AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Arbitrum BoLD is an essential next step towards complete decentralization. With eyes set on Stage 2, it is only pleasing to see this implementation come to fruition. Besides security, setting this high bar for bad actors makes total sense. We have also gone through the rationale of compensating in ETH as opposed to ARB and we are in support.
AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Bond Sentiment. We were in support of releasing the funds requested to the Foundation. Also, seeing that the BoLD upgrade requires at least one active proposer at any point in time, we were happy to allow the Foundation be the first to take up this responsibility.
AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Operational Cost Sentiment Finally, we were in support of this proposal to cater for the costs needed to reimburse L1 gas fees as well as the 500 ETH service fees. Due to the nature of the BoLD upgrade, it does sound logical to both reimburse participants and incentivize them for actively working to progress the chain.
The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting FOR bringing BoLD to Arbitrum One at the Snapshot Stage.
By bringing BoLD to mainnet, we finally move away from permissioned validation, and get one step closer to being called a Stage 2 rollup.
The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting FOR bringing BoLD to Arbitrum One at the Snapshot Stage.
By bringing BoLD to mainnet, we finally move away from permissioned validation, and get one step closer to being called a Stage 2 rollup.
The recommendation about keeping Nova permissioned makes sense though - the capital requirements are high for the current TVL. (Looking forward to the Fast Withdrawal AIP btw!)
The OpenZeppelin report on future economic risks is definitely something other delegates should look into - seems like there's a decent amount of monitoring and tweaking to be done in the future. But for now, we're excited to finally see this version of BoLD live shortly!
Blockworks Research will be voting FOR implementing the BoLD upgrade, as well as bootstrapping the first BoLD validator to be operated by the Foundation and covering BoLD-associated OpEx, on Snapshot.
We naturally support the upgrade to increase Arbitrum’s security and decentralization, while taking off any remaining “training wheels,” as Vitalik calls them. We’re also supportive of allocating capital to the Foundation to become the first proposer for Arbitrum One, as this is clearly required for the system to function from the start and the Foundation’s incentives are to act honestly in its role as a BoLD validator. Apologies if this has already been discussed, but could a situation arise, especially when BoLD is in its infancy, where the Foundation needs more than one challenge’s worth of capital to ensure the system functions properly? If so, it might be sensible to extend a larger amount of capital to bootstrap the validator. Finally, we agree that BoLD validators should be paid service fees and L1 gas costs should be refunded, especially in the beginning to attract a wider set of participants.
We are voting for this proposal. We believe it increases security of protocol in long term.
We vote FOR the proposal on Snapshot.
BoLD unlocks permissionless validations for the Arbitrum chains, which is a great step for the DAO and a technological feat provided by Offchain Labs. While we need to review the economical incentive that is also sustainable for a more diversified set of operators to join in the future, we are in 100% support of the proposal and implementation of it as it stands.
Voted in favour. BoLD will only benefit Arbitrum as a chain.
As the ITU Blockchain delegation team, we appreciate the detailed proposal and supporting documents. We recognize BoLD’s importance in providing open validation, predictable assertions, and aligning with long-term protocol goals. Given its potential to enhance security and decentralization in the Arbitrum ecosystem, we are voting in favor of this proposal.
Voting in favor. This proposal enhances security and decentralization via permissionless validation. I only see benefits from its implementation.
We're voting For the BoLD upgrade. While there are potential issues with relying on the Foundation and DAO-funded validators long-term, BoLD is a solid step forward. It enables permissionless validation, strengthens security, and aligns with Arbitrum's decentralization goals. The team has thoroughly tested it and is exploring ways to further diversify the validator pool. Let's keep building!
We have voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. BOLD is an exciting innovation for the Arbitrum community and a step towards a credibly neutral Arbitrum protocol by enabling permissionless state validation.
Voicing all three vote opinions are below. As a general opinion, it is clear that a ton of work has been done on this project and plenty of feedback / discussion has been taken into account. It also seems to have been properly audited and a lot of through has been put into the economic side of things. I am excited to see Arbitrum continue to work towards being more decentralized as time goes on.
1. AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Voting "For" as this is a clear upgrade in security and decentralization of the network. Reduction in delay attacks is a positive as well. No real reason to vote against this
Upgrading to BoLD is a no brainer. Making progress towards getting to Stage 2 is always an easy yes.
Proposal 1: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum
Better security and more decentralization via permissionless validation and reduced delay attacks. Who wouldn't want that!
It seems thoroughly tested and audited. The economic incentives for honest participation seem solid. Easy yes
Voting FOR BOLD and whitelisting Infura Nova Validator
Rationale
Feedback We would have greatly preferred to have these two separate proposals as separate votes on tally. bundling them in this way makes it hard for us to check that there wasnt new additions or modifications to the proposal .
We are certainly for both proposals and would have easily voted For them if unbundled, but bundling made it more difficult to check that they were indeed simply the progression of the snapshot proposals without any major changes or interconnection between the two proposals.
If the issue is quorum, we actually think its easier for people to vote on proposals quickly and often in favor of them when they are unbundled as its easier to simply check its the same proposal and quickly vote for it (instead of having to spend additional time DDIng the proposal and perhaps losing that vote) so even for quorum purposes it seems non ideal
I fully support the proposal, as it will increase the security and decentralization of Arbitrum. This is another step towards achieving Stage 2 of rollups.
I'm voting in favor on Tally for the same reasons that I have mentioned for the snapshot vote (https://forum.arbitrum.foundation/t/aip-bold-permissionless-validation-for-arbitrum/23232/58)
gm, voting in favor of the proposal on Tally, consistent with the reasons previously outlined.
I voted for all three aspects of the proposal on Snapshot. The protocol itself is clearly necessary for both the project’s evolution as well as maintaining Arbitrum’s role as a leader among L2s.
The two economic proposals are also well thought out and have benefited from ongoing dialogue here on the forum. The need for a single honest attestor/validator is both a security benefit and an aid to implementation, and the Foundation is the obvious party to get the technology on its feet.
I voted for all three aspects of the proposal on Snapshot. The protocol itself is clearly necessary for both the project’s evolution as well as maintaining Arbitrum’s role as a leader among L2s.
The two economic proposals are also well thought out and have benefited from ongoing dialogue here on the forum. The need for a single honest attestor/validator is both a security benefit and an aid to implementation, and the Foundation is the obvious party to get the technology on its feet.
It’s also encouraging that these proposals recognize the DAO’s primary role in governing the protocol and its implementation. I think it will be important for the DAO to develop its own mechanisms for monitoring the effectiveness of these incentives so that we can update them as needed (as a natural evolution of the work that @Entropy is already doing modeling sequencer revenues). This info will also be clarifying for the ongoing process of thinking about DAO revenues and budgets for security and technology needs.
In the longer term, the DAO could also explore the possibilities raised by bonding pools in order to build on the great work that Offchain Labs and the Foundation have already done to make that possible.
Below is the rationale of the UADP for all three BoLD Snapshots:
We voted For all three of the BoLD proposals because they mark a crucial evolution for Arbitrum, significantly boosting the network's security and decentralization.
Below is the rationale of the UADP for all three BoLD Snapshots:
We voted For all three of the BoLD proposals because they mark a crucial evolution for Arbitrum, significantly boosting the network's security and decentralization.
AIP: BoLD - permissionless validation for Arbitrum: Introducing permissionless validation allows any honest participant to help defend the network, thereby reducing our reliance on a small group of validators. This is pivotal in mitigating delay attack risks and ensuring faster, more secure dispute resolutions, aligning with best practices in optimistic rollup protocols.
However, the high bond requirements could create a barrier for smaller participants–but the Economics paper outlines that “bond sizes be high enough to discourage challenges from ever being opened at all, as evil parties will always stand to lose when playing the game” which in our opinion is a good incentive-based justification. The complexity of the dispute resolution process and the need for extensive off-chain computation could introduce operational challenges. Balancing bond costs and preventing spam while ensuring sufficient participation and security is a complex economic issue that requires careful adjustment.
AIP: Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator - Bond sentiment & AIP: Funds to bootstrap the first BoLD validator - Operational cost sentiment.
We voted For these two proposals as well. There needs to be an aligned actor to ensure that this system works with integrity, and having the serving as the first one makes a lot of sense. We also appreciate the checks and balances approach being taken by the Foundation: “The ArbitrumDAO will have the authority to single-handedly return the funds to the ArbitrumDAO treasury by revoking the Arbitrum Foundation’s proposer at any time and returning the bonds back to the treasury.” The operational cost, 500 ETH for service fees and 400 ETH for L1 gas costs, seem fairly earmarked but perhaps a bit high. Since the AF will not be entitled to any service fees, that helps with potentially receiving more back after the 3 year period. We'd appreciate how this budget fluctuates over time. It’s better to have a larger buffer in place anyways, so this seems fair.
DAOplomats voted “For” in all three proposals on BoLD.
AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Arbitrum BoLD is an essential next step towards complete decentralization. With eyes set on Stage 2, it is only pleasing to see this implementation come to fruition. Besides security, setting this high bar for bad actors makes total sense. We have also gone through the rationale of compensating in ETH as opposed to ARB and we are in support.
DAOplomats voted “For” in all three proposals on BoLD.
AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Arbitrum BoLD is an essential next step towards complete decentralization. With eyes set on Stage 2, it is only pleasing to see this implementation come to fruition. Besides security, setting this high bar for bad actors makes total sense. We have also gone through the rationale of compensating in ETH as opposed to ARB and we are in support.
AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Bond Sentiment. We were in support of releasing the funds requested to the Foundation. Also, seeing that the BoLD upgrade requires at least one active proposer at any point in time, we were happy to allow the Foundation be the first to take up this responsibility.
AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Operational Cost Sentiment Finally, we were in support of this proposal to cater for the costs needed to reimburse L1 gas fees as well as the 500 ETH service fees. Due to the nature of the BoLD upgrade, it does sound logical to both reimburse participants and incentivize them for actively working to progress the chain.
The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting FOR bringing BoLD to Arbitrum One at the Snapshot Stage.
By bringing BoLD to mainnet, we finally move away from permissioned validation, and get one step closer to being called a Stage 2 rollup.
The Princeton Blockchain Club is voting FOR bringing BoLD to Arbitrum One at the Snapshot Stage.
By bringing BoLD to mainnet, we finally move away from permissioned validation, and get one step closer to being called a Stage 2 rollup.
The recommendation about keeping Nova permissioned makes sense though - the capital requirements are high for the current TVL. (Looking forward to the Fast Withdrawal AIP btw!)
The OpenZeppelin report on future economic risks is definitely something other delegates should look into - seems like there's a decent amount of monitoring and tweaking to be done in the future. But for now, we're excited to finally see this version of BoLD live shortly!
Blockworks Research will be voting FOR implementing the BoLD upgrade, as well as bootstrapping the first BoLD validator to be operated by the Foundation and covering BoLD-associated OpEx, on Snapshot.
We naturally support the upgrade to increase Arbitrum’s security and decentralization, while taking off any remaining “training wheels,” as Vitalik calls them. We’re also supportive of allocating capital to the Foundation to become the first proposer for Arbitrum One, as this is clearly required for the system to function from the start and the Foundation’s incentives are to act honestly in its role as a BoLD validator. Apologies if this has already been discussed, but could a situation arise, especially when BoLD is in its infancy, where the Foundation needs more than one challenge’s worth of capital to ensure the system functions properly? If so, it might be sensible to extend a larger amount of capital to bootstrap the validator. Finally, we agree that BoLD validators should be paid service fees and L1 gas costs should be refunded, especially in the beginning to attract a wider set of participants.
We are voting for this proposal. We believe it increases security of protocol in long term.
We vote FOR the proposal on Snapshot.
BoLD unlocks permissionless validations for the Arbitrum chains, which is a great step for the DAO and a technological feat provided by Offchain Labs. While we need to review the economical incentive that is also sustainable for a more diversified set of operators to join in the future, we are in 100% support of the proposal and implementation of it as it stands.
Voted in favour. BoLD will only benefit Arbitrum as a chain.
As the ITU Blockchain delegation team, we appreciate the detailed proposal and supporting documents. We recognize BoLD’s importance in providing open validation, predictable assertions, and aligning with long-term protocol goals. Given its potential to enhance security and decentralization in the Arbitrum ecosystem, we are voting in favor of this proposal.
Voting in favor. This proposal enhances security and decentralization via permissionless validation. I only see benefits from its implementation.
We're voting For the BoLD upgrade. While there are potential issues with relying on the Foundation and DAO-funded validators long-term, BoLD is a solid step forward. It enables permissionless validation, strengthens security, and aligns with Arbitrum's decentralization goals. The team has thoroughly tested it and is exploring ways to further diversify the validator pool. Let's keep building!
We have voted FOR this proposal on Snapshot. BOLD is an exciting innovation for the Arbitrum community and a step towards a credibly neutral Arbitrum protocol by enabling permissionless state validation.
Voicing all three vote opinions are below. As a general opinion, it is clear that a ton of work has been done on this project and plenty of feedback / discussion has been taken into account. It also seems to have been properly audited and a lot of through has been put into the economic side of things. I am excited to see Arbitrum continue to work towards being more decentralized as time goes on.
1. AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Voting "For" as this is a clear upgrade in security and decentralization of the network. Reduction in delay attacks is a positive as well. No real reason to vote against this
Upgrading to BoLD is a no brainer. Making progress towards getting to Stage 2 is always an easy yes.
Proposal 1: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum
Better security and more decentralization via permissionless validation and reduced delay attacks. Who wouldn't want that!
It seems thoroughly tested and audited. The economic incentives for honest participation seem solid. Easy yes
Voicing all three vote opinions are below. As a general opinion, it is clear that a ton of work has been done on this project and plenty of feedback / discussion has been taken into account. It also seems to have been properly audited and a lot of through has been put into the economic side of things. I am excited to see Arbitrum continue to work towards being more decentralized as time goes on.
1. AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Voting "For" as this is a clear upgrade in security and decentralization of the network. Reduction in delay attacks is a positive as well. No real reason to vote against this
2. AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Bond Sentiment The Arbitrum Foundation is a trusted entity in regards to running the first BoLD Validator. I see no issue with the cost, and the ability of the DAO to clawback in the event of a bad actor is appreciated.
3. AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Operational Cost Sentiment Agree that it is important to subsidize the first year in order to attract Validators to the network to further increase decentralization.
Edit: To save forum space, editing this post to state that my opinions remain unchanged for the Tally vote.
Edit 2: To save forum space, editing this post to state that my opinions remain unchanged for the Tally vote for the BoLD vote.
Upgrading to BoLD is a no brainer. Making progress towards getting to Stage 2 is always an easy yes.
Proposal 1: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum
Better security and more decentralization via permissionless validation and reduced delay attacks. Who wouldn't want that!
It seems thoroughly tested and audited. The economic incentives for honest participation seem solid. Easy yes
Proposal 2: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Bond Sentiment
Honestly, I think its really cool that making the Arbitrum Foundation the first validator is even a vote... Obviously it's better to give them some of the ETH we have accumulated from fees than to have them sell ARB to do make this happen.
Proposal 3: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Operational Cost Sentiment
Subsidizing validators costs for the first year makes sense. I'm surprised its soooo pricey I assume we can trust the foundation to ensure that no one games this system.
I voted FOR this proposal at the temp check stage because BOLD makes Arbitrum more secure and credibly neutral by technically allowing anyone to dispute the chain state.
gm, voting FOR in the 3 BOLD proposals.
gm, voting FOR in the 3 BOLD proposals.
I am equally happy to know that all Orbit chains can follow the same path: this truly positions the Arbitrum ecosystem on another level and we, as a DAO, should do our best to highlight & promote this paradigm shift.
As per BOLD itself, no specific concerns from my side. I’ll be voting FOR in the upcoming Snapshot to move to the testnet phase.
It makes sense for the DAO to refund gas costs to incentivize more participants, and make sure there is at least 1 bonder at the start.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal during temp-check.
The introduction of BOLD is a great step towards increasing Arbitrum’s decentralization and enhancing the security of all Arbitrum chains.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal during temp-check.
The introduction of BOLD is a great step towards increasing Arbitrum’s decentralization and enhancing the security of all Arbitrum chains.
Delphi Digital's summary, provided as a research member of the ARDC, was helpful in better understanding BOLD's value proposition, how it works, and its main differences from other dispute resolution mechanisms of other rollups.
While BOLD can safely be deployed to Arbitrum One and Nova without having a polished, finalized economic model, we support the initiative to use ETH from the treasury to bootstrap the first BoLD validator as well as to pay service fees and to refund L1 gas costs for proposers who are actively participating and advancing the chain. As a result, we’re also voting FOR the respective proposals, for the bonds, and for the operational costs.
As with similar such proposals in the past, we’re committing to doing a deep-dive in the actual code once the proposal goes on-chain before casting our vote.
I couldn't attend the office hour for the AIP BoLD Temp Checks Proposals, but here is my rationale for each of them regarding to BoLD. In my opinion, these proposals represent a significant advancement for the Arbitrum protocol and ecosystem.
I couldn't attend the office hour for the AIP BoLD Temp Checks Proposals, but here is my rationale for each of them regarding to BoLD. In my opinion, these proposals represent a significant advancement for the Arbitrum protocol and ecosystem.
This proposal introduces the BoLD protocol, which will enable permissionless validation on Arbitrum chains, significantly enhancing security by mitigating the risks of delay attacks. The implementation of BoLD ensures that any honest party can effectively defend the integrity of Arbitrum's chain state. Additionally, this advancement is crucial for the progressive decentralization and long-term stability of the Arbitrum ecosystem.
I support the proposal to allocate 4,234 ETH for the Arbitrum Foundation to act as the first honest validator under BoLD. This funding will cover the assertion and challenge bonds needed to establish a validator that secures the Arbitrum One chain. It is essential to ensure that there is at least one active and honest validator to protect the system from the start, thereby fostering the protocol's security and reliability.
Finally, I support the request for 900 ETH to cover operational costs and reimburse L1 gas fees for active and honest validators. This funding ensures that validators actively advancing the chain are adequately compensated, eliminating the disincentive to participate due to gas costs. This approach is vital for maintaining active participation and the ongoing security of the BoLD protocol on Arbitrum One.
I'd like to understand how another service provides can be also be part of this efforts in pro of Arbitrum Decentralization, so will do my research to find those resources.
Is there a path to lower the bond amount in the future? and why not include $ARB in the bonding?
After reviewing the proposal and the delegate feedback, we have decided to vote in favor of all three proposals during the temperature check. The feedback was positive, highlighting more benefits than drawbacks.
After reviewing the proposal and the delegate feedback, we have decided to vote in favor of all three proposals during the temperature check. The feedback was positive, highlighting more benefits than drawbacks.
We support this proposal because it enhances security and decentralization through permissionless validation. We don't have additional technical points beyond what has been discussed.
We support the request for 4,234 ETH to bootstrap the first BoLD validator, ensuring an honest proposer for Arbitrum. The return policy if the upgrade isn't approved provides additional assurance.
We support the allocation of 900 ETH for operational costs, including 500 ETH for service fees and 400 ETH for L1 gas cost reimbursements. This ensures active participation and fair compensation for proposers, essential for network reliability.
I voted for on the 3 snapshots.
While don't having much to add technically to the discussion, I really appreciated the resources shared as it made the evaluation of the proposals easier.
I support having the Foundation as one of the validators (the first one) and the budget presented to cover operational costs.
We just consider it a potential issue in the future to keep relying on the Foundation and validators funded by the DAO for their services, though we certainly believe the proposal as-is can be voted on and passed.
Also, watching the recording of the latest call about BoLD AIP temp checks, Derek specifically mentioned that the research about how to diversify the validator pool with economic incentives equipped will be in underway and explored with the community, which is good enough at this point and we are looking forward to the further updates.
How does BOLD ensure fair participation and prevent monopolization by well-resourced entities given the high bond requirements for validators?
Voting in favour of this temp check related to bringing BoLD to arbi one and nova, relying to also the technical opinion of Delphi here. No point in gating the upgrade of the protocol in general.
Voting in favour of this temp check related to bringing BoLD to arbi one and nova, relying to also the technical opinion of Delphi here. No point in gating the upgrade of the protocol in general.
I want to thank other delegates for sharing more technical details on the design choices behind this system (re: @RikaGoldberg mentioning usage of confiscated funds, @swmartin about a potential divergence of viability if there is a big divergence in future of eth price compared to arb, and @PGov for the request of breakdown of funds distribution). Most if not all of this are takes likely outside the comprehensive skillset of a lot of users, and reading them helps understanding potential pitfalls for the future.
EDIT: realizing this is the topic to comment on also the other 2 proposals,
Voting in favour of funding the first BoLD validator and making the foundation run it. We need at least one honest validator, and to be honest we can't find a better aligned stakeholder than the foundation to do it. Having them running it, with even the caveat as per the proposal that we will be able to claw back funds, is the safest scenario i can think about for now for our ecosystem.
Finally, voting in favour of funding the operational costs for the BoLD validator run by the foundation. The proposal makes imho a good breakdown on the cost related (3% of the 3600 eth for 3 years, so 432 eth, plus the buffer of 68, + 400 eth for gas costs to post and challenge + 500 eth for service fees). Up the point a simple cow is able to understand it. Also foundation won't take service fees from this.
As a final note, we likely want to keep a tab on all of these numbers and more in relation to the discussion we are having about using the sequencer revenue. While I don't think is written anywhere, my educated guess is that we will take the eth from there indeed (if not and I missed something feel free to correct me). We finally got an excuse to use them i guess.
I strongly support the AIP to bring the BoLD upgrade to Arbitrum One and Nova. This new dispute resolution protocol will significantly enhance the security and decentralization of the Arbitrum chains by enabling permissionless validation and mitigating the risk of delay attacks. The thorough testing and audits, along with the clear economic incentives for honest participation, ensure that BoLD is a robust and reliable solution. By adopting BoLD, we can take a major step towards solidifying Arbitrum's position as a Stage 2 Ethereum rollup, benefiting all users and contributors to the ecosystem.
BOLD allows for permissionless validation, removing the reliance on a permissioned set of validators and enhancing decentralization. It also fixes the challenge period, preventing delay attacks and ensuring timely dispute resolution. These improvements benefit all Arbitrum users, node operators, dApps, and bridges.
Generally speaking, we are in support of the network upgrade and have no extra technical points to chime in here that haven't been discussed or laid out.
When it comes to what Rika messaged about confiscated funds from malicious actor(s), our opinion is that these funds should best be used to refund L1 gas costs to honest parties. Ensuring this isn't a cost to these parties helping run the network is top priority. Hence the 400 ETH refund for L1 gas costs for proposers is something we are voting a strong yes on. The other 500 ETH on the other hand for proposers who are actively participating we are a little more comprehensive on. We would like to see a breakdown of the funds and which parties are getting what.
This is one of the more exciting developments occurring in Ethereum L2 land - can't wait to see it go live. Stage 2, here we come!
I read the full proposal, all the comments, and the FAQ linked above (still need to watch the governance call recordings). However, my one concern comes down to paying out proposers in ETH - targeting the ETH staking yield. I understand the idea is to compensate proposers for the bond / opportunity cost associated with that (which is of course the eth staking yield), but I do not love the idea of having service fees denominated in a currency that we cannot control and have a small amount of in our treasury.
@404DAO's understanding is that Arbitrum DAO will play a role in deciding what to do with confiscated funds from a malicious actor. We would like to get the conversation started (if one hasn’t already begun) around how best to ensure that the DAO makes an educated decision.
The proposal authors present a few possible options that the DAO can choose from when deciding how to use the confiscated funds:
@404DAO's understanding is that Arbitrum DAO will play a role in deciding what to do with confiscated funds from a malicious actor. We would like to get the conversation started (if one hasn’t already begun) around how best to ensure that the DAO makes an educated decision.
The proposal authors present a few possible options that the DAO can choose from when deciding how to use the confiscated funds:
We are not proposing any options yet (e.g. create a new committee, use an existing committee, or something else) but would like to plant the seed for a future conversation.
I think this dispute will lead nowhere. But you answered your own question if you think that no one needs it.
Quite a lot of participants can do this for you if you ask them. This is not the first time this has happened. Only about 50 delegates can do this If at least one agrees with your point of view, there will be a vote
No one is stopping you from arranging a vote and doing this However, there are several reasons to use WETH, And yes, you're right about ARB utility - it will be better for community, not necessarily for these cases, which may never happen in life
Taking into account all the listed changes, this proposal can have a positive impact on the development of Arbitrum. The only thing that confuses me is the Stylus. In the Stylus thread you did not answer my questions about the implementation, namely:
Exciting times folks - Arbitrum will soon upgrade to Stage 2.
I am equally happy to know that all Orbit chains can follow the same path: this truly positions the Arbitrum ecosystem on another level and we, as a DAO, should do our best to highlight & promote this paradigm shift.
Exciting times folks - Arbitrum will soon upgrade to Stage 2.
I am equally happy to know that all Orbit chains can follow the same path: this truly positions the Arbitrum ecosystem on another level and we, as a DAO, should do our best to highlight & promote this paradigm shift.
As per BOLD itself, no specific concerns from my side. I'll be voting FOR in the upcoming Snapshot to move to the testnet phase.
Voicing all three vote opinions are below. As a general opinion, it is clear that a ton of work has been done on this project and plenty of feedback / discussion has been taken into account. It also seems to have been properly audited and a lot of through has been put into the economic side of things. I am excited to see Arbitrum continue to work towards being more decentralized as time goes on.
1. AIP: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum Voting "For" as this is a clear upgrade in security and decentralization of the network. Reduction in delay attacks is a positive as well. No real reason to vote against this
2. AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Bond Sentiment The Arbitrum Foundation is a trusted entity in regards to running the first BoLD Validator. I see no issue with the cost, and the ability of the DAO to clawback in the event of a bad actor is appreciated.
3. AIP: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Operational Cost Sentiment Agree that it is important to subsidize the first year in order to attract Validators to the network to further increase decentralization.
Edit: To save forum space, editing this post to state that my opinions remain unchanged for the Tally vote.
Edit 2: To save forum space, editing this post to state that my opinions remain unchanged for the Tally vote for the BoLD vote.
Upgrading to BoLD is a no brainer. Making progress towards getting to Stage 2 is always an easy yes.
Proposal 1: BoLD - Permissionless Validation for Arbitrum
Better security and more decentralization via permissionless validation and reduced delay attacks. Who wouldn't want that!
It seems thoroughly tested and audited. The economic incentives for honest participation seem solid. Easy yes
Proposal 2: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Bond Sentiment
Honestly, I think its really cool that making the Arbitrum Foundation the first validator is even a vote... Obviously it's better to give them some of the ETH we have accumulated from fees than to have them sell ARB to do make this happen.
Proposal 3: Funds to Bootstrap the First BoLD Validator - Operational Cost Sentiment
Subsidizing validators costs for the first year makes sense. I'm surprised its soooo pricey I assume we can trust the foundation to ensure that no one games this system.
I voted FOR this proposal at the temp check stage because BOLD makes Arbitrum more secure and credibly neutral by technically allowing anyone to dispute the chain state.
gm, voting FOR in the 3 BOLD proposals.
gm, voting FOR in the 3 BOLD proposals.
I am equally happy to know that all Orbit chains can follow the same path: this truly positions the Arbitrum ecosystem on another level and we, as a DAO, should do our best to highlight & promote this paradigm shift.
As per BOLD itself, no specific concerns from my side. I’ll be voting FOR in the upcoming Snapshot to move to the testnet phase.
It makes sense for the DAO to refund gas costs to incentivize more participants, and make sure there is at least 1 bonder at the start.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal during temp-check.
The introduction of BOLD is a great step towards increasing Arbitrum’s decentralization and enhancing the security of all Arbitrum chains.
The following reflects the views of L2BEAT’s governance team, composed of @krst and @Sinkas, and it’s based on the combined research, fact-checking, and ideation of the two.
We’re voting FOR the proposal during temp-check.
The introduction of BOLD is a great step towards increasing Arbitrum’s decentralization and enhancing the security of all Arbitrum chains.
Delphi Digital's summary, provided as a research member of the ARDC, was helpful in better understanding BOLD's value proposition, how it works, and its main differences from other dispute resolution mechanisms of other rollups.
While BOLD can safely be deployed to Arbitrum One and Nova without having a polished, finalized economic model, we support the initiative to use ETH from the treasury to bootstrap the first BoLD validator as well as to pay service fees and to refund L1 gas costs for proposers who are actively participating and advancing the chain. As a result, we’re also voting FOR the respective proposals, for the bonds, and for the operational costs.
As with similar such proposals in the past, we’re committing to doing a deep-dive in the actual code once the proposal goes on-chain before casting our vote.
I couldn't attend the office hour for the AIP BoLD Temp Checks Proposals, but here is my rationale for each of them regarding to BoLD. In my opinion, these proposals represent a significant advancement for the Arbitrum protocol and ecosystem.
I couldn't attend the office hour for the AIP BoLD Temp Checks Proposals, but here is my rationale for each of them regarding to BoLD. In my opinion, these proposals represent a significant advancement for the Arbitrum protocol and ecosystem.
This proposal introduces the BoLD protocol, which will enable permissionless validation on Arbitrum chains, significantly enhancing security by mitigating the risks of delay attacks. The implementation of BoLD ensures that any honest party can effectively defend the integrity of Arbitrum's chain state. Additionally, this advancement is crucial for the progressive decentralization and long-term stability of the Arbitrum ecosystem.
I support the proposal to allocate 4,234 ETH for the Arbitrum Foundation to act as the first honest validator under BoLD. This funding will cover the assertion and challenge bonds needed to establish a validator that secures the Arbitrum One chain. It is essential to ensure that there is at least one active and honest validator to protect the system from the start, thereby fostering the protocol's security and reliability.
Finally, I support the request for 900 ETH to cover operational costs and reimburse L1 gas fees for active and honest validators. This funding ensures that validators actively advancing the chain are adequately compensated, eliminating the disincentive to participate due to gas costs. This approach is vital for maintaining active participation and the ongoing security of the BoLD protocol on Arbitrum One.
I'd like to understand how another service provides can be also be part of this efforts in pro of Arbitrum Decentralization, so will do my research to find those resources.
Is there a path to lower the bond amount in the future? and why not include $ARB in the bonding?
After reviewing the proposal and the delegate feedback, we have decided to vote in favor of all three proposals during the temperature check. The feedback was positive, highlighting more benefits than drawbacks.
After reviewing the proposal and the delegate feedback, we have decided to vote in favor of all three proposals during the temperature check. The feedback was positive, highlighting more benefits than drawbacks.
We support this proposal because it enhances security and decentralization through permissionless validation. We don't have additional technical points beyond what has been discussed.
We support the request for 4,234 ETH to bootstrap the first BoLD validator, ensuring an honest proposer for Arbitrum. The return policy if the upgrade isn't approved provides additional assurance.
We support the allocation of 900 ETH for operational costs, including 500 ETH for service fees and 400 ETH for L1 gas cost reimbursements. This ensures active participation and fair compensation for proposers, essential for network reliability.
I voted for on the 3 snapshots.
While don't having much to add technically to the discussion, I really appreciated the resources shared as it made the evaluation of the proposals easier.
I support having the Foundation as one of the validators (the first one) and the budget presented to cover operational costs.
We just consider it a potential issue in the future to keep relying on the Foundation and validators funded by the DAO for their services, though we certainly believe the proposal as-is can be voted on and passed.
Also, watching the recording of the latest call about BoLD AIP temp checks, Derek specifically mentioned that the research about how to diversify the validator pool with economic incentives equipped will be in underway and explored with the community, which is good enough at this point and we are looking forward to the further updates.
How does BOLD ensure fair participation and prevent monopolization by well-resourced entities given the high bond requirements for validators?
Voting in favour of this temp check related to bringing BoLD to arbi one and nova, relying to also the technical opinion of Delphi here. No point in gating the upgrade of the protocol in general.
Voting in favour of this temp check related to bringing BoLD to arbi one and nova, relying to also the technical opinion of Delphi here. No point in gating the upgrade of the protocol in general.
I want to thank other delegates for sharing more technical details on the design choices behind this system (re: @RikaGoldberg mentioning usage of confiscated funds, @swmartin about a potential divergence of viability if there is a big divergence in future of eth price compared to arb, and @PGov for the request of breakdown of funds distribution). Most if not all of this are takes likely outside the comprehensive skillset of a lot of users, and reading them helps understanding potential pitfalls for the future.
EDIT: realizing this is the topic to comment on also the other 2 proposals,
Voting in favour of funding the first BoLD validator and making the foundation run it. We need at least one honest validator, and to be honest we can't find a better aligned stakeholder than the foundation to do it. Having them running it, with even the caveat as per the proposal that we will be able to claw back funds, is the safest scenario i can think about for now for our ecosystem.
Finally, voting in favour of funding the operational costs for the BoLD validator run by the foundation. The proposal makes imho a good breakdown on the cost related (3% of the 3600 eth for 3 years, so 432 eth, plus the buffer of 68, + 400 eth for gas costs to post and challenge + 500 eth for service fees). Up the point a simple cow is able to understand it. Also foundation won't take service fees from this.
As a final note, we likely want to keep a tab on all of these numbers and more in relation to the discussion we are having about using the sequencer revenue. While I don't think is written anywhere, my educated guess is that we will take the eth from there indeed (if not and I missed something feel free to correct me). We finally got an excuse to use them i guess.
I strongly support the AIP to bring the BoLD upgrade to Arbitrum One and Nova. This new dispute resolution protocol will significantly enhance the security and decentralization of the Arbitrum chains by enabling permissionless validation and mitigating the risk of delay attacks. The thorough testing and audits, along with the clear economic incentives for honest participation, ensure that BoLD is a robust and reliable solution. By adopting BoLD, we can take a major step towards solidifying Arbitrum's position as a Stage 2 Ethereum rollup, benefiting all users and contributors to the ecosystem.
BOLD allows for permissionless validation, removing the reliance on a permissioned set of validators and enhancing decentralization. It also fixes the challenge period, preventing delay attacks and ensuring timely dispute resolution. These improvements benefit all Arbitrum users, node operators, dApps, and bridges.
Generally speaking, we are in support of the network upgrade and have no extra technical points to chime in here that haven't been discussed or laid out.
When it comes to what Rika messaged about confiscated funds from malicious actor(s), our opinion is that these funds should best be used to refund L1 gas costs to honest parties. Ensuring this isn't a cost to these parties helping run the network is top priority. Hence the 400 ETH refund for L1 gas costs for proposers is something we are voting a strong yes on. The other 500 ETH on the other hand for proposers who are actively participating we are a little more comprehensive on. We would like to see a breakdown of the funds and which parties are getting what.
This is one of the more exciting developments occurring in Ethereum L2 land - can't wait to see it go live. Stage 2, here we come!
I read the full proposal, all the comments, and the FAQ linked above (still need to watch the governance call recordings). However, my one concern comes down to paying out proposers in ETH - targeting the ETH staking yield. I understand the idea is to compensate proposers for the bond / opportunity cost associated with that (which is of course the eth staking yield), but I do not love the idea of having service fees denominated in a currency that we cannot control and have a small amount of in our treasury.
@404DAO's understanding is that Arbitrum DAO will play a role in deciding what to do with confiscated funds from a malicious actor. We would like to get the conversation started (if one hasn’t already begun) around how best to ensure that the DAO makes an educated decision.
The proposal authors present a few possible options that the DAO can choose from when deciding how to use the confiscated funds:
@404DAO's understanding is that Arbitrum DAO will play a role in deciding what to do with confiscated funds from a malicious actor. We would like to get the conversation started (if one hasn’t already begun) around how best to ensure that the DAO makes an educated decision.
The proposal authors present a few possible options that the DAO can choose from when deciding how to use the confiscated funds:
We are not proposing any options yet (e.g. create a new committee, use an existing committee, or something else) but would like to plant the seed for a future conversation.
I think this dispute will lead nowhere. But you answered your own question if you think that no one needs it.
Quite a lot of participants can do this for you if you ask them. This is not the first time this has happened. Only about 50 delegates can do this If at least one agrees with your point of view, there will be a vote
No one is stopping you from arranging a vote and doing this However, there are several reasons to use WETH, And yes, you're right about ARB utility - it will be better for community, not necessarily for these cases, which may never happen in life
Taking into account all the listed changes, this proposal can have a positive impact on the development of Arbitrum. The only thing that confuses me is the Stylus. In the Stylus thread you did not answer my questions about the implementation, namely:
Exciting times folks - Arbitrum will soon upgrade to Stage 2.
I am equally happy to know that all Orbit chains can follow the same path: this truly positions the Arbitrum ecosystem on another level and we, as a DAO, should do our best to highlight & promote this paradigm shift.
Exciting times folks - Arbitrum will soon upgrade to Stage 2.
I am equally happy to know that all Orbit chains can follow the same path: this truly positions the Arbitrum ecosystem on another level and we, as a DAO, should do our best to highlight & promote this paradigm shift.
As per BOLD itself, no specific concerns from my side. I'll be voting FOR in the upcoming Snapshot to move to the testnet phase.
Generally speaking, we are in support of the network upgrade and have no extra technical points to chime in here that haven't been discussed or laid out.
When it comes to what Rika messaged about confiscated funds from malicious actor(s), our opinion is that these funds should best be used to refund L1 gas costs to honest parties. Ensuring this isn't a cost to these parties helping run the network is top priority. Hence the 400 ETH refund for L1 gas costs for proposers is something we are voting a strong yes on. The other 500 ETH on the other hand for proposers who are actively participating we are a little more comprehensive on. We would like to see a breakdown of the funds and which parties are getting what.
As for the third vote that is up on snapshot, we think it makes sense to adopt the foundation as the first active proposer for Arbitrum One. We only need one honest proposer as any one time and it makes sense to have this crucial responsibility be on the foundation. As for the funding, once again, it would be nice to get a breakdown of all the funding. A reason why we are leaning rather positively on this is because of the refunds clause within 30 days for extra funds.
This is one of the more exciting developments occurring in Ethereum L2 land - can't wait to see it go live. Stage 2, here we come!
I read the full proposal, all the comments, and the FAQ linked above (still need to watch the governance call recordings). However, my one concern comes down to paying out proposers in ETH - targeting the ETH staking yield. I understand the idea is to compensate proposers for the bond / opportunity cost associated with that (which is of course the eth staking yield), but I do not love the idea of having service fees denominated in a currency that we cannot control and have a small amount of in our treasury.
This is the classic emerging markets problem where nation states have a sovereign fiat currency that devalues versus their USD denominated debt obligations, which requires more native currency creation to pay USD liabilities and ultimately devalues the native currency further.
In this example, ARB is the EM's sovereign fiat currency and WETH is the USD debt obligation.
I do not have a good solution. On the one hand, we want a diverse set of proposers further down the line.. but we cannot do that under the proposed structure without scaling ETH costs (with ETH revenues ironically on the decline). On the other hand, if the service fee is paid in ARB, and the USD (or ETH) value of that ARB decreases, the SECURITY of the network decreases in tandem. The latter is clearly the worse option between the two.
I am all for passing this proposal as is, but the DAO must proactively consider this to ensure the long-term sustainability of permissionless validation via BOLD.
This is good. The fact that L3s can leverage the protocol is even better.
Regarding the reward for validators, I totally understand the logic of preventing competition but still feel a percentage of the funds from the malicious actors should go to the validators. What that percentage will be, I am not sure but these are some of the things we could brainstorm on.
This is good. The fact that L3s can leverage the protocol is even better.
Regarding the reward for validators, I totally understand the logic of preventing competition but still feel a percentage of the funds from the malicious actors should go to the validators. What that percentage will be, I am not sure but these are some of the things we could brainstorm on.
Also, going over the economics on Github, I came across this:

Just curious, is it possible for an attacker to go above the security budget? and what happens then? Not so clear on that.
We voiced an opinion during the call but for the record, we would like to bring up a point that the DAO needs to consider in the future; with the current specification, we don't necessarily incentivize honest operators running BOLD validators even though it's quite a large commitment from them. "Defender's bounty" is an interesting idea, but we aren't so certain that it's enough for serious operators to join the operations and achieve some level of diversity.
There are other points that brought up from the delegates and we should continue to discuss them after the release of BOLD.
Like most, I’m very excited to see this finally hit the forum ~ it’s a huge step forward towards having truly decentralised rollups. My only question is regarding the ERC20 bond - is there an specific reason why a token like WETH would be preferable over ARB? Is it a matter of safety, liquidity, volatility etc?
Generally speaking, we are in support of the network upgrade and have no extra technical points to chime in here that haven't been discussed or laid out.
When it comes to what Rika messaged about confiscated funds from malicious actor(s), our opinion is that these funds should best be used to refund L1 gas costs to honest parties. Ensuring this isn't a cost to these parties helping run the network is top priority. Hence the 400 ETH refund for L1 gas costs for proposers is something we are voting a strong yes on. The other 500 ETH on the other hand for proposers who are actively participating we are a little more comprehensive on. We would like to see a breakdown of the funds and which parties are getting what.
As for the third vote that is up on snapshot, we think it makes sense to adopt the foundation as the first active proposer for Arbitrum One. We only need one honest proposer as any one time and it makes sense to have this crucial responsibility be on the foundation. As for the funding, once again, it would be nice to get a breakdown of all the funding. A reason why we are leaning rather positively on this is because of the refunds clause within 30 days for extra funds.
This is one of the more exciting developments occurring in Ethereum L2 land - can't wait to see it go live. Stage 2, here we come!
I read the full proposal, all the comments, and the FAQ linked above (still need to watch the governance call recordings). However, my one concern comes down to paying out proposers in ETH - targeting the ETH staking yield. I understand the idea is to compensate proposers for the bond / opportunity cost associated with that (which is of course the eth staking yield), but I do not love the idea of having service fees denominated in a currency that we cannot control and have a small amount of in our treasury.
This is the classic emerging markets problem where nation states have a sovereign fiat currency that devalues versus their USD denominated debt obligations, which requires more native currency creation to pay USD liabilities and ultimately devalues the native currency further.
In this example, ARB is the EM's sovereign fiat currency and WETH is the USD debt obligation.
I do not have a good solution. On the one hand, we want a diverse set of proposers further down the line.. but we cannot do that under the proposed structure without scaling ETH costs (with ETH revenues ironically on the decline). On the other hand, if the service fee is paid in ARB, and the USD (or ETH) value of that ARB decreases, the SECURITY of the network decreases in tandem. The latter is clearly the worse option between the two.
I am all for passing this proposal as is, but the DAO must proactively consider this to ensure the long-term sustainability of permissionless validation via BOLD.
This is good. The fact that L3s can leverage the protocol is even better.
Regarding the reward for validators, I totally understand the logic of preventing competition but still feel a percentage of the funds from the malicious actors should go to the validators. What that percentage will be, I am not sure but these are some of the things we could brainstorm on.
This is good. The fact that L3s can leverage the protocol is even better.
Regarding the reward for validators, I totally understand the logic of preventing competition but still feel a percentage of the funds from the malicious actors should go to the validators. What that percentage will be, I am not sure but these are some of the things we could brainstorm on.
Also, going over the economics on Github, I came across this:

Just curious, is it possible for an attacker to go above the security budget? and what happens then? Not so clear on that.
We voiced an opinion during the call but for the record, we would like to bring up a point that the DAO needs to consider in the future; with the current specification, we don't necessarily incentivize honest operators running BOLD validators even though it's quite a large commitment from them. "Defender's bounty" is an interesting idea, but we aren't so certain that it's enough for serious operators to join the operations and achieve some level of diversity.
There are other points that brought up from the delegates and we should continue to discuss them after the release of BOLD.
Like most, I’m very excited to see this finally hit the forum ~ it’s a huge step forward towards having truly decentralised rollups. My only question is regarding the ERC20 bond - is there an specific reason why a token like WETH would be preferable over ARB? Is it a matter of safety, liquidity, volatility etc?