A shot of Espresso, please: Blockchain scaler to offer third testnet integration

Shared sequencers are an essential part of decentralization that may eventually lead to mass adoption

article-image

All for you friend/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Blockchain scaling and privacy infrastructure company Espresso Systems will release its third testnet of the Espresso Sequencer for OP stack builders.

The testnet, named Cortado, will include work for an Optimism Request for Proposal (OP RFP) that aims to decentralize sequencers. 

Rollup solutions today run their own sequencers that have their own execution environments. These sequencers are responsible for ordering transaction information that is then sent to a virtual machine.

To ensure there is no single authority that orders these transactions, projects such as Espresso Systems are exploring ways to diversify these sequencers. 

The initial release will be a locally hosted demo version of an OP stack rollup running on Espresso that enterprises can test. 

Over the coming weeks, a publicly hosted canonical OP stack testnet will be released. This testnet will be similar to the testnet Doppio, which went live in July, according to Jill Gunter, chief strategy officer at Espresso Systems.

This publicly hosted testnet will be deployed in partnership with Caldera. The one-click rollup deployment allows developers to choose the different layers to build a blockchain.

Decentralizing sequencers before decentralizing fraud proofs

A popular narrative within crypto circles raises the concern that without fraud-proofs — a mechanism that can challenge the accuracy of a transaction — shared sequencing solutions will still have to include potentially fraudulent transactions in a rollup sent to the layer-1.

Loading Tweet..

Gunter told Blockworks that decentralizing a sequencer does not mitigate the need for fraud proofs, but the two play separate important roles. 

“Decentralizing the sequencer will help mitigate the risk that this centralized entity running the sequencer is going to be persistently ignoring transactions or leaving them out,” Gunter said.

Although it’s understandable that there are debates as to whether or not the development of shared sequencers should be prioritized before fraud proofs have even been shipped, Gunter believes that all of these different aspects play an important role in ensuring that blockchains become more decentralized.

“Eventually these things will all need to be on the roadmap,” she said. “A big part of what our motivation has been at Espresso Systems is to help rollups accelerate the roadmap towards mainstream adoption.”


Start your day with top crypto insights from David Canellis and Katherine Ross. Subscribe to the Empire newsletter.

Explore the growing intersection between crypto, macroeconomics, policy and finance with Ben Strack, Casey Wagner and Felix Jauvin. Subscribe to the Forward Guidance newsletter.

Get alpha directly in your inbox with the 0xResearch newsletter — market highlights, charts, degen trade ideas, governance updates, and more.

The Lightspeed newsletter is all things Solana, in your inbox, every day. Subscribe to daily Solana news from Jack Kubinec and Jeff Albus.

Tags

Upcoming Events

Javits Center North | 445 11th Ave

Tues - Thurs, March 18 - 20, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

recent research

LTIPPanalysis.png

Research

This report is a retroactive analysis of Arbitrum's Long Term Incentives Pilot Program (LTIPP). We collect relevant data at a protocol level and review bi-weekly updates to analyze recipients, their strategies, and the impact of the incentives on high level growth metrics. In particular, we want to highlight outperformers and underperformers, and glean any best practices or lessons learned for protocols distributing ARB incentives in the future. The overarching goal is to synthesize lessons learned that the DAO can reference as it begins thinking about future incentives programs–namely, the working group for incentives that is being actively discussed–especially as Timeboost introduces new conditions for trading and economic activity.

article-image

OFAC sanctioned Tornado Cash in 2022, claiming the mixer had been used to launder more than $7 billion in crypto

article-image

The Fed’s preferred inflation gauge showed that prices increased 0.2% from September and 2.3% annually

article-image

While acknowledging potential headwinds for risk assets, Galaxy’s Alex Thorn notes there are also plenty of catalysts

article-image

BuilderNet is a new block building network designed to return more MEV and gas fees to users

article-image

Ledn’s John Glover gives some price targets to watch for bitcoin

article-image

Sponsored

AI project Zerebro intersects the spheres of artificial intelligence, finance, art, music, and culture