Rollup
A layer 2 scaling technique that executes transactions off the main chain and posts the compressed data and result back to it.
- glossary
A rollup is a layer 2 network that executes transactions off the main chain (layer 1) and then periodically posts a compressed state commitment—along with the underlying transaction data—back to it, so the rollup's state can always be reconstructed and verified from layer 1 alone. L2BEAT, the leading tracker of these networks, defines rollups as systems whose state commitments are "validated by either Validity Proofs or... accepted optimistically and can be challenged via [a] Fraud Proof mechanism," which is exactly the split between ZK rollups and optimistic rollups. Because the data lands on the base chain, a rollup inherits its parent chain's security rather than depending on a separate validator set the way a sidechain does. Arbitrum, Optimism, Base, zkSync, and Starknet are all rollups built on Ethereum. For tokenized domains, rollups are what make routine actions—transfers, DNS updates, sub-domain issuance—affordable, since executing off the base chain can cut fees by 10–100x.
Related keywords
- rollup
- layer 2
- optimistic rollup
- zk rollup
- scaling
- l2
Contributors
Namefi is a collective of engineers, designers, and operators who obsess over building tools that make managing your onchain domain names effortless.
Victor Zhou is a technology founder and standards editor focused on digital identity and trust. He founded Namefi, edits Ethereum Improvement Proposals, and previously led smart-contract architecture work at Google Labs.
His work sits at the intersection of naming, ownership, and the systems people use to establish identity online. That perspective makes him especially interested in the way names move between personal meaning, public recognition, and digital infrastructure.
For Namefi, Victor edits and writes about domains as durable digital identity: how names become ownable onchain assets, how tokenization changes custody and trust, and what naming can learn from the systems people use to establish identity online.