Unichain

October 2024
Hayden Adams Mark Toda Alex Karys
hayden@[Link] mark@[Link] [Link]@[Link]

Xin Wan Daniel Gretzke Eric Zhong

xin@[Link] [Link]@[Link] [Link]@[Link]

Zach Wong Daniel Marzec Robert Miller

[Link]@[Link] dan@[Link] robert@[Link]

Hasu Karl Floersch Dan Robinson

hasu@[Link] karl@[Link] dan@[Link]

ABSTRACT is intended to enable quick, inexpensive and broad access to liq-

Unichain is an optimistic rollup optimized for efficient markets by uidity for rollup users. Unichain is being developed through an
delivering fast state updates, offering a framework for applications iterative, open source process, making its codebase available to
to internalize MEV, and providing an economic finality system for other OP Stack rollups. The features described in this document
quick settlement across blockchains. will be thoroughly tested on a publicly accessible testnet called
Unichain Experimental before being deployed to Unichain mainnet.

1 INTRODUCTION
Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap has successfully scaled onchain
2 PRIOR WORK AND CURRENT
activity through the proliferation of rollups over the last few years. CHALLENGES
However, this approach has introduced new challenges for the DeFi Ethereum has made great progress towards a robust, permission-
ecosystem, including suboptimal execution quality, degraded user less, and credibly neutral network. However, various issues have
experience, and fragmented liquidity. emerged as adoption of blockchain technology has increased. One
This paper introduces Unichain, an optimistic rollup built on the of the most pressing issues is the unpredictability and high cost
OP Stack [16], designed to address these core challenges through of gas fees during periods of network congestion [1, 2], which is
two key innovations: caused by limitations in throughput. Rollups have been proposed
as a strategy to scale the overall processing capacity of the under-
• Verifiable Block Building: A block building mechanism
lying network, and have been suggested as the main strategy by
built in collaboration with Flashbots, initially designed to
the community [6]. Currently, the technology underlying the most
deliver:
popular rollups are developed by OP Labs [16, 17] and Offchain
– 200-250ms effective block times by splitting each block
Labs [12], among others. Most of these rollups require trust that the
into four “Flashblocks.”
sequencer will comply with their stated block building protocols.
– Transparent enforcement of priority ordering within
In addition, a block production environment that enables users
each Flashblock, allowing applications to allocate some
to extract maximal extractable value (“MEV” [8]) from other users
of their maximal extractable value (MEV) for the ben-
limits the efficiency of markets and applications that can be built.
efit of their users.
Solutions such as private mempools were introduced as a mitigation
– Trustless revert protection for transactions.
to MEV extraction risk, but they introduce single points of failure
• Unichain Validation Network: A decentralized network
[2, 9, 15, 18], to which trusted execution environments (TEEs) have
of Unichain node operators designed to reduce certain key
been proposed as a solution [10].
risks of the block sequencing process, enabling faster eco-
Automated market makers (AMMs) [3–5], pioneered by Uniswap
nomic finality for quicker settlement of cross-chain trans-
Labs, have also seen significant growth on blockchains like Ethereum
actions and supporting potential future extensions.
[22]. While they have revolutionized digital asset trading by making
Unichain is built on the Superchain, a scalable and intercon- liquidity provision permissionless, other challenges have emerged.
nected network of rollups on the OP Stack, as a foundational envi- Specifically, constraints of existing blockchains such as long block
ronment to promote the seamless movement of liquidity. Alongside times increase adverse selection risks for onchain liquidity providers
an intents-based, cross-chain bridge [21] and fast finality from the [13, 14], while public mempool and unconstrained transaction or-
Unichain Validation Network, connectivity with the Superchain dering could lead to sandwich attacks [19].
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 Adams et al.

To address the current set of challenges, Unichain introduces transactions while building blocks, and is programmed to detect
two main features, Verifiable Block Building and Unichain Validation and remove any reverting transactions.
Network. These features draw inspiration from the aforementioned Revert protection reduces friction for users and improves the
research and innovations. efficiency of AMMs and intents-based systems, as participants can
have greater confidence in their transactions.
3 VERIFIABLE BLOCK BUILDING
Block building plays a crucial role in determining MEV leakage 3.4 Future Work
and latency characteristics. Unichain adopts a novel block building The verifiable block builder is a primitive on which many future
protocol optimized for user experience and value preservation, improvements to Unichain can be built, such as:
while maintaining neutrality. This is enabled by Rollup-Boost [11], • Encrypted Mempool: Users could encrypt transactions,
developed in collaboration with Flashbots. enhancing their pre-transaction privacy.
• Scheduled Transactions: The TEE could be programmed
3.1 Sequencer Builder Separation to allow users or smart contracts to submit automatic trans-
Unichain separates the role of block building from the sequencer actions to execute scheduled or recurring actions.
with the Verifiable Block Builder, built in collaboration with Flash- • TEE Coprocessor: The TEE could allow smart contracts
bots. Block building operations are executed inside a trusted exe- to request private, verifiable computation.
cution environment (TEE), allowing external users to verify com-
pliance with stated ordering rules. TEEs offer enhanced trust and 4 UNICHAIN VALIDATION NETWORK
security guarantees relative to the servers they replace. Unichain addresses the risks associated with single-sequencer ar-
The initial TEE builder will run an open source builder codebase 1 chitectures by introducing the Unichain Validation Network (UVN),
on Intel’s TDX hardware, which offers both private data access and a decentralized network of node operators that independently val-
verifiable execution through its computational integrity property idate the latest blockchain state. While rollups benefit from the
[7]. Execution attestations will be posted publicly, allowing users strong security of the base blockchain, the sequencer’s behavior
to verify that blocks were built inside the TEE according to stated can affect the blockchain’s liveness, MEV dynamics, and finality.
policies. The UVN is an extensible platform, with an initial focus on verifying
TEE block building is a powerful primitive for rollups, not only blocks for faster finality.
mitigating the risk of discretionary block ordering, but also pro- Two major risks in particular emerge in single sequencer rollups
viding a framework for making transparent incremental improve- that affect the speed of cross-chain settlement:
ments.
• Block Equivocation Risk: The possibility that the se-
quencer proposes multiple conflicting blocks at the same
3.2 Flashblocks height, creating uncertainty around which block will ulti-
Flashblocks are block pre-confirmations issued by the TEE block mately be finalized.
builder. Shorter block times lower adverse selection costs for liquid- • Invalid Block Risk: The risk that a sequencer posts an
ity providers [13, 14], reduce latency for users, and foster a more invalid block, leading to a chain reversion when fault proofs
efficient onchain market. As transactions are streamed to the TEE are submitted, further delaying settlement.
builder, it incrementally commits to Flashblocks, which are ordered
These risks cause longer wait times for finality of the blockchain,
sets of transactions that will be included in the eventual proposed
hindering the seamless flow of liquidity across networks. The UVN
block. The sequencer then broadcasts these Flashblocks as pending
addresses these challenges by having verifiers attest to the canonical
blocks, providing users, applications, and integrators with the expe-
chain as blocks are proposed, providing faster economic finality.
rience of block times multiple times faster than the default. In most
current rollup architectures, block proposals face high fixed latency
due to serialization and state root generation, making sub-second 4.1 Staked Validators
block times infeasible. Flashblocks bypass this overhead over short In order to become eligible as a validator in the UVN, node op-
timescales, enabling low latency blockchain interaction. erators must stake UNI on Ethereum mainnet. Stakes are tracked
The TEE enforces priority ordering for each Flashblock and on Unichain in a smart contract, which receives notifications over
supports a Flashblock bundle type that enables users to target the native bridge of stake and unstake operations. Unichain blocks
specific Flashblocks for inclusion. The combination of these two are segmented into epochs of a set length. At the start of each
features facilitates allocation of MEV for the benefit of users by epoch, the currently staked balances are snapshotted, blockchain
applications, such as through MEV tax [20]. fees are collected, and a reward per staked token value is calculated.
Participants can also stake and vote for a validator, increasing the
3.3 Trustless Revert Protection validator’s stake-weight. A limited number of validators with the
highest UNI stake-weight will be considered the active set, and are
The verifiable builder enables trustless revert protection, reducing
eligible to post attestations and earn the earmarked compensation
the risk that a user pays for a failed transaction. The TEE simulates
for the epoch.
Active validators are expected to be online, running an instru-
1 [Link] mented Reth Unichain node that performs validation of proposed
2
Unichain

blocks. Validators sign block hashes and publish them to the UVN [13] Jason Milionis, Ciamac C Moallemi, and Tim Roughgarden. 2023. Automated
Service smart contract on Unichain once per epoch as a public attes- market making and arbitrage profits in the presence of fees. arXiv preprint
arXiv:2305.14604 (2023).
tation of their validity to the network. The Service smart contract [14] Jason Milionis, Ciamac C Moallemi, Tim Roughgarden, and Anthony Lee Zhang.
validates these attestations as they are posted, and compensates 2022. Automated market making and loss-versus-rebalancing. arXiv preprint
arXiv:2208.06046 (2022).
the validator immediately based on the validator’s stake-weight. [15] Robert Miller. 2023. MEV-Share: programmably private orderflow to share MEV
Validators who fail to post a valid attestation for the epoch will not with users. [Link]
receive their allocation, and this compensation will roll over into orderflow-to-share-mev-with-users/1264
[16] Optimism. [n. d.]. Optimism Docs. [Link]
the next epoch. [17] Optimism. 2019. Introducing the OVM. [Link]
The specific checks performed in each attestation are extensible. introducing-the-ovm-db253287af50
To start, UVN validators will perform simple block attestations to [18] COW Protocol. [n. d.]. MEV Blocker. [Link]
[19] Dan Robinson and Georgios Konstantopoulos. 2020. Ethereum is a Dark Forest.
increase confidence in the state of the canonical chain. [Link]
[20] Dan Robinson and Dave White. 2024. Priority Is All You Need. [Link]
[Link]/2024/06/priority-is-all-you-need
5 POTENTIAL FUTURE WORK [21] Mark Toda, Matt Rice, and Nick Pai. 2024. ERC-7683: Cross Chain Intents: An
The Unichain Validators Network is intended to be a platform interface for cross-chain trade execution systems. [Link]
eip-7683
on which various checks can be performed with respect to the [22] RT Watson. 2024. Uniswap hits a historic $2 trillion in trading vol-
sequencing process . Some future extensions to the system could ume. [Link]
include: in-trading-volume

• Credible Neutrality: Validators can monitor the rollup’s

mempool, ensuring that transactions are being included in DISCLAIMER
a timely manner. This paper is for general information purposes only. It does not
• Limiting Posting: The BatchPoster contract can require constitute investment advice or a recommendation or solicitation to
a certain attestation weight before including blocks, effec- buy or sell any investment and should not be used in the evaluation
tively limiting the sequencer’s ability to post blocks that of the merits of making any investment decision. It should not be
don’t follow specific rules. relied upon for accounting, legal or tax advice or investment recom-
mendations. This paper reflects current opinions of the authors and
6 CONCLUSION is not made on behalf of Uniswap Labs, Paradigm, Flashbots, OP
Unichain addresses some of the most pressing challenges for trad- Labs, or their affiliates and does not necessarily reflect the opinions
ing in Ethereum’s rollup-centric scaling strategy, notably liquidity of Uniswap Labs, Paradigm, Flashbots, OP Labs, or their affiliates.
fragmentation and inefficient cross-chain interactions. By introduc- The opinions reflected herein are subject to change without being
ing innovative technologies like Flashblocks, Unichain Validation updated.
Network and integrating with the Superchain, Unichain aims to
become the home for DeFi liquidity and best place to access DeFi
across rollups.

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