Table of Contents
This document outlines the modifications, configuration and usage of a L1 execution engine for L2.
The Engine interfaces abstract away transaction types with EIP-2718.
To support rollup functionality, processing of a new Deposit TransactionType
is implemented by the engine, see the deposits specification.
This type of transaction can mint L2 ETH, run EVM, and introduce L1 information to enshrined contracts in the execution state.
Transactions cannot be blindly trusted, trust is established through authentication. Unlike other transaction types deposits are not authenticated by a signature: the rollup node authenticates them, outside of the engine.
To process deposited transactions safely, the deposits MUST be authenticated first:
- Ingest directly through trusted Engine API
- Part of sync towards a trusted block hash (trusted through previous Engine API instruction)
Deposited transactions MUST never be consumed from the transaction pool. The transaction pool can be disabled in a deposits-only rollup
Sequenced transactions (i.e. not applicable to deposits) are charged with 3 types of fees: priority fees, base fees, and L1-cost fees.
The three types of fees are collected in 3 distinct L2 fee-vault deployments for accounting purposes: fee payments are not registered as internal EVM calls, and thus distinguished better this way.
These are hardcoded addresses, pointing at pre-deployed proxy contracts.
The proxies are backed by vault contract deployments, based on FeeVault
, to route vault funds to L1 securely.
Vault Name | Predeploy |
---|---|
Sequencer Fee Vault | SequencerFeeVault |
Base Fee Vault | BaseFeeVault |
L1 Fee Vault | L1FeeVault |
Priority fees follow the eip-1559 specification, and are collected by the fee-recipient of the L2 block. The block fee-recipient (a.k.a. coinbase address) is set to the Sequencer Fee Vault address.
Base fees largely follow the eip-1559 specification, with the exception that base fees are not burned, but add up to the Base Fee Vault ETH account balance.
The protocol funds batch-submission of sequenced L2 transactions by charging L2 users an additional fee based on the estimated batch-submission costs. This fee is charged from the L2 transaction-sender ETH balance, and collected into the L1 Fee Vault.
The exact L1 cost function to determine the L1-cost fee component of a L2 transaction is calculated as:
(rollupDataGas + l1FeeOverhead) * l1Basefee * l1FeeScalar / 1000000
(big-int computation, result in Wei and uint256
range)
Where:
rollupDataGas
is determined from the full encoded transaction (standard EIP-2718 transaction encoding, including signature fields):- Before Regolith fork:
rollupDataGas = zeroes * 4 + (ones + 68) * 16
- The addition of
68
non-zero bytes is a remnant of a pre-Bedrock L1-cost accounting function, which accounted for the worst-case non-zero bytes addition to complement unsigned transactions, unlike Bedrock.
- The addition of
- With Regolith fork:
rollupDataGas = zeroes * 4 + ones * 16
- Before Regolith fork:
l1FeeOverhead
is the Gas Price Oracleoverhead
value.l1FeeScalar
is the Gas Price Oraclescalar
value.l1Basefee
is the L1 Base fee of the latest L1 origin registered in the L2 chain.
Note that the rollupDataGas
uses the same byte cost accounting as defined in eip-2028,
except the full L2 transaction now counts towards the bytes charged in the L1 calldata.
This behavior matches pre-Bedrock L1-cost estimation of L2 transactions.
Compression, batching, and intrinsic gas costs of the batch transactions are accounted for by the protocol
with the Gas Price Oracle overhead
and scalar
parameters.
The Gas Price Oracle l1FeeOverhead
and l1FeeScalar
, as well as the l1Basefee
of the L1 origin,
can be accessed in two interchangeable ways:
- read from the deposited L1 attributes (
l1FeeOverhead
,l1FeeScalar
,basefee
) of the current L2 block - read from the L1 Block Info contract (
0x4200000000000000000000000000000000000015
)- using the respective solidity
uint256
-getter functions (l1FeeOverhead
,l1FeeScalar
,basefee
) - using direct storage-reads:
- L1 basefee as big-endian
uint256
in slot1
- Overhead as big-endian
uint256
in slot5
- Scalar as big-endian
uint256
in slot6
- L1 basefee as big-endian
- using the respective solidity
This updates which L2 blocks the engine considers to be canonical (forkchoiceState
argument),
and optionally initiates block production (payloadAttributes
argument).
Within the rollup, the types of forkchoice updates translate as:
headBlockHash
: block hash of the head of the canonical chain. Labeled"unsafe"
in user JSON-RPC. Nodes may apply L2 blocks out of band ahead of time, and then reorg when L1 data conflicts.safeBlockHash
: block hash of the canonical chain, derived from L1 data, unlikely to reorg.finalizedBlockHash
: irreversible block hash, matches lower boundary of the dispute period.
To support rollup functionality, one backwards-compatible change is introduced
to engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV1
: the extended PayloadAttributesV1
PayloadAttributesV1
is extended to:
PayloadAttributesV1: {
timestamp: QUANTITY
random: DATA (32 bytes)
suggestedFeeRecipient: DATA (20 bytes)
transactions: array of DATA
noTxPool: bool
gasLimit: QUANTITY or null
}
The type notation used here refers to the HEX value encoding used by the Ethereum JSON-RPC API
specification, as this structure will need to be sent over JSON-RPC. array
refers
to a JSON array.
Each item of the transactions
array is a byte list encoding a transaction: TransactionType || TransactionPayload
or LegacyTransaction
, as defined in EIP-2718.
This is equivalent to the transactions
field in ExecutionPayloadV1
The transactions
field is optional:
- If empty or missing: no changes to engine behavior. The sequencers will (if enabled) build a block by consuming transactions from the transaction pool.
- If present and non-empty: the payload MUST be produced starting with this exact list of transactions. The rollup driver determines the transaction list based on deterministic L1 inputs.
The noTxPool
is optional as well, and extends the transactions
meaning:
- If
false
, the execution engine is free to pack additional transactions from external sources like the tx pool into the payload, after any of thetransactions
. This is the default behavior a L1 node implements. - If
true
, the execution engine must not change anything about the given list oftransactions
.
If the transactions
field is present, the engine must execute the transactions in order and return STATUS_INVALID
if there is an error processing the transactions. It must return STATUS_VALID
if all of the transactions could
be executed without error. Note: The state transition rules have been modified such that deposits will never fail
so if engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV1
returns STATUS_INVALID
it is because a batched transaction is invalid.
The gasLimit
is optional w.r.t. compatibility with L1, but required when used as rollup.
This field overrides the gas limit used during block-building.
If not specified as rollup, a STATUS_INVALID
is returned.
No modifications to engine_newPayloadV1
.
Applies a L2 block to the engine state.
No modifications to engine_getPayloadV1
.
Retrieves a payload by ID, prepared by engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV1
when called with payloadAttributes
.
The execution engine can acquire all data through the rollup node, as derived from L1: P2P networking is strictly optional.
However, to not bottleneck on L1 data retrieval speed, the P2P network functionality SHOULD be enabled, serving:
- Peer discovery (Disc v5)
eth/66
:- Transaction pool (consumed by sequencer nodes)
- State sync (happy-path for fast trustless db replication)
- Historical block header and body retrieval
- New blocks are acquired through the consensus layer instead (rollup node)
No modifications to L1 network functionality are required, except configuration:
networkID
: Distinguishes the L2 network from L1 and testnets. Equal to thechainID
of the rollup network.- Activate Merge fork: Enables Engine API and disables propagation of blocks, as block headers cannot be authenticated without consensus layer.
- Bootnode list: DiscV5 is a shared network, bootstrap is faster through connecting with L2 nodes first.
The execution engine can operate sync in different ways:
- Happy-path: rollup node informs engine of the desired chain head as determined by L1, completes through engine P2P.
- Worst-case: rollup node detects stalled engine, completes sync purely from L1 data, no peers required.
The happy-path is more suitable to bring new nodes online quickly, as the engine implementation can sync state faster through methods like snap-sync.
- The rollup node informs the engine of the L2 chain head, unconditionally (part of regular node operation):
engine_newPayloadV1
is called with latest L2 block received from P2P.engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV1
is called with the currentunsafe
/safe
/finalized
L2 block hashes.
- The engine requests headers from peers, in reverse till the parent hash matches the local chain
- The engine catches up: a) A form of state sync is activated towards the finalized or head block hash b) A form of block sync pulls block bodies and processes towards head block hash
The exact P2P based sync is out of scope for the L2 specification: the operation within the engine is the exact same as with L1 (although with an EVM that supports deposits).
- Engine is out of sync, not peered and/or stalled due other reasons.
- The rollup node maintains latest head from engine (poll
eth_getBlockByNumber
and/or maintain a header subscription) - The rollup node activates sync if the engine is out of sync but not syncing through P2P (
eth_syncing
) - The rollup node inserts blocks, derived from L1, one by one, potentially adapting to L1 reorg(s),
as outlined in the rollup node spec (
engine_forkchoiceUpdatedV1
,engine_newPayloadV1
)