- Tom Lehman argued that sovereign rollups are already the dominant paradigm since stablecoins and native assets represent 60-71% of TVL on today’s top two rollups, Base and Arbitrum, making enshrined bridges unable to dictate fork choices
- He claimed enshrined bridges now deliver zero benefits while retaining large downsides—most critically, an upgradable bridge can “nuke” a chain by minting unlimited native gas tokens.
- The group explored paths forward—native rollups, immutable or per‑asset bridges, wallet‑integrated light clients, and repricing EVM op‑codes—agreeing that practical security hinges on bridge design, proof availability, and user education.
Presentation: Sovereign Rollups are the Future (and Present!)
Tom Lehman laid out two rollup architectures:
- Classic / enshrined‑bridge rollups – one privileged bridge handles deposits of the native gas token (usually bridged ETH). Its supposed benefits are familiarity (users pay gas in ETH) and a focal point for choosing the “real” chain.
- Sovereign rollups – no bridge is privileged; any party can deploy a validating bridge, so all bridges are equally authoritative. The gas token must be issued natively on the rollup.
He argued that:
- Enshrined bridges have lost their advantages: gas abstraction is coming, and real fork choice already follows whichever bridge / entity controls the most redeemable value. On today’s top two rollups, Base and Arbitrum, these are stablecoin issuers, not the canonical bridge.
- Though it has lost its benefits, the enshrined bridge still carries a fatal risk: administrators can upgrade it to mint limitless L2 ETH, bidding gas to infinity and freezing the chain, making rollups with upgradeable enshrined bridges less appealing to issuers of stablecoins and other rollup-native assets.
- The enshrined bridge model also hinders user education by encouraging users to place too much weight on the security of a single bridge. Instead, security dashboards like L2Beat should evaluate every bridge and every issued asset and place greater weight on censorship‑resistance and other rollup properties that apply to all assets.
- Sovereign design is simpler and future‑proof but it’s not a “shortcut” to rollup security. We still need validating bridges and exit windows on each bridge; immutable or native‑rollup models could remove the upgrade risk entirely.
Q&A
Q (Timothy): If BSC used Ethereum for DA it still wouldn’t be an L2. You need proof systems for Ethereum security inheritance. Without proofs, you're just an alt-L1.
A (Tom): Agreed! A rollup must at least enable validating bridges. But once any bridge can be built, no single bridge should be privileged—fork choice is social and follows where assets hold value.
Q (Timothy): Once you add proofs, you're no longer sovereign by my definition - you've bound state in a smart contract.
A (Tom): That's where we differ on terminology. I define sovereign as "no enshrined bridge" - Base would be sovereign under your definition since anyone can build equally secure bridges. Actually I see two definitions - sovereign by design (no enshrined bridge) versus sovereign in practice (no bridge controls >50% of value).
Q (Sacha): How bullish are you on native rollups on Ethereum?
A (Tom): They're potentially the best design if done immutably, but how native rollup consensus would work without upgrades is unresolved. We will cover it in a future call! Also, if L1 can scale dramatically with ZK proofs, the value proposition changes.
Participants
Tom Lehman, Timothy Clancy, Sacha Y SL