Ethereum Validators Take Over Rollup Sequencing

Ethereum's layer-2 ecosystem has been criticized for its technical contradictions. Rollups are touted as scalability solutions that inherit Ethereum's security, but most operate with a centralized sequencer. This introduces a single point of trust and allows the operator to censor addresses and capture MEV (Maximum Extractable Value).

The based rollup proposal removes this trade-off by shifting sequencing directly to Ethereum validators. In a based rollup, the L1 proposer assigned to each slot determines the sequencing. The layer-2 network does not elect its own sequencer or run a validator set; instead, it uses the proposer schedule of the Beacon Chain.

This approach has several benefits. It eliminates the need for an independent sequencer and adds no extra tokens or consensus protocols. Censorship resistance aligns with that of the base layer: if a proposer omits an L2 transaction, a future proposer can include it.