Cross-Rollup Governance

Governance models differ fundamentally based on rollup architecture. Sovereign rollups (e.g., Celestia rollups) publish data to a data availability layer but handle their own execution and dispute resolution, requiring bespoke inter-rollup communication protocols. Smart contract rollups (e.g., Arbitrum, Optimism) settle directly into a smart contract on a layer 1, allowing the L1 to enforce their state transitions, which simplifies cross-rollup coordination through the L1's canonical state.

Governance platforms that abstract away chain complexity, allowing decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) to manage assets and execute decisions across multiple rollups from a single interface.

• Treasury Management: Tools like Syndicate or Llama enable DAOs to deploy capital from a treasury on Ethereum Mainnet to provide liquidity on an Arbitrum or Base rollup.
• Cross-Chain Voting: Platforms allow token holders from various rollups where the governance token is deployed to aggregate votes and execute proposals that affect the protocol across all chains.

A critical coordination problem in cross-rollup user experience. If Rollup A and Rollup B have independent sequencers, a user's transaction on A and another on B cannot be atomically ordered, leading to MEV extraction and failed cross-chain swaps. Proposed solutions include:

• Shared Sequencer Networks: A neutral network (e.g., Espresso, Astria) that sequences transactions for multiple rollups, enabling atomic cross-rollup bundles.
• Based Sequencing: Using the underlying L1 (e.g., Ethereum) block builder as a shared sequencer through protocols like PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation).

Managing protocol upgrades across a rollup ecosystem presents a major governance hurdle. If a rollup's core contracts are upgraded, how do connected rollups and bridges ensure compatibility?

• Social Consensus: Relying on off-chain coordination among core developers and major ecosystem projects to adopt upgrades simultaneously.
• Technical Enforcement: Using versioning in interoperability protocols or time-locked upgrades to give dependent chains time to adapt. A failure to coordinate can lead to chain splits where parts of the ecosystem follow different fork choices.

A foundational technical primitive for cross-rollup governance is arbitrary message passing. Protocols like Axelar, Wormhole, and LayerZero enable DAOs on one chain to send executable governance instructions to smart contracts on another. This allows for:

• Treasury Management: A DAO on Ethereum governing a treasury deployed on an L2.
• Parameter Synchronization: Updating fee parameters or whitelists across a suite of application-specific rollups.
• Emergency Actions: Halting bridges or contracts across multiple chains via a single governance vote.

Cross-rollup interactions almost always rely on bridges or messaging layers, which become critical points of failure. A governance decision on one rollup (e.g., upgrading a bridge contract) can compromise the security of assets locked on another. This creates a weakest-link security model, where the safety of the entire cross-chain system is only as strong as its least secure component.

Each rollup maintains sovereignty over its execution and upgrade keys. This creates a coordination dilemma: achieving consensus for a cross-chain action requires agreement from multiple, potentially adversarial, sequencer sets or governance DAOs. Misaligned incentives or simple apathy can stall critical security upgrades or emergency responses, leading to governance deadlock.

Cross-rollup fraud proofs are exceptionally complex. To dispute a state transition that involves another rollup, a verifier must have access to and understand the data availability and fraud proof rules of both chains. Differences in proof systems (e.g., ZK vs. Optimistic) and data availability solutions create verification fragmentation, making it difficult to construct a universally accepted proof of malfeasance.

Asynchronous upgrades pose a major threat. If Rollup A upgrades its virtual machine or precompile logic, but interconnected Rollup B does not, it can break cross-chain smart contracts and message passing. This desynchronization can be exploited for liveness attacks or lead to permanent loss of funds if a critical interoperability pathway fails. Coordinating hard forks across sovereign chains is a largely unsolved problem.

An attacker could target the economic security of a smaller, connected rollup to influence outcomes on a larger one. For example, a 51% attack on a less-secure rollup could be used to mint illegitimate assets that are then bridged to a larger ecosystem, exploiting the larger chain's trust in the bridge's state validation. This creates cross-chain MEV and attack vectors that span multiple security budgets.

Mitigation efforts focus on standardization (e.g., shared bridge interfaces) and shared security models. Solutions like EigenLayer for restaking or cosmos-sdk-style interchain security aim to provide a unified validator set for multiple chains. However, these introduce new trust assumptions and centralization pressures, trading one set of governance risks for another.

A specific governance action whose execution requires changes or coordination across multiple, distinct rollup chains. This is the primary unit of work in cross-rollup governance systems.

• Mechanics: A proposal is typically initiated on a governance hub, then relayed to target rollups for voting or execution via interoperability protocols.
• Example: A proposal to update a shared fee parameter or upgrade a common bridge contract deployed on several rollups.

A specialized blockchain or smart contract system that acts as the coordinating center for a cross-rollup ecosystem. It aggregates votes, tallies results, and triggers execution across connected chains.

• Role: Often houses the staking and voting logic for the overarching protocol, issuing instructions to member rollups.
• Analogy: Functions like a federal government coordinating policies across state-level rollups.

The deterministic rule that member rollups follow to agree on the canonical state of the cross-rollup governance system, especially during disputes or chain reorganizations. This is a critical consensus-layer concept for decentralized cross-rollup governance.

• Purpose: Ensures all participating chains have a consistent view of which governance proposals have passed and been executed, preventing splits in the ecosystem state.