OP’s price takes 4.5% hit after Optimism faces ‘very high risk’ security concerns

• Issue could have put user funds at significant risk
• OP token fell by 4.57% in 24 hours following the disclosure

L2s are in the news today after major security vulnerabilities were unearthed in Optimism’s [OP] stack, the software underpinning top layer-2 (L2) chains like the OP Mainnet and Base. Interestingly, the issues were brought to light by Offchain Labs, the original developer of another leading Ethereum scaling solution – Arbitrum [ARB].

Optimism avoids major risk

In a blog post shared on 26 April, Offchain Labs highlighted the security flaws detected in the recently-released OP Stack fraud proofs in the test environment. The evidence associated with these loopholes were shared with OP Labs, the development team behind Optimism, who later conceded to it.

The flaws reportedly allowed an attacker to tamper with the chain’s security, either by getting a fraudulent claim accepted by the protocol, or by getting a correct claim rejected. These issues might have put user funds at a “very high risk” if the version had reached the mainnet.

According to Offchain Labs, at the time of writing, OP Labs had fixed these issues, with the testnet updated as well.

For those unfamiliar with the project, OP Labs has been testing fault proofs in recent months, a key security feature that is at the core of optimistic rollup technology. L2 chains built on the OP Stack are some of the largest in the ecosystem, with Base, Blast, and OP Mainnet accounting for over 48% of the total deposits on rollups, AMBCrypto found using DeFiLlama data.

Source: DeFiLlama

Realistic or not, here’s OP’s market cap in BTC’s terms

FUD harms Optimism’s OP token

Although the issue stands resolved, the disclosure generated significant FUD among OP token holders. The crypto fell by 4.57% in the last 24 hours, according to CoinMarketCap.

Market sentiment for the coin continued to remain negative too, as seen by AMBCrypto using Santiment’s data. Moreover, the Open Interest (OI) in Futures market dropped, suggesting low interest from speculative traders.

Source: Santiment