Hello all, after discussing the idea with team members at OP Labs, we are looking for a delegate to sponsor a new Mission Request:
Adoption of the ERC-7281 standard for the Optimism Stack
Note: This post does not adhere to the standard Mission Request template as its primary purpose is to provide a high-level overview for potential sponsors of the initiative. Please let me know if any changes are necessary.
Description
Enable support of ERC-7281 (the xERC20 tokens) by building a Custom Bridge on the Optimism messaging layer
Intent it aligns with
Grow the Superchain
Benefits
The adoption of xERC20, being completely bridge agnostic, helps the whole web3 ecosystem by making crosschain liquidity more capital efficient and secure. It helps projects to avoid being locked into 3rd party bridges which, if compromised, can jeopardize even secure layers like Optimism.
This also fits within the work being done with the Superchain, as it helps to unify liquidity across OP chains using both native and 3rd party bridges.
Projects that upgrade/launch their tokens using the xERC20 standard can immediately enable the transfer of their token across chains of the OP stack with granular risk control and no requirement to bootstrap liquidity.
Background
xERC20 (ERC-7281) is an open proposed standard for Sovereign Bridged Tokens.
The approach allows tokens to be minted and burned across chains by multiple bridges (canonical or 3rd-party), while giving token issuers the ability to granularly control their security preferences for each bridge using rate limits.
This fine-grained control mechanism enhances security and limits potential damage in the event of security breaches.
The standard enables projects to work with and expand to any chain using the OP-Stack without fragmenting liquidity across rollups, while still being able to retain sovereignty and granular security control.
xERC20s are neutral, native crosschain tokens to satisfy the business needs of projects today while being future proof for the technology of tomorrow.
Proposed Mission Milestone
- Build the xERC20 token bridge on top of Optimism’s existing base messaging functionality with the specifications below.
- (optional) suggest upgrade for Optimism’s bridge UI to route ERC20 tokens that have existing mapped xERC20 representations to their lockbox and then bridge them via the xERC20 bridge.
- Enable token mapping
I am at disposal for any feedback, and happy to share more technical documentation on the project.
If you are a delegate who is available to sponsor this mission please reach out.
Thanks
Max