Offchain Labs releases Arbitrum BOLD on testnet

Offchain Labs, the firm building out the Arbitrum ecosystem, launched Arbitrum BOLD on testnet. 

The Bounded Liquidity Delay, or BOLD, is a dispute protocol with interactive fraud proofs for optimistic rollups, which can be used across Arbitrum chains. BOLD lets users operate a validator node and help facilitate the network's consensus process. It also implements defenses against delay attacks, or a cybersecurity threat in which a bad actor intentionally delays a system's normal functioning by disrupting data flow.

"BOLD guarantees a fixed upper-bound on the confirmation of Arbitrum states on Ethereum and allows a single, well-resourced party to defend claims against many adversaries without needing to play 1-vs-1 games against them," wrote Offchain Labs in a Monday statement.

Arbitrum is among one of the most popular Ethereum Layer 2 networks based on the number of active wallets, The Block previously reported. Offchain Labs raised $120 million in funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners in August 2021.

Reasoning for BOLD

"Validation on Arbitrum One and Nova via fraud proofs today is permissioned because their dispute protocols are vulnerable to denial-of-service attacks," Offchain Labs wrote when it introduced BOLD in August 2023. "A malicious validator can repeatedly spend funds to prevent assertions from being confirmed, therefore delaying withdrawals from L2 to L1 for as long as they’re willing."

"We have invented a new approach to validation that gives us a fixed, upper bound 7 days of additional delay on confirmations without suffering from delay attacks. Our protocol, called BOLD can make validation of Arbitrum chains safely permissionless, moving them many steps up in the ladder of decentralization," the firm added. "The approach allows a single, honest validator to win disputes on Ethereum against any number of adversaries."