A Look at Shared Sequencing

The ongoing quest to scale Ethereum has resulted in the rapid proliferation of rollups, with over 20 rollups in production currently, and they cumulatively hold over $10.5 billion in total value locked. However, many of these rollups today still have centralized operators, which goes against the ethos of public blockchains and distributed ledger technology. 

Thus, a handful of shared sequencing solutions have surfaced to address this issue. In this two-part research piece, we will first cover the notion of shared sequencing, as well as its pros and cons, before delving into the design tradeoffs in shared sequencing layers and potential applications in the second part.