How is Ink Secured?

Ink is built on and secured by the Optimism Stack (the totality of Optimism L2 infrastructure) as well as Kraken's own infrastructure.

Ink's chain is part of a network of chains called the Optimism Superchain. This infrastructure enables chains to share security, communicate with each other (including bridging) and benefit from a range of features from core updates and decentralized governance.

Ink forms an integral part of Kraken's established support and security framework, designed to provide a smooth and safe onchain user experience while benefiting from deep integration with the exchange's products and services.

The Superchain

The upgrade of the Optimism Stack to the Superchain introduces a number of crucial improvements to strengthen the Optimism L2 ecosystem, including but not limited to:

• Permissionless proposals for withdrawals of funds: previously only an appointed "proposer" could submit withdrawals - with the Superchain upgrade anyone can now submit proposals on demand.
• Configurable sequencers: previously chains built on Optimism could not choose a custom sequencer - this is possible with the Superchain upgrade and is a necessary step towards sequencer decentralization.
• The chain safety and liveness built into the Superchain bridge security model enable users to migrate away from a misbehaving sequencer if needed.

Upgrades to the Superchain

A decentralized security council exists to shepherd upgrades to the OP Stack. It can also emergency pause the bridge if needed, which would result in the perpetual pausing of withdrawals and bridge upgrades. The freezing of funds is preferred over the loss of funds should e.g. the private keys of the council be compromised in a worst-case scenario; this is also known as the safety-over-liveness design principle.

A frozen bridge can be mitigated through an L1 soft fork. Anyone may propose such a fork provided they also put up a bond. While this mechanism may imply systemic risk to Ethereum (as L1) it is meant to act as a deterrent and unlikely to ever be used.

For further information please see the Optimism documentation.