2026-05-09 –, Sladkovský Stage
Layer 2 rollups secure over $40B on Ethereum, yet their sequencer architectures lack systematic security analysis. In this talk, we classify sequencer designs into three patterns: stand-alone, pipeline, and distributed. And we map attack surfaces across each transaction processing stage. Our findings reveal fundamental flaws across all the rollups, as well as, inherent trade-offs.
This talk stems from our peer-reviewed research on rollup security, co-authored with researchers from Chalmers University and UAB. As a ZK/blockchain security auditor and PhD candidate focused on rollup scalability, I've observed firsthand, through auditing ZK systems at OpenZeppelin and studying real-world incidents like the Arbitrum and Starknet sequencer outages, that the community lacks a unified framework for reasoning about rollup threat models. On the talk, I'll walk attendees through the three architectural patterns we identified by studying 20+ rollups listed on L2Beat, then map concrete attack vectors (DDoS, BGP hijacks, coordination failures, blob market congestion) to each phase of transaction processing. The goal is to give builders and auditors a practical mental model for evaluating rollup security trade-offs.
I am a Zero-Knowledge Cryptographer and Blockchain Security Researcher. Most recently, I worked at OpenZeppelin auditing zkVMs, several DeFi protocols, and researching Zero-Knowledge Cryptography and Fully-Homomorphic Encryption. Moreover, I am also a PhD Candidate in Applied Cryptography on Blockchain at the KISON research group (Universitat Oberta de Catalunya).