The Sovereign Rollup Approach

To understand why Spicenet chose to be a sovereign rollup, let's first examine the limitations of traditional "settled" rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism:

Traditional settled rollups must:

• Wait for the base layer (like Ethereum) to confirm state updates

• Follow all base layer protocol upgrades

• Pay high fees during network congestion

• Accept whatever changes the base layer's social consensus decides

Here's a concrete example: When Ethereum underwent the Merge, all settled rollups had to modify their systems to accommodate the change. They had no choice in the matter. Additionally, when Ethereum gets congested and gas prices spike, settled rollups see their costs increase dramatically.

As a sovereign rollup, Spicenet works differently:

This means Spicenet can:

1. Optimise specifically for trading use cases

2. Implement protocol upgrades independently

3. Keep fees low and predictable

4. Maintain control over its own destiny