A Taxonomy and Security Analysis of Rollup Architectures in Ethereum Blockchain

Presenting a systematic taxonomy of Ethereum rollup architectures and their associated security threats.

Talk given at RECSI 2026 (XIX Reunión Española sobre Criptología y Seguridad de la Información) at Universidad de La Laguna, Tenerife, March 19, 2026.

Abstract

Layer 2 rollups improve Ethereum’s scalability by executing transactions off-chain while relying on on-chain verification for finality. Despite their growing importance with increasingly high stakes, rollups have received limited systematic security analysis.

This paper presents a taxonomy of rollup architectures, focusing on the design of the sequencer — the critical component that bridges off-chain transaction execution with on-chain finality. We identify three main architectural patterns:

  • Stand-alone sequencer (simple and high-availability variants) — e.g., Polygon zkEVM, ZKSync Era, Arbitrum One, Base
  • Pipeline sequencer — e.g., Linea, Starknet, Katana
  • Distributed sequencer — e.g., Lighter, INTMAX, Facet Bluebird

The analysis reveals inherent trade-offs between throughput, decentralisation, and resilience, demonstrating that no single architecture simultaneously optimises all these properties.

Authors

Adrià Torralba-Agell, Muoi Tran, and Cristina Pérez-Solà.