Ethereum Layer-2 Rollups Misprice Small Transactions, Study Warns

The Rollup networks from Ethereum Prices Small Transactions incorrectly, resulting in risks that vary from blown user costs for denial attacks, according to a new study by researchers from ZKSecurity, Prooflab and Imperial College London.

The study“Not -unpacked stimuli: price attacks against blockchain rollups”, was placed on Sundays and detailed how different rollups calculate the costs for implementation, availability of data and evidence costs. It concluded that the current reimbursement mechanisms are too easy to balance fairness, security and usability.

Rollups are Layer-2 networks that batch transactions and arrange them on low-1 block chains such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana to lower costs and increase capacity. Rollups are central to Ethereum’s saving route map, which relies on these systems to process large quantities of transactions, while the base chain is limited in transit.

To work, rollups have to pay for three different sources. The first is calculation, the costs for carrying out the transactions in a batch. The second is the availability of data, the costs for placing transaction data back to a blockchain so that it can be verified. The third party are the gas costs for batch settlement and evidence verification.

These three costs vary independently, but the study notes that most rollups do not explain them separately. Instead, they often take them in a single formula or apply fixed rules that can distort the prices.

According to the researchers, this design means that small transfers can be wrong. Users who make payments of low value can ultimately pay more than necessary, while attackers can benefit from insufficiently expensive transactions to send large amounts of spam at few costs.

The authors Benchmarken Five major rollups – Polygon ZKEVM, ZKSync ERA, Scroll, Optimism and Arbitrum – and found broad differences in the way the reimbursements are set. Some networks repair costs when a transaction is submitted, others wait until a batch is sealed, and some problems that pay back if the actual costs become lower than expected.

Those mechanisms may seem technical, but they create opportunities for exploitation. For example, a repayment system can be gamed by attackers who submit a large number of transactions and then recover part of the reimbursement and still consume network sources.

“Naive reimbursement models create exploitable seams,” the authors write, warning that flat or static reimbursement curves are particularly vulnerable.

In addition to user frustration, De Paper argues, create these weak points systemic risk. If the wrong prices enable attackers to subsidize small transactions, they can set up denial attacks that hide the network, break down the performance or increase costs for honest users. The problem is not in incorrect code, but in economic design choices that form incentives.

The study emphasizes that these issues matter as the Rollup ecosystem of Ethereum grows. Rollups today secure dozens of billions of dollars in assets, making them high -quality goals.

“Ignoring these stimulating gaps is no longer safe,” the authors write.

As a mitigation, the article requests “multidimensional” reimbursement mechanisms that separate price calculation, data messages and evidence separately. Coordinating reimbursements with actual use of resources, it argues, would make systems more resistant to spam, while users can give more predictable costs.

Tools such as dynamic adjustment, partial batching and disclosure of cost components can all help to tackle the problem. Some Rollup teams are already experimenting with adaptive reimbursement curves and real-time modeling, but the study notes that standards have not yet been established.

The findings as Ethereum continue a route map that is built around zero knowledge certificates and Rollup-Central Scaling. Virtual machines with zero knowledge, or ZKVMs, promise a stronger verification of transactions, but they also introduce evidence costs that can spijken, depending on the demand and available hardware. Models that do not take that variability into account, says the paper, to break down the risk under stress.

For users, exchanges and portfolios, that means inconsistent reimbursements and degraded service. For developers and investors, the message of the research is to look beyond Headline through or nominal low costs and to investigate how those costs are calculated.

“Incentives are safety,” argued the authors, encouraging the Ethereum community to treat transaction prices as part of the consensus design instead of a side issue.