Coinbase has launched Pessimism, an open-source monitoring system designed to enhance security oversight across networks in the Optimism ecosystem on its Base Layer 2 network. The purpose of Pessimism is to identify protocol threats and security vulnerabilities specific to networks created with the Optimistic Virtual Machine (OVM) Stack and other Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible chains.

The Pessimism system comprises three primary subsystems: the ETL (extract, transform, load) subsystem, Risk Engine, and Alerting. Together, these systems can parse, analyze, and flag potential security concerns. Coinbase plans to expand Pessimism's capabilities to bridge monitoring, emphasizing features like withdrawal safety and the detection of potential security issues.

Users and developers have been invited to suggest features or raise issues on Pessimism's GitHub page: github.com/base-org/pessimism/issues.

This announcement follows Coinbase's statement last month where it shared its plan to move the Base network to a decentralized model by introducing fault proofs and leveraging diverse client software to maintain network censorship resistance. Under this plan, Coinbase will work alongside the Optimism Collective and OP Labs to transition Base towards full decentralization. However, Coinbase has not provided a specific timeline for the transition yet.

Contributions to the Superchain infrastructure include creating OP chains like Base, contributions to the OP Stack, and being one of the main contributors to OP-geth, the first client for the OP Stack. The Base team aims to assist in forming a "security council" for the Superchain that would implement further checks and balances to augment the security and decentralization of Base, OP Mainnet and related chains.

Base was launched publicly in early August and became the third-largest Layer 2 ecosystem on Ethereum after Arbitrum and Optimism within just over a month, with a total value locked over $400 million.