Glossary
Native Rollup
A proposed rollup design that reuses Ethereum's own execution engine via an EXECUTE precompile, letting the L1 verify L2 state transitions directly.
A native rollup is a rollup that outsources verification of its state transitions to Ethereum itself, rather than to a custom fraud-proof game or a hand-written zk circuit. The idea, championed by Justin Drake, adds an EXECUTE precompile to the L1: a rollup submits a batch of transactions plus a claimed post-state, and the precompile re-runs the EVM to check that the transition is correct.
Because the verifier is the canonical Ethereum execution client, a native rollup automatically inherits L1 equivalence and every future upgrade without redeploying custom proof code. It also removes the security-critical bug surface of maintaining a separate zkEVM or optimistic dispute contract. The trade-off is that EXECUTE requires protocol changes to Ethereum, so native rollups remain a research direction rather than a shipped feature.