RIA·DeFi
Control Atlas · Chain · reviewed 2026-07-31

Arbitrum One: who orders transactions?

Centralised — >99% of transactions through a single sequencer

approved with limitsstage-1Hybrid control

Chain control is one layer. It does not determine the safety or suitability of every asset and protocol deployed on the chain.

Control profile

Transaction ordering
Centralised — >99% of transactions through a single sequencer
Escape hatch
Forced inclusion via the L1 delayed inbox. forceInclusion threshold is 24 hours; in practice a full self-service exit is slow and costly.
Upgrade authority
DAO plus a security council. Admin keys can upgrade bridge contracts on roughly a 7-day timeline — as at every other top-5 L2.
Liveness record
Sequencer outages have occurred; user funds were never at risk, but access was.

Ketju assessment

Stage 1 with live permissionless fraud proofs, which is the current state of the art — as of mid-2026 there are still NO Stage 2 rollups. So this is as good as an L2 gets, and it is still not Ethereum. Appropriate for yield-first and tokenised-income mandates where cheap transactions matter more than censorship resistance. NOT appropriate for a sovereignty-first mandate: a client who is paying us to make them un-freezable should not sit behind a single sequencer and a 7-day upgrade key.

Observable review triggers

  • Fraud proof system disabled or made permissioned
  • Force-inclusion delay extended beyond 24 hours
  • Security council threshold lowered, or upgrade timelock shortened below 7 days
  • Sequencer outage exceeding 6 hours

These triggers make the judgment monitorable. They are not predictions; each identifies a fact that would revoke or force review of the current assessment.

Advisor implementation questions

  1. Does the client’s thesis require censorship resistance, or primarily low-cost settlement?
  2. Can the client exit without cooperation from the normal transaction-ordering party?
  3. Who can upgrade bridges or contracts, and what delay applies?
  4. Does the asset introduce an issuer weaker than the chain grade?
  5. What evidence will show a halt, censorship event, or governance change?

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