Optimism will pause ETH withdrawals for one hour on February 15

The Optimism layer 2 network will temporarily halt Ether (ETH) withdrawals for one hour on February 15 to test an upgraded system's response to incidents.

According to the announcement on Discord, withdrawing ETH from the Layer 2 network to the Ethereum mainnet will be temporarily suspended during this period. Deposits from the mainnet to the Layer 2 network and regular transactions on the network will not be affected.
The goal is to enhance the system's ability to respond to security incidents across different chains within the Optimism ecosystem in a coordinated manner.

The incident response system currently features on-chain pausing for Ethereum withdrawals. The new feature will allow a pause across the entire Superchain, suspending withdrawals for tokens and NFTs for both Optimism and any Optimism-based chain choosing to participate.

OP Labs stated during the announcement of the system upgrade on January 25:

"This upgrade not only strengthens individual chains but also leverages the shared security intelligence of the entire Superchain."
The upgrade feature is currently on its testnet. The one-hour pause is to verify whether it operates in a live environment.

A live environment (synonymous with the production environment) is a "sacred" environment containing real-running applications, real users, and real data.
During the downtime, updates will be posted on its network status page.

Optimism Ecosystem

Optimism is an ecosystem consisting of Layer 2 chains (commonly referred to as Superchain) utilizing optimistic rollups to reduce transaction fees for decentralized applications (dapps). This ecosystem is governed by a DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organization) known as the Optimism Collective.

The leading network is the OP Mainnet, which is joined by other networks such as Base and Zora.