The Agglayer Thesis: Connecting Every Chain in Web3

tl;dr:

• Agglayer creates a fast, unified blockchain experience  
• Builders will be able to connect any chain, L1 or L2, without sacrificing sovereignty
• Enables the security for fast, low-fee, cross-chain interoperability
• Latest release brings pessimistic proofs live, foundational for security

‍

Blockchains today don’t look or feel like the Internet. Instead of a unified, highly scalable network, users face scaling limitations and bad UX. Liquidity is fragmented across an ever-increasing number of new chains. Right now, the state of blockchains resembles the early internet: siloed, lacking interoperability, clunky to use.

We need to do better. Solving these challenges requires a novel solution that will unify all of web3. 

Agglayer can do it, connecting blockchains into a seamless web that feels like using the Internet.

Agglayer is live, in growth mode. Nine chains and counting are already connected.

Like the invention of TCP/IP, which created a unified internet, Agglayer unifies liquidity, users, and state. Chains are connected together through Agglayer for secure, fast cross-chain interop and settlement. 

With Agglayer, users won’t need to know what chain they’re on, experiencing blockchain like the internet itself.

Agglayer brings abundant benefits to chains, developers, and users alike: 

• Fungible cross-chain tokens, without wrapped tokens or intermediaries
• Fast interoperability with sub 5 second crosschain finality (coming soon) for connected chains, bringing the best UX
• Cross-chain security with the pessimistic proof for a flexible Agglayer that ensures safety for cross-chain message passing and transactions
• Ballooning network effects as more chains join, for deeper unified liquidity

The docs are live. Check them out to explore fundamental architectural concepts. 

This is the refreshed aggregated thesis, the next evolutionary step of blockchain design that improves on monolithic and modular approaches to blockchain scaling. 

The aggregated vision: monolithic → modular → aggregated

Agglayer was born after recognizing that no current architecture can bring crypto scale without sacrificing either a unified experience or sovereignty. Right now, there are two primary approaches to blockchain scaling today, the monolithic and modular approaches. Agglayer introduces a third way. 

Monolithic chains run nodes responsible for consensus, data availability, and execution, and also serve as a settlement layer. These ecosystems are unified and interoperable by design. However, monoliths have fundamental limits: tradeoffs of scalability, security, and decentralization. As scalability increases, the hardware requirements for validators increase. More centralization, less security. Even the most efficient chains suffer state bloat (storing too much data) and state contention (processing too many transactions that touch the same state). Performance degrades over time. Monolithic chains do not offer meaningful customizability or sovereignty for ecosystem participants. 

To address these challenges, devs turned to modular architectures. A modular framework solves a ton of problems inherent to monolithic systems. Modularity allows many chains to run independently and in parallel. All maintain sovereignty. It allows for much higher scalability and multiplicity of chain design—from VMs to decentralization to privacy profiles.

But modularity alone, as an evolution from monolithic chains, leads to fragmentation across liquidity and users. The modular approach results in multi-chain ecosystems that either require awkward, inefficient bridging, or a sacrifice of chain sovereignty.

Siloed liquidity and users limit true adoption.

The solution to the monolithic-versus-modular dilemma is a new category of blockchain design, pioneered by Agglayer: an aggregated approach.

Aggregation offers the sovereignty and scale of modular architectures, as well as the unified liquidity and UX of a monolithic system. 

Synthesized architecture for unlimited throughput, true scale, and UX that just works. 

Benefits of Agglayer

Agglayer unifies all chains (L1, L2, L∞) while maintaining security and keeping the sovereignty of those chains intact. 

• For chains connected through Agglayer: Maintain full sovereignty but tap into unified liquidity; fast interoperability (coming soon), with low-fees from proof aggregation, will bring a better UX

• For app developers: Focus on building the best app, not bootstrapping users and liquidity. Doesn’t matter what chain you build on, tap aggregated liquidity and users in an expanding exosystem, without the cumbersome bridging. 

• For end users: Making crosschain transactions as easy as opening a browser tab. One-click cross-chain experiences, like the internet you know.

Agglayer is live, in growth mode

Already, nine chains are connected to Agglayer, with more joining every week. The ecosystem index shows what’s live and what’s next.

Still, Agglayer is early. There have been two releases, with the most recent in February, unlocking two core features:

1. Unified bridge, bringing native asset fungibility and eliminating the need to wrap or unwrap tokens in cross-chain transfers
2. Pessimistic proof, for foundational security so that no chain can withdraw more assets than have been deposited on the unified bridge.

Pessimistic proofs went live on mainnet in the v0.2 release, providing safety for cross-chain interoperability and creating flexibility for Agglayer. Already, chains without zero-knowledge execution proofs are on testnet, thanks to the pessimistic proof.

So here’s how it works.

In short, pessimistic proofs make Agglayer noninvasive and flexible. It ensures no single chain can withdraw more than has been deposited from the unified bridge. Treating each chain suspiciously creates safety for all connected chains. 

A user from Chain A, without full ZK execution proofs, can send assets to a user on Chain B, swap these assets, then transfer to a gaming Chain C with different security mechanisms to buy an NFT. (Note that the infra for this kind of transaction is under development by a number of core contributors to Agglayer. In the meantime, browse the Github docs here.) 

Check out a developer deep dive for pessimistic proofs, here.