Astar zkEVM is the second chain supporting AggLayer after Polygon zkEVM.
Astar Community, a number one undertaking within the Polkadot ecosystem, has expanded onto Ethereum with the mainnet launch of its zkEVM Layer 2 validium rollup.
Astar launched its zkEVM on March 6, with the community leveraging Polygon’s Chain Growth Equipment (CDK) — a modular open-source toolkit for constructing Layer 2 networks leveraging zero-knowledge (ZK) proofs.
Astar zkEVM can also be the primary third-party community to combine with Polygon’s AggLayer — a cross-chain interoperability protocol facilitating atomic swaps amongst Ethereum’s mainnet and Layer 2 networks. Polygon’s zkEVM rollup additionally helps AggLayer.
By means of AggLayer, Astar described its zkEVM as driving groundbreaking interoperability between the Polygon, Ethereum, and Astar ecosystems. “This begins unifying state and liquidity and begins cross-chain interoperability between three main ecosystems: Polygon, Ethereum, and Astar Community,” Astar stated.
“At the moment is a vital first step to welcome communities to a seamless multi-chain ecosystem,” stated Sandeep Nailwal, co-founder of Polygon. “With Astar and quite a few different ZK-powered chains onboarding quickly, Polygon CDK and AggLayer are poised to carry internet-scale capabilities to the world of crypto.”
Astar Community is a Layer 1 Polkadot Parachain internet hosting greater than $700 million value of property. Its ASTR token can also be the biggest parachain token with a market cap of $864.5 million, based on CoinGecko.
ASTR final modified fingers for $0.154, marking a 24-hour drawdown of 1.5% however a 280% achieve since mid-October.
Polygon AggLayer
The launch of zkEVM expands Astar’s presence exterior of Polkadot and into the Ethereum ecosystem by way of its adoption of Polygon’s AggLayer.
Polygon launched AggLayer in early February, describing the protocol as bypassing the centralization dangers related to standard blockchain bridges.
AggLayer additionally eliminates the frictions and withdrawal delays with transferring between networks inside Ethereum’s ecosystem with out bridges — which in any other case would require customers to switch to and from the Ethereum mainnet when transferring property between Layer 2s.
“Every chain may have an area copy of the unified bridge root, enabling cross-chain transactions that don’t require withdrawing to Ethereum or the safety dangers of third-party bridges,” Polygon stated. “Not solely can customers switch property between chains (bridge), however they’ll additionally set off contracts on a special chain after the asset has arrived (name)… inside a single transaction.”
For instance, Astar zkEVM customers can work together with sensible contracts on Polygon zkEVM through AggLayer to make trades through decentralized exchanges or NFT marketplaces in a single transaction. “From the top consumer’s perspective, this may really feel like utilizing a single chain,” Polygon stated.
Polygon additionally emphasised the advantages AggLayer affords to builders, highlighting that “customers can work together with dApps while not having to know that they’re accessing one other chain.”
Polygon acknowledged that AggLayer customers will initially expertise some latency when transacting through the protocol, however added it’s prioritizing the event and launch of a second model of AggLayer that will increase the velocity of transaction finality by 2025.
