New tooling will allow builders to rapidly spin up app-specific networks with out compromising on decentralization.
Restaking protocol EigenLayer and rollup resolution supplier AltLayer have launched an idea referred to as “restaked rollups,” which may resolve key points for Ethereum scaling.
To that finish, AltLayer is providing three companies which is able to, in principle, permit builders to rapidly spin up their very own app-specific rollups, with out sacrificing decentralization or compromising on pace.
EigenLayer permits customers to “restake” their staked Ether or liquid staking tokens (LSTs) to safe different companies along with the Ethereum blockchain. Third-party techniques secured by EigenLayer are referred to as Actively Validated Companies (AVS).
Within the context of the partnership, EigenLayer supplies the safety for AltLayer’s rollups as AVS.
Rollup networks, that are Layer 2 scaling options for Ethereum, have been a recurring theme this 12 months, attracting greater than $16B of property to their chains. Arbitrum is at the moment the main L2, with roughly half the sector’s whole worth locked (TVL).
Centralization Challenges
Nevertheless, spinning up a rollup that provides quick and low cost transactions with out compromising on decentralization has proved to be an enormous technical problem.
The largest hurdle for rollup builders lies in sequencers, key items of software program chargeable for ordering, processing and aggregating transactions on a rollup earlier than posting their outcomes to the primary chain.
Presently, main rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism management their very own sequencers. With the usage of such centralized sequencers, the tasks may probably rearrange transactions to favor sure events — which might be antithetical to decentralization.
Nevertheless, as AltLayer factors out, the groups’ fame and the variety of individuals observing main chains like Aribitrum and Optimism have made centralized sequencers a suitable design alternative, a minimum of within the brief time period.
This centralization danger will increase when coping with particular person builders trying to spin up a small-scale rollup. Sufficient individuals aren’t watching the chain, so it’s onerous for such tasks to develop consumer belief.
Regardless of this, tooling has emerged for builders to deploy their very own rollups — Arbitrum, Optimism, and others have launched software program growth kits (SDKs) to simplify the method. These SDKs don’t present all of the tooling to make small-scale rollups strongly decentralized, which is the place AltLayer and Eigenlayer need to step in.
Eigenlayer and AltLayer are a part of an rising design paradigm within the Ethereum area centered round modular blockchains. The core thought is that builders can choose and select totally different suppliers to tackle numerous facets of a rollup’s structure.
The restaking rollup framework could show to be one other step alongside the way in which to a crypto stack the place builders can deploy absolutely decentralized rollups inside minutes.
