Espresso, a closely watched blockchain project to coordinate cross-chain transactions and interactions, shared Monday that its flagship product known as the confirmation layer has gone live.
According to the team, the acknowledgment layer will be a crucial part of the infrastructure for the composition of rollups, allowing two networks to read and trust each other’s blocks of transaction data. A rollup is a type of auxiliary or “layer 2” network on top of a main blockchain, providing a venue for cheaper and faster transactions.
Specific benefits of Espresso’s new confirmation layer may include faster bridging of assets between networks, decentralizing a key part of layer 2 blockchains known as the ‘sequencer’, and providing a way for networks to perform low-cost transactions. costs to store large amounts of transaction data. to the project documentation.
“It’s literally a protocol for when a rollup sequencer publishes its blocks, which, once published at the confirmation layer, cannot be changed, even if that chain later puts them into Ethereum,” says Ben Fisch, CEO of Espresso Systems. in an interview with CoinDesk.
Essentially this takes over the role of a sequencer these days and adds some security. Sequencers are a crucial piece of infrastructure in rollups, bundling transactions from layer 2 users so they can be committed to layer 1, in this case Ethereum.
“For example, optimism takes seven days to settle on Ethereum,” Fisch said. “The confirmation layer enforces that whatever is published to the confirmation layer must be what is ultimately published and handled on the L1. And that means that any node that reads the published blocks from the conformation layer can simply execute them and know exactly what the status of the rollup is.”
Centralized sequencers
The problem with sequencers is that they are usually managed by centralized entities and form a single point of bankruptcy.
“As long as that sequencer is honest and not hacked or compromised, you can simply confirm your transactions. That’s actually the way people mainly use it these days – it just creates a huge security risk.” Fisch said: “So while users of the chain rely on it, protocols and applications on other chains cannot. The more you create cross-chain dependencies based on what a sequencer says, the more money a hacker can compromise.”
The mounting layer not only adds an extra level of security, but according to the Espresso team, it also enables faster and cheaper bridging. The configurability of the acknowledgment layer creates interdependencies between rollups, allowing nodes to quickly read the data and status of other rollups, according to a press release.
Over time, the mounting layer will begin to integrate with some of the major rollups in the layer 2 space, such as Arbitrum’s nitro stack, Optimism’s OP stack, and Polygon’s chain development kit.
In March Espresso has raised $28 million in funds to contribute to its products and help with research. The Series B round was led by venture capital giant Andreessen Horowitz’s a16z Crypto and saw participation from many of the developer companies behind the leading layer 2 rollups such as Arbitrum, Starknet and Polygon.
In addition to the mounting layer, Espresso will focus on research and development in the field of composability and sequencing in the future.
Read more: Espresso Systems Raises $28 Million in New Funding Led by A16z Crypto