The NEAR Foundation has a Strategic collaboration with Eigen Labs, a startup focused on building the Ethereum re-recording protocol Eigen Layer.
While addressing the challenges of liquidity fragmentation between Layer 2 (L2) solutions, the collaboration aims to reinvent them Ethereum (ETH) roll-up transactions, making them “more cost-effective and efficient.”
Fast and affordable Ethereum transactions?
In a joint statement released on November 10, the NEAR Foundation and Eigen Labs revealed their plans to develop a ‘fast finality layer’ to enable fast and cheap transactions for Ethereum rollups, including cross-rollup transactions.
According to the announcement, the partnership aims to significantly reduce costs transaction processing times to just 3-4 seconds, a remarkable improvement compared to the minutes, hours or even days it currently takes. Furthermore, it aims to make transactions 4,000 times cheaper than existing options, providing a cost advantage for users.
Furthermore, one of the key objectives of the partnership is to establish “secure and low latency” cross-rollup communications, solving the challenges faced by developers and founders. working with rolls.
As announced, the Fast Finality Layer will retain the “security guarantees” of Ethereum while introducing additional guarantees of the NEAR and EigenLayer technologies.
Both protocols believe that this solution promises to improve liquidity by reducing fragmentation between Layer-2 solutions, allowing developers to make informed decisions about the sequencers they prefer. for transaction processing.
NEAR and Eigen Labs partnership for ‘seamless web3 integration’
Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, expressed pride in the collaboration with Eigen Labs and emphasized that the rapid finality layer showcases NEAR’s technological strengths while Open web more user-friendly. Polosukhin further stated:
NEAR Foundation is proud to partner with such an excellent team as Eigen Labs to offer a fast finality layer for ETH rollups. The fast finality layer showcases the strengths of NEAR’s technology while making the Open Web more usable, which has always been NEAR’s core goal. It will also help defrag liquidity for Ethereum rollups and therefore make all of Web3 more interoperable.
Sreeram Kannan, Founder of Eigen Labs, in turn shared his enthusiasm for the partnership and highlighted the mutual benefits it brings. In his words, the collaboration will leverage the innovative technologies of both NEAR and EigenLayer, enabling faster, cheaper and easier development on the Ethereum network.
The collaboration between NEAR and Eigen Labs marks a significant milestone for EigenLayer as it enables rapid settlement of cross-rollup transactions and demonstrates broader adoption of re-inclusion across the Ethereum ecosystem and beyond.
For NEAR, the partnership extends to improving the NEAR-Ethereum Rainbow Bridge by transitioning it to an actively validated service (AVS). This transition is expected to improve bridging capabilities between NEAR and Ethereum, enabling faster transaction finality, better security guarantees, and improved decentralization.
The partnership is expected to launch a testnet in the first quarter of 2024, and further details will be shared then. This partnership between the NEAR Foundation and Eigen Labs holds promise for advancing Ethereum rollup transactions, improving liquidity, and driving broader adoption of Web3 technologies.
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