Exploring the Future of Chain Aggregation at Polygon Aggregation Day
The state of aggregation panel today at Polygon Aggregation Day moderated by David Hoffman, featuring:
Hussein of Union Build
What does being aggregated mean?
Everyone is aggregating proofs. High level is aggregation of chains. Value transfer between chains is being aggregated.
While every chain has its own state, aggregation is actually from the user perspective.
It’s the single unified chain experience without sacrificing sovereignty.
Most chains will have to give up the sovereignty to be aggregated and achieve this UX.
In reality, they may need to give up sovereignty of their sequencer to achieve a single chain experience.
Modular backend, monolithic UX.
Jordi and Ben went back and forth about async v sync composability:
Practical examples of sync advantages do exist
Async comm we can do already
Agglayer enables sync comp between diff VMs but it relies on coordinated builders
Sync is much more complex overall
Base layer is async, and on top you can abstract. Users will be able to work like its synchronized. Examples from the early internet (original UNIX RPC) failed at synchronized composability because it was too complex.
David went on ask “Points where things are combined, these are Aggregation points. What are design principles that make a good aggregation point?” The key takeaways were…
“Keep in mind your project’s own value capture”
“Agnostic to tech stack.”
“Openness. Transparency. Of what’s being agg’d. (for devs) Usability for end users, most imp design principle.”
“Simplicity”
David then asked:
“What are the BD challenges of getting builders to build on YOUR agg system?”
Fast finality product onto Ethereum blob DA, sidecar product onto Near DA aggregation ( Nuffle Labs)
Synergies (aka network effects).
Different projects benefit from the full capability of networks on the agg layer.
Free to decide what they want to build. Build whatever, vibe, but benefit from all the solutions built AggLayer and synergize.
(AggLayer)
Approach is to work closely with the L2s. Linea, zksync, starknet synergize with these teams and work to expand the set of L2s.
BD is hard but with the infra already built, teams are able to see the existing infra benefits and tap in.
(zkLink)
Optionality to own prover, or own the relayer if you want.
There is no single point of failure in the entire aggregation system.
Permissionless nature is necessary to properly solve the extensibility problem of agg systems.
Building and at the same time, doing BD. Able to shape product around feedback from rollups.
Rollups are pained by slow bridges and fast finality helps solve this problem. Now, AggLayer helps contracts on one chain access liquidity on other chains.
They can do this now with trusted layer such as shared sequencer but once agglayer is developed they can trustlessly tap into liquidity.
Overall, a really good panel and we enjoyed!