AltLayer - dApp Staking Application

Governance dApp Staking Applications
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Introduction

Hello Astar Community,

We’re excited to submit our application to the Astar dApp Staking program and introduce AltLayer, the company that manages and operates a Fast Finality Layer for Soneium. Soneium’s fast finality layer uses ASTR and restaked ETH for economic security.

This proposal is a strategic step towards embedding ASTR at the core of Soneium’s rollup infrastructure, enhancing its utility on Soneium and helping expand the role and utility of ASTR token in the broader ecosystem.

Overview of AltLayer

AltLayer is a RaaS provider. We help builders launch and deploy rollups. We are also the creator of a Fast Finality Network called MACH for rollups. MACH is built as an Actively Validated Service (AVS) that leverages EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism and offers faster confirmation for rollup blocks. We have been closely collaborating with Startale Labs and the Astar team on operating a MACH dedicated to Soneium that makes use of ASTR tokens for economic security.

Mission

At AltLayer, we believe in a world of rollups. However, rollups today suffer from several drawbacks, for instance slow finality. Every user transaction on a rollup like Soneium needs to be finalized by the base layer, for e.g., Ethereum. As Ethereum doesn’t have single-slot finality, it can take up-to 12-13 minutes for a transaction to have the same finality as Ethereum. This is prohibitively slow for many types of transactions particularly gaming that Soneium is designed for.

Our goal at AltLayer is to change that with our fast finality offering. Our fast finality layer MACH relies on a network of operators to validate rollup blocks. These operators bring economic security in the form of ETH or other ERC20 tokens.

Powering Soneium’s Finality Layer

In collaboration with Startale Labs, AltLayer has deployed a Fast Finality Layer called MACH for Soneium, the new Layer 2 network developed by Sony and Startale. Secured by restaked ETH via EigenLayer and ASTR, this finality layer brings crypto-economic security and sub-10 second transaction confirmations to the Soneium ecosystem.

This effort aligns with Astar’s roadmap by:

  • Giving ASTR real infrastructure-layer utility
  • Creating a new token sink via staking and yield opportunity for ASTR holders
  • Deepening the relationship between Astar and Soneium’s growing app ecosystem

To learn more about how the fast finality layer works, please refer to a previous post on the forum: Proposal to Build a Fast Finality Layer for Soneium with ASTR and Restaked ETH for Economic Security

Team

AltLayer was founded by Yaoqi Jia. He was previously Director, Parity Asia and prior to that he was the Co-Founder and CTO of Zilliqa Research. In his non-entrepreneurial life, he was a Research Fellow at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and he holds a PhD in Computer Science from NUS. His research interests span areas of blockchain security, distributed system security, web security/privacy, and network security. His research work has been published in top-tier security and privacy conferences namely CCS, USENIX Security, PETS, RAID, ESORICS among others.

The broader team has deep research and business experience in operating blockchain infrastructure companies with prior stints at Zilliqa and Parity.

Security

Soneium’s MACH relies on the AVS core contracts for security. The audit reports can be found here: https://docs.eigenlayer.xyz/eigenlayer/security/audits.

Past Performance & Milestones

AltLayer is a major RaaS provider in the market and is backed by Polychain. We have served over 30 partners for their rollup and AVS needs. Some of our prominent clients include DIN (Infura), Swell, DODO, Automata and others.

As for our fast finality layer, we have 5 MACHs on EigenLayer mainnet serving different rollups including OP Mainnet, Cyber, DODO chain and Soneium. These AVS in aggregate have over $12B of TVL.

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The Soneium MACH itself boosts a TVL of over $180M with 24,000 restakers and is operated by 6 operators. Soneium MACH has also over 18.46M in ASTR tokens staked alongside other assets.

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Roadmap

We plan to achieve the following with Soneium MACH in the coming months:

  1. Grow the number of operators to 10 and then to 20.
  2. Add other assets for economic security for better cross-ecosystem alignment.
  3. Build an RPC proxy for fast finality alerts that can be used by dApps on the Soneium chain.
  4. Bring BTC-security to Soneium MACH.

dApp Staking Reward Usage

We plan to use dApp staking rewards to offset the initial cost that AltLayer incurred in the development of Soneium’s MACH.

For longer-term, the operational cost for operators will be covered via a dedicated reward mechanism that is being discussed with the relevant stakeholders.

We’re committed to building with transparency and a shared purpose. With your support, ASTR will become a foundational asset for decentralized infrastructure for Soneium.

We welcome feedback, questions, and collaboration from the community.

Thank you
The AltLayer Team

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Hello @amrit! Welcome to the Astar Community.

The use of ASTR as an economic security asset at the infrastructure layer is exactly the kind of integration we aim to promote: tangible utility for the token within critical systems that bring real value to the ecosystem. The alignment between Astar, Soneium, and AltLayer, both technically and strategically, reinforces the project’s long-term sustainability and positions ASTR as a foundational asset in next-generation solutions.

Given the demonstrated impact, the added value to the network, and the long-term vision you present, I fully support this initiative and the use of dApp Staking as a mechanism to help offset the initial operational costs.

We appreciate your commitment to transparency and your open collaboration with the community. LFGM! :astr:

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Hello, I am delighted to see the Altlayer team here.
I am basically in favor of participating in Altlayer’s dApp Staking, but I have a question.

I think some kind of incentive is necessary for ASTR holders to participate in Soneium MACH. However, the APR is not currently displayed on the UI. This is probably the overall situation for AVS, but what are the plans for rewards for Restakers?

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Thank you @you425 for the support on the proposal! We are aligned with you that some incentive structure should be put in place for ASTR stakers as well as operators. This is something that is being discussed with the Soneium and the Astar teams. We will update the community as soon as the stakeholders have put a long-term staking incentive plan in place.

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I’m very glad and surprised to see AltLayer applying to dApp staking. Curios from the original draw about Soneium MACH I have the same question as You mentioned.
Reading the docs looks like also the users will be able to provide the economic security to this AVS. I’m curious to understand how external stakers will be incentivized to participate , how the rewards system and distribution of rewards will work.
Will wait for more details and will support this proposal :grinning_face_with_smiling_eyes:

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Thanks for the support @VasaKing

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Thank you!
I have known about Altlayer since its inception (I learned about it when Gavin’s participation in fundraising was announced), and I am also a holder of a small amount of ALT tokens.
I am delighted about the collaboration with Soneium and Astar, and I am rooting for them.

I look forward to the release of detailed information about the incentives!

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Hi everyone,

Glad to see you all here! I look forward to a fruitful collaboration for everyone. :slight_smile:

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Hello team!

I strongly support the proposal and see great value in your RaaS product.
However, I would appreciate a more objective clarification on the following topics:

Thank you!

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Hi @amrit

Really glad to see AltLayer’s application to the dApp Staking program! :raising_hands:

I’ve been working closely with the AltLayer team on the launch of the Fast Finality Layer for Soneium, which uses ASTR alongside restaked ETH to bring fast, secure finality to rollup transactions.

This has been a major milestone for the ecosystem and a big step in showing how ASTR can play a meaningful role in infrastructure beyond Astar itself, especially within the Ethereum space.

AltLayer has already shown strong alignment with Astar’s vision, and I fully support their inclusion in the dApp Staking program. Excited to see what comes next as we keep building deeper ASTR integration together.

Gaius_sama :astr:

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I have known Altlayer for a long time and would like to see a RaaS project like yours serve the Astar ecosystem. A MACH focused on Soneium and using $ASTR tokens sounds interesting.

I definitely support it!

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Thank you @Gaius_sama and @MrKarahanli-Emre for your support.

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Great initiative! Excited to see ASTR gaining deeper infrastructure utility. One question: Will the fast finality RPC proxy be open-source for developers to integrate directly into their dApps?

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Thanks for the support. For context, the RPC-proxy is just a hosted wrapper RPC (like Infura) around the network’s finality signature. We have plans to outsource it, but dApp buiders can already integrate it just like they integrate or rely on Infura. More concretely, this service just reads the output from the AVS, i.e., which blocks have been finalised by the AVS operators and returns back the result via an API. It can be easily and independently built by anyone.

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Hi @amrit

Before the Community Council can proceed with voting on your dApp Staking application, we kindly ask you to submit the following:

  • An Astar Native wallet (Polkadot). You may use wallet providers such as Talisman, Subwallet, Novawallet, or Polkadot.js.
  • One of your smart contract addresses deployed on Astar Native (WASM) or Astar EVM.

Note that the contract address you need to submit does not have to be the actual production address of your project’s product. It just needs to be owned by the project and verified on a block explorer.

If, due to the circumstances of your project, you do not have an on-chain project yet, you can use a Hello World contract as referenced on the following page: builders-program/hellowold.sol at main · AstarNetwork/builders-program · GitHub

For more details, please refer to the documentation:
Astar dApp Staking Guide.

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Thank you @Mouthmouth68. We have the address and the contract ready. Will create the governance proposal soon. Appreciate the support.

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Hello @Mouthmouth68. Here is the information requested:

  1. Astar Native Wallet: 5FKnb7YNJbJx8wUWp7Lgh2Znj13aLNS6iTwPyBgF5cT465RF
  2. Smart contract address (helloworld.so): Astar address details for 0xA3D21742eEfd831ffBB4238CA1C6B42EC389f748 | Blockscout

And tagging the community council as well for the next steps. @Community_Council

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Happy to see AltLayer joining the DApp Staking program and ASTR becoming one of the restaked assets, look forward to further synergies between AltLayer, EigenLayer, Soneium and Astar!

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