Proposal to Build a Fast Finality Layer for Soneium with ASTR and Restaked ETH for Economic Security
Background
Astar Foundation recently introduced Astar Evolution Phase 1.5: From Blockchain to Collective (details here). This initiative aims to transition Astar from being a blockchain into a collective, accelerating real-world blockchain adoption and empowering ASTR with broader utilities across both Astar and Soneium ecosystems including:
- ASTR being a representative asset on Soneium: ASTR will obtain its position as a representative asset on Soneium. Consequently, ASTR holders will benefit directly from the growth and success of Soneium by sharing in the ecosystem’s value.
- Ecosystem token in the Soneium ecosystem: ASTR will be the reference token in the Soneium ecosystem, one of the most anticipated ecosystems with prospering projects. More users will be incentivized to hold ASTR, enhancing its value as a currency.
- Routing asset in Soneium DeFi ecosystem: Astar will provide liquidity across the Soneium DeFi ecosystem. By doing so, ASTR will facilitate trades between Soneium-native assets and mainstream assets (ETH, USDC, BTC, etc.), solidifying its position as a base currency in Soneium DeFi.
- Payment token on Soneium consumer dApps: Certain consumer dApps on Soneium will leverage ASTR to facilitate payments directly or indirectly via ASTR-collateralized stablecoins.
- Staking assets to secure Soneium’s core infrastructure: ASTR holds significant economic value and could be utilized for multiple aspects of network security. Specific examples are as follows:
- A fast finality layer of Soneium and other different infrastructure layers on Soneium will use ASTR as its staking asset. Such an infrastructure layer will open additional reward opportunities for ASTR holders.
- Potential participation in other elements of Soneium’s infrastructure to contribute to the security and scalability of the blockchain.
As one of the initial steps to further expand ASTR’s utilities on Soneium, we propose to build a fast finality layer for Soneium using ASTR and Restaked ETH to enhance Soneium’s economic security. This initiative will be implemented via AltLayer and aligns with the vision of making Soneium a highly secure, scalable, and efficient blockchain ecosystem.
About AltLayer
AltLayer is an open and decentralized protocol for rollups. AltLayer brings together a novel idea of Restaked rollups which takes existing rollups (spun from any rollup stack such as OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, ZKStack, Polygon CDK, etc.) and provides them with enhanced security, decentralization, interoperability and crypto-economic fast finality via EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism.
Restaked rollups offer a set of three vertically integrated Actively Validated Services (AVSes) created on-demand for a given rollup that works with any underlying rollup stack. These AVSes in conjunction offer three key services to rollups in particular to app-specific rollups:
- Faster finality via MACH
- Verification of rollups’ state correctness via VITAL
- Decentralized Sequencing via SQUAD
Why Soneium needs a Fast Finality Layer?
Soneium, is an OP Stack rollup and hence relies on fraud proof systems for settlement. Optimistic rollups also have a withdrawal period typically 7 days.
Users and dApps on Soneium get two types of transaction finality:
- Soft finality offered by the Soneium sequencer.
- Hard finality when rollup transactions/state get settled on Ethereum.
While Ethereum is the most decentralized network with almost 1M validators, it’s also the network with the most liquidity. As Soneium is Layer 2 blockchain protocol, Ethereum is also Soneium’s settlement layer.
Given that Ethereum takes about 13 minutes (2 epochs) for a transaction to be finalized, rollups such as Soneium that are focusing on real-world use cases and aim to serve latency-sensitive applications such as finance, games, and social apps often rely on the promise provided by the sequencer to post transactions on-chain after soft finality on Soneium L2.
However, as centralized sequencers have no on-chain economic stake, the soft finality guarantee offered by centralized sequencers has less on-chain guarantees, which can be a drawback in certain scenarios as cross-chain interoperability. For example, for a burn on rollup A and mint on rollup B style cross-rollup message, rollup B needs to have strong guarantees that the sequencer for rollup A has indeed burnt a certain number of tokens on the rollup A.
Where does AltLayer’s MACH fit in?
MACH is a fast finality layer for rollups with the following key desiderata:
- Fast confirmation for rollup transactions
- Crypto-economic security so as to handle any malicious network participants
- Support both ZK as well as optimistic rollups
- Generic enough to support different proof systems and runtimes
MACH Overview
In order to guarantee finality, MACH as a network needs to verify the validity of a rollup state to ensure that the rollup operators have followed the state transition function correctly.
Benefits of MACH to Soneium
Implementation of Soneium MACH
Soneium MACH will not require any changes to the Soneium chain. The MACH AVS will operate alongside the Soneium chain. The only requirement will be that MACH operators have a way to read Soneium blocks. This could be achieved directly running a full node or by having access to a Soneium RPC endpoint. All on-chain AVS contracts will be deployed on Ethereum.
The client code to be run by the operators has already been developed by AltLayer in the broader context of OP stack chains. It will only require some basic modifications to make it work with Soneium chain. AltLayer has also worked extensively with AVS operators in the past which will also make it easier to on-board the first set of operators to serve MACH.
For restaking, the AVS will leverage EigenLayer’s restaking contracts, and will have the ability to take any ERC20 token on Ethereum for economic security including but not limited to any bridged ASTR token on Ethereum, LSTs representing staked ASTR tokens.
How does MACH Benefit ASTR?
As MACH requires economic security, this could come from a variety of assets. But, most importantly, EigenLayer recently enabled permissionless strategy and quorum for all AVSs. This means that Soneium MACH will be leveraging ASTR token for economic security alongside restaked ETH.
Using ASTR token for economic security will not only create a token sink but also help bring together different stakeholders such as token holders, operators, VCs and broader community to help operate the MACH network that can benefit user and dApps alike.
Moreover, using ASTR as a staking token via MACH offers a more realistic model compared to using ASTR as a gas token for Soneium.
Furthermore, we are also exploring opportunities to have AltLayer MACH listed in dApp staking and use the developer reward as incentives for ASTR stakers in the Fast Finality Layer on Soneium to further enhance the staking yield for ASTR holders and potentially have MACH stakers to earn additional rewards to further expand ASTR’s utility
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Success of AltLayer-powered MACHs in the Wild
AltLayer has facilitated the launch of 5 MACHs so far, most of them serving a dedicated rollup such as Xterio chain, Cyber Network, DODO chain etc.
These MACHs have garnered billions of dollars in TVL, tens of thousands of delegators and scores of operators.
Conclusion
We believe that the Fast Finality Layer for Soneium with ASTR and Restaked ETH can benefit Soneium and ASTR in both technical and non-technical aspects and further align the interests between Astar collective and Soneium ecosystem. Let’s go mainstream together.