Proposal to Build a Fast Finality Layer for Soneium with ASTR and Restaked ETH for Economic Security

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:

  1. Faster finality via MACH
  2. Verification of rollups’ state correctness via VITAL
  3. 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:

  1. Soft finality offered by the Soneium sequencer.
  2. 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:

  1. Fast confirmation for rollup transactions
  2. Crypto-economic security so as to handle any malicious network participants
  3. Support both ZK as well as optimistic rollups
  4. 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.

13 Likes

Wow , this is something really unique for Astar token appreciation. Glad to see this proposal and of course I will support it. Will go a little bit deeper into provided documentation and in case will ask more questions later :star2:

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The success of soneium will be the success of Astar :star::cd: let’s keep it up :globe_with_meridians:

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Short TLDR explainer:

Soneium is an Ethereum L2. When the user sends a tx on Soneium L2, the sequencer receives it, sequences the txs into blocks, and submits them on Ethereum L1. Only when the block is Ethereum L1 is finalized (can’t be reverted), the tx on Soneium is really finalized (can’t be reverted).

But Ethereum L1 is producing blocks every 12 seconds and finalized txs every 2 epochs (which means 64 blocks). It means txs on Soneium L2 technically takes a long time to be finalized.

However, to adapt to applications’ requirements, we can’t wait that long for Soneium L2. So we have been assuming that all txs submitted by sequencer are correct. However, this is trust-based, and little mechanism ensures that.

The Fast Finality Layer is to allow ASTR to be staked there to add additional economic security as there are assets staked. It adds extra layer of security for Soneium using ASTR tokens.

7 Likes

Thanks for the detailed explanation!
I think using ASTR on Soneium to enhance Soneium security is a good idea.

However, considering the current dApp Staking, the incentives we can offer to MACH may be much less. In that case, does this raise any concerns regarding the security of MACH?

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@Mingshi
Awesome, just awesome, congratulations on such a spectacular post! You summarized several vital points in a post that could be digested by someone like me, who’s forte is not DeFi :sweat_smile: .

This also generates my interest

Economic security ensures up to staked amount indeed. However in this case for fast finality, low amount of asset staked is less of a concern as Soneium’s eventual finality relies on Ethereum’s security in any case. You can think of it as supplemental layer that provides additional security for Soneium, on top of Ethereum as a settlement layer.

Therefore, as long as there are use cases where people can rely on faster finality based on certain amount of economic security, this is net positive for Soneium ecosystem. From Astar perspective, this is good way to align interest further with Soneium ecosystem without particular opportuniry cost entailed for Astar itself.

3 Likes

It definitely seems like a great opportunity that’s justifiable in helping to speed up the chain whilst still keeping ASTR at the forefront and providing increased additional security. Overall, sounds good with the explanation from @mingshi and summary from @Maarten too!

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Exploring the potential of aligning the Astar ecosystem more closely with Ethereum and Soneium, while introducing new utility for the ASTR token, is worthwhile for me.

I’m fully in favor of this proposal if it means having the ASTR token on Ethereum and establishing a pair with liquidity on a major DEX.

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I see. If the issue in this regard is not a problem, I don’t see any problem.
Basically, it will work positively for the ASTR holder.

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I totally agree with your comment, G! Definitely having REAL use case for the $ASTR will bring many benefits to the token itself, and to the ecosystems that support it (Astar & Soneium).

EigenLayer is a protocol that is widely used in the EVM ecosystem and seeing an implementation of it in Soneium is a major technological breakthrough.

Thanks a lot for this easy and clear explanation! This new ASTR use on SONEIUM is really really interesting and is another step forward to make ASTR as a pillar of SONEIUM.