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We really enjoyed this presentation.
While we’ve had multiple shared sequencers talks on Modular March, each one has been far different. Today’s deep dive is around the game theory and incentive designs behind creating a rollup ecosystem which feels completely seamless and interoperable.
At its core, Espresso leverages a two part system to enforce how transactions are ordered and finalized across rollups via its sequencer. This system mirrors Ethereum's, but with a twist, aiming to streamline interactions between different rollups and thereby improve user experience significantly.
We discussed the based sequencing approach, their auction & lottery mechanism, and where Espresso fits in the broader modular thesis.
While we are bullish on Espresso (and Ellie is amazing), we didn’t let their vision go untouched so to speak. There were areas where we pushed back around the incentive designs and whether or not this would actually work in practice. We also tried to understand why potentially making things more complex is really the solution for scaling the modular L2 landscape. Also, if Espresso is another chain with trust assumptions, what tradeoffs does that bring for rollup operators?
Finally the big question…Will rollup operators really want to use Espresso if it could cause a big revenue reduction? Ellie flipped that narrative on its head, ever so graciously. She helped us understand how Espresso works under the hood and answered our questions.
We were impressed and left feeling extremely optimistic on shared sequencing.
Happy April Fools Day (no jokes here, yet!) & let’s have a great week!
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We’ve heard of the fragmentation problem many times in Modular March, and we’ve came to learn of a variety of solutions like shared sequencing, intents-based interop, and more.
Today, in less than 10 minutes, we hear the vision from Avail’s head of product Dan Mills live from Modular Day in ETHDenver.
Created in 2020 as part of Polygon, Avail emerged in response to Ethereum's shift toward a rollup-centric architecture, identifying a critical need for enhanced data availability in support of data-hungry rollups. Avail's foundational product, AvailDA, addresses this need by providing scalable, raw block space without necessitating base layer execution features (aka a specialized, modular blockchain).
Through the use of validity proofs and KZG polynomial commitments, AvailDA ensures that light clients can trust the data's integrity through efficient random sampling.
However, Dan thought past first order consequences and like many of us now realize, there will be thousands of chains. To counter this, Avail is introducing Nexus, a unification layer based on aggregating proofs from various chains to guarantee the accuracy of execution and state transitions.
We also dive into Avail Fusion, the eventual security layer and third part of the Avail Trinity.
Stay up to speed on the biggest upcoming modular project launch, Avail, in less than 10 minutes with Andy.
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Saknas det avsnitt?
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If you are modular-pilled this will be a refreshing short chat.
If you want to understand the counterargument to building in a modularized fashion, you’ll enjoy this.
Andy sat down with Avery Chang, co-founder of Aptos to discuss his perspective on the modular thesis and understand why he is building Aptos in a more integrated fashion.
Avery shared his perspective on the intricate dance between modularity and monolithic architectures in blockchain design, and why Aptos leans into the latter with the elegance of a ‘finely tuned sports car’ as a reference.
Avery addressed concerns regarding centralization and scalability, explaining that a unified stack simplifies development and security processes. He highlighted the strength of Aptos's community, with over 400 developers contributing to its codebase, underscoring the project's potential for decentralization and scalability.
The conversation also delved into Aptos's adoption of the Move VM, which Avery advocates for its ability to reduce the risks associated with smart contract development and introduce formal verification to the ecosystem.
Sometimes we can be stuck in tunnel vision with our steadfast beliefs of modularity.
It’s good to hear the other side.
We’re still modularity enthusiasts, don’t you worry.
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What an interesting conversation this was.
Going way back to the core ethos of cryptoeconomic systems, we took a bit of a journey through PoW, PoS, and now modularity. It was quite a different presentation from the previous Modular March episodes.
We sat down with Alejo, a co-founder of Lumio, to discuss the memetic nature of crypto incentive systems with a focus on designing conservative systems which are aligned with Satoshi’s vision of blockchain.
Alejo is an OG and is now building out Lumio, a moveVM based L2 on Ethereum which will likely utilize EigenDA. To be fair, we just briefly touched on what they are actually building and spent most of the time discussing the philosophical side of building in crypto, which we found interesting.
Modularity is breaking apart the traditional mental frameworks for blockchain value accrual and design.
See for yourself.
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Again, we find ourselves returning to the interoperability and fragmentation problem of the modular expansion. We’ll keep it real, there is nothing innovative of building hundreds of siloed execution environments.
Even if you value sovereignty as much as the rest of us, having reachable allies in the onchain world is a necessity.
As new L2s and appchains are launched (which is happening at an alarmingly high rate), the ability to seamlessly interact across chains becomes crucial for the broader adoption and user experience. In today’s video, we set out to learn if an intent-based design is a viable solution.
We had the pleasure of sitting down with Hart, co-founder of UMA & Across, to discuss why he believes intents are the future of interoperability. This design employs third-party actors, known as relayers or solvers, who provide the liquidity needed for cross-chain transactions, thereby allowing sub one second transfers and enhanced security (no ‘honeypots’ for hackers).
But, as always, we pushed back.
Is there really a way to scale an intents based design to 1000s of chains? Is value transfer the only necessity of bridging in crypto or is there also a demand for messaging? Why are solvers sometimes slow to fill orders vs. extremely quick in other scenarios?
We really vibe with Hart well, and he wasn’t fearful of any questioning on his mental models. We enjoyed hearing his perspectives and learning from him.
You probably will, too.
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After our episode with Tarun Chitra about value accrual in the modular stack, as well as thinking about it deeper we’ve came to our own conclusions.
Josh Bowen, ex-Celestia team, and now founder of Astria blew it all out of the water today.
Completely shifted the way we are thinking about RaaS providers, shared sequencers, and how they are approaching the competitive market of sequencing. We first dove into the modular architecture of Astria and their relationship with Celestia, and then dove deep into how Josh thinks about early stage tech markets.
The vision behind Astria extends beyond facilitation of rollup deployment. Josh aspires to lower barriers to innovation in launching blockchains, in order to create a diverse ecosystem of rollups that transcend the limitations of existing setups.
But, is this really possible? Can Astria do what other RaaS providers are doing at a tenth of the cost? Can they actually commoditize RaaS providers?
Josh is a straight shooter and did not hold back when he pressed him about his mental models. We left quite impressed.
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The checkered cross-chain past is something you just had to live through to understand.
We tend to think the best have survived and the unfortunate events of 2021-2022 have led to a completely different way of thinking about interoperability security for the modular expansion.
In today’s piece Rob & Andy sat down with Jon Kol, CEO of Hyperlane, to understand their design choices around permissionless. At its core, Hyperlane aims to establish an open framework that enables any blockchain to seamlessly connect with others, creating a interoperable ecosystem without long BD queues and permissioned deployments.
But, what does this really mean for security and liveness?
Rob and Andy asked Jon about their design choices, security modules, mailboxes, and tried to approach this from a realm of “what could go wrong?” and “how well is this system designed?”.
Hyperlane has been a leading part of the Modular Expansion (notably, the team coined the term we believe). We expect them to continue this trajectory as they expand into new verticals like yield routes and other innovative interoperability concepts. We really think the permissionless nature of adding new chains and giving optionality for interoperability partners is a key aspect of their design focused around security.
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A core fundamental primitive of blockchain is the unlocking of usecases which are not possibly in any other type of system.
We’ve heard a lot of this and we believe the technology stack is being built as we speak which will facilitate an array of “breakout apps” atop of it.
In today's piece, we set out to find out what type technological design constraints are present in the current modular ecosystem as well as the necessary solutions. If you’ve been following us for awhile, you know the Lagrange team from our zkAcademy. If you are newer here, you’re in luck.
Andy and Rob sat down with Ismael, co-founder of Lagrange, to learn why zk coprocessors are crucial in enabling offchain computation for data queries and processing tasks that are too intensive for standard smart contracts.
By creating a decentralized network for ZK proving and prioritizing access to complex onchain information within the modular ecosystem, Lagrange is playing a crucial role in the modular thesis.
Let’s have a great week and continue to push forward as part of Modular March.
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One of the core issues we heard about awhile back on our podcast with Jon Kol from Hyperlane was the ‘indexing’ problem of the modular expansion.
Essentially, if we are going to exist in a world of 1000s of chains, we’ll also need to have a streamlined process for data.
This is where yesterdays post with Lava Network fits in the puzzle (RPCs). Staying on the data tooling pattern, today’s post is an interview from ETHDenver with Jack, the founder of Routescan.
Andy and Jack discussed Routescan’s journey over the past few months highlighting the growth of their expanding community with over 50,000 users.
They also touched on Jack’s approach to embracing modularity by unlocking new block explorers across appchains, rollup frameworks, and subnets.
Enjoy this today’s interview live from ETHDenver and Modular March.
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Wow. What a day yesterday.
Our modular market map absolutely blew up on X.
Including in this map, under data tooling, is Lava Network. Lava is modular RPC data access provider for modular chains. Our discussion today is centered around how Lava's modular data access layer is facilitating better connectivity across various blockchain environments.
A Remote Procedure Call (RPC), is a vital mechanism for accessing blockchain data. This enables users to perform a wide array of actions, such as checking balances and executing transactions, through effective communication with nodes.
The idea here is simple:
IF the modular expansion plays out how we think it will, we will have thousands of modular chains which will need RPCs so users can interact onchain. The current solutions are not very extensible and if they are, they lack privacy and/or speed.
Lava will take marketshare from the big names of the space who have been monoliths for sometime.
Rob sat down at ETHDenver with founders Yair & Gil to discuss where Lava fits in the modular thesis.
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Dymension was the second massive modular launch following Celestia.
Yesterday, the first RollApp on Dymension, NIM Network announced their genesis rolldrop to $DYM stakers, Pudgy Penguins, $PRIME holders and other communities. Of course, we asked Yishay what he thinks of NIM and other RollApps deploying on Dymension.
We have been strong believers of Dymension since the middle of last year and brought on Yishay, the founder, to discuss the progress since inception and the evolution of their rollapps.
Dymension is taking a phased deployment approach to their technology to focus on stability, liquidity, and seamless interoperability with their eIBC implementation utilizing an intents based interop solution. Yishay spoke on the importance of scaling in a modular fashion by providing their ecosystem RollApps with grants and other support.
As we navigate through Dymension’s architectural evolution from “2D to 4D”, we embrace this new modular ecosystem being built part by part.
Watch this video for a catchup into the Dymension ecosystem.
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The explosion of modular appchains is happening. Head over to Celenium, Celestia’s main block explorer, to see the chains using Celestia for modular DA.
These are typically happening through RaaS providers who offer a seamless setup process. Today we are focused Gelato’s approach to modular appchains, and specifically how founder Luis sees similarities in how Web2 & Web3 scale.
We learned how Web3 is drawing inspiration from the evolution of web2 infrastructure, and whereby applying the principles of modularity, we can address scaling challenges effectively. Another interesting, yet relatively experimental concept is zero gas appchains. Its a bit confusing to us how this would really work in practice, so we asked Luis about the edge cases and possibilities of spam attacks.
He answered quite well.
We also dove into the modular framework which Gelato provides for builders, allowing them to be selective in their modular chain design based on the specific usecase at hand.
Overall, we enjoyed this presentation and hope you do as well!
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In a world of 1000s of rollups and chains, the problem to tackle is unification of these otherwise isolated execution environments.
In today’s Modular March presentation, we sit down with NEAR founder Illia to take a look at their data availability layer, account aggregation, and chain abstraction toolkit.
We ask Illia about the potential of NEAR DA, how sharding really works for the L1, and his plans to grow adoption for the DA solution compared to others on the market. However, what was particularly interesting to us was this idea of account aggregation whereby enabling a single wallet to participate across multiple crypto experience, NEAR is building a better end user experience.
Illia went on to illustrate his larger vision for chain abstraction of the modular future and how he sees this playing out in the near future.
NEAR will continue to play an important role in connecting the modular expansion at the user facing level, in today’s presentation you’ll learn how they plan to do this.
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We were speaking to a liquid fund in Denver who just wouldn’t deploy capital into DeFi products on EVM because of the risk of re-entrancy bugs and other exploits.
However, what they did mention was they wanted to deploy into Movement’s upcoming L2 and they are actively deployed on Aptos, because of the security of the MOVE programming language. When we heard this, we knew our bullish conviction in Movement since summer of last year was going to pay off.
In today’s Modular March presentation we speak with Rushi Manche, co-founder of Movement Labs, and ask him “Why Movement?” like, really, why?
He took us through why he’s so bullish on M2, along with the MoveVM. Rushi’s energy and ambition is rooted in addressing some of the most pressing issues facing blockchain adoption today: enhancing security, reducing transaction fees, and creating an open framework for developers to build.
Initially created by the minds at Facebook for the Diem project, MOVE programming language stands out for its security and robustness…
But, is it really the best tech? As you know, we’ve set out in modular march to not be a shillfest, rather to seek the truth amongst the noise and learn alongside you.
We do just that in today’s presentation. Enjoy!
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The value accrual model in the modular stack is akin to that of the rise of the early internet.
According to Tarun, founder of Gauntlet and a prominent angel investor, we will see more and more specialized usecases for applications which are highly expressive. As a result of this, the need for a modular stack becomes more and more apparent.
We really enjoyed this conversation which drew inspiration from the evolution of the internet and computing to paint a clearer picture of the modular future. We’ve been quite deep in the technical weeds during Modular March (exactly where we want to be), so it was refreshing to host a discussion that goes beyond technicalities and instead touches on the practical application layer of modular blockchains.
Hope you enjoy and feel free share with your friends who are trying to answer the question “why modularity?” & “where does the value accrue in the modular stack?” for the future of blockchain scaling.
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One of the biggest things we are leaning into is the design choices behind the certain builders decisions. We really want to understand why projects are choosing execution environments in specific modular architectures.
In today’s video we sit down with Cartesi’s co-founder Felipe to gather insights for builders. We take a dive into the differences between app specific rollups and general purpose chains and how choosing a modular stack composition based on the usecase.
Felipe sheds light on the “cone of innovation,” a model created by Cartesi which illustrates the dynamic interplay between computational capacity and data availability. By emphasizing the importance of tailored execution environments, Felipe highlights the need for careful consideration of various factors such as computational intensity, developer resources, and privacy concerns.
The optionality of execution environments and the strategic decisions behind them play a pivotal role in shaping the future of modular blockchain applications.
One of the core reasons were here is to give builders a choice.
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As you may know, this year in the modular space has been characterized by the rise of modular DA solutions bringing in extremely low costs to txs on rollups.
We call this “the modular big bang” where the beginning of the modular expansion begins.
Today, we’re diving into the next modular DA solution to launch: Avail.
Stemming from Polygon roots, this team is set to launch their mainnet very, very soon. While DA is the first objective on their roadmap, Avail understands the second and third order consequences of the modular expansion: Fragmentation of liquidity, users, and chains.
So, they have set out to unify the modular space and push for a more connected and less fragmented future.
This is where Avail Nexus comes into play, offering a coordination layer that binds independent rollups through proof aggregation and ordering guarantees supported by the security backbone of Avail Fusion.
In essence, Avail’s trio of offerings—Avail DA, Avail Nexus, and Avail Fusion—are about laying down a solid, interoperable foundation for the upcoming modular expansion.
Learn more about it in today’s Modular March presentation.
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In today’s Modular March presentation, we’re diving into a topic brought to light by Ethereum foundation researcher, Justin Drake.
Interoperability has long been a stumbling block in the path to a unified DeFi space. Traditional bridges and their limitations, the high costs associated with proof aggregation, and the challenges of achieving true atomic composability have fragmented the landscape.
Yet, amidst these challenges, Ethereum has been pushing towards a world of shared sequencing.
In this presentation, we discuss Nodekit’s unique consensus mechanism that ensures quick finality and minimal reorganizations, which is essential for the reliability of atomic operations across chains.
As we explore the future of blockchain interoperability and the role of shared sequencing and hyperstructures, it’s clear that projects like NodeKit are pivotal.
Lets learn about shared sequencing together.
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Welcome to the first episode of the series of Modular March Presentations.
Today, we delve into the zk side of things with Karel, founder of Union Build, a project focused squarely on bringing together modular chains as part of the modular expansion.
At its core, Union leverages the principles of modularity and zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs) to enhance the way different blockchain networks communicate and interact with each other.
Union’s initiative is distinguished by its adoption of the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, a decision that underscores its commitment to a secure, scalable, and decentralized cross-chain communication framework.
As Union pushes forward, its work towards a future where chains can send and verify proofs of transactions to each other using ZKPs stands out as a promising development. This “proof of proof” concept aims to significantly reduce the resources needed for interoperability, enabling a much larger scale of interconnected chains and applications.
Such advancements are vital in moving towards a modular, scalable, and inclusive future, powered by advanced cryptographic techniques and a steadfast commitment to open, decentralized principles.
With partnerships lined up with Scroll to bring IBC to EVM, we think Union will play a role in bringing together the modular eco.
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High Rollers:
In today’s podcast, we’re taking a closer look at Zircuit's zkEVM, an innovative L2 focused on going to market in 2024.
Zircuit’s leverages zero-knowledge proofs (ZKPs), a groundbreaking approach that ensures transaction validity without compromising privacy.
This feature not only enhances the security of transactions by keeping details shielded but also plays a crucial role in scalability.
A key focus for Zircuit is the developer experience. The platform provides comprehensive tools and resources designed to simplify the development and deployment of smart contracts and applications. It ensures that developers can easily migrate existing projects or start new ones on Zircuit's platform with minimal friction.
We are quite bullish on the state of L2s in the coming year or two. We are extremely bullish on rollups utilizing zk tech in the coming year or two.
Let's dive deeper into how Zircuit's zkEVM with founder Jan Gorzny.
Cheers,
The Rollup
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