Cosmos native layer 1 blockchain Canto has become the latest chain to migrate to Ethereum as a layer 2 zero-knowledge rollup, after another layer 1 blockchain Astar announced similar plans to migrate from the Polkadot ecosystem to Ethereum.
Canto is a permissionless, general-purpose blockchain compatible with the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) that aims to incorporate the traditional financial sector into decentralized financial applications.
Polygon Labs explained on September 18 that its core developers will build a ZK rollup on top of Ethereum layer 2 under a formal agreement through Canto Commons, a framework for contributors to coordinate protocol ideas and solutions:
“By leveraging the shared ZK Bridge, Canto will finally leverage the liquidity of the unified Polygon ecosystem and provide easy access to Ethereum.”
Polygon Labs said Canto will “inherit” the security of Ethereum, enabling more decentralization and trustless guarantees when bridging assets:
“User security comes from state-of-the-art ZK provers in production, meaning community security is cryptographically ensured and inherited from Ethereum, rather than the socio-economic incentives of fraud proofing.”
Massive New Finance – Canto is migrating to Ethereum L2 powered by ZK, @0xpolygon CDK.
this @CantoPublic The community will leverage Ethereum’s deep liquidity through a shared ZK Bridge without sacrificing user security – a huge step towards new finance. https://t.co/8uDhLYk1G9
— Polygon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) September 18, 2023
Polygon Labs added that there will be no changes to Canto’s validators or staking system.
Cantor follows in Asta’s footsteps
Polygon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal said that in recent months, Canto joined companies such as Astar, Gnosis Pay, Palm and IDEX in announcing plans to build ZK Layer 2 using Polygon’s chain development kit.
On September 13, the Astar team announced that it would soon begin building its own Ethereum layer 2 scaling solution called Astar ZK – the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), also using Polygon’s CDK.
The Astar team explained in a statement on September 14: “We are building a trustless bridge to Ethereum with high EVM equivalency out of the box, so dApp developers can use existing tools Building solutions across our entire ecosystem.”
i’m happy to welcome @星网,leading @polka dot Chain to Ethereum.They will use the zkEVM chain boot @0xpolygon CDK, Ethereum L2 secured by ZK!@星网 It is Japan’s leading blockchain. After its launch, it quickly became the most famous… pic.twitter.com/0SgYE6ENet
— Sandeep Nerwal | Sandeep. Polygon (@sandeepnailwal) September 13, 2023
Polygon Labs hopes the ZK-powered chain will help enterprises implement Web3 solutions with greater speed, scalability and security in Japan, where Astar is headquartered, and around the world.
Ryan Sean Adams, co-host of the Ethereum show Bankless, said the two recent migrations to Ethereum could be the beginning of a rollup avalanche.
Polkadot’s largest chain just moved to Ethereum. (a star)
Cosmos’ largest public chain has just become Polygon Validium. (Cantor)
And…I heard that the world’s first Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) L2 will be released tomorrow.
Ethereum rollups are eating the world.
— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS – rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) September 18, 2023
Not all protocols remain on Ethereum
At the same time, some agreements appear to be moving in the opposite direction.
Decentralized exchange dYdX announced its intention to build a “purely decentralized” order book exchange on Cosmos as part of a planned migration from Ethereum in early September.
Maker, another Ethereum-native protocol, also said it plans to cut ties with Ethereum in September and use Solana’s code base to build a new, more “efficient” chain.
related: The ideal Ethereum community-built zkEVM Scroll will launch in a few weeks
Rune Chistensen, co-founder of Maker, added that Solana is currently the “most promising” ecosystem worth exploring as it has proven its resilience during the FTX collapse and has a pool of highly qualified Solana-based developers.
The final stage of Endgame is the launch of a native blockchain codenamed NewChain for Maker
Will make the ecosystem more secure and efficient
After some research, I think the Solana codebase should be considered the foundation of NewChain https://t.co/KyGxBBGlVH
— Rune (@RuneKek) September 1, 2023
Non-fungible token collection OnChainMonkey is also moving its collection of 10,000 NFTs from Ethereum to Bitcoin. The team behind the protocol cited a more secure base layer and the thriving Bitcoin ordinal ecosystem as the main reasons behind the migration plan.
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