Deep Dive Into AltLayer

AltLayer is an open and decentralized protocol for rollups. AltLayer brings together a novel idea of Restaked Rollups which takes rollups (spun from any rollup stack such as OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK, ZK Stack, etc.) and provides them with enhanced security, decentralization, interoperability and crypto-economic fast finality by leveraging restaking mechanism.

ALT is AltLayer's native utility token and is used in the following functions:

Economic bond: ALT token will be used alongside restaked assets to provide economic stake. This stake can be slashed if a malicious behavior is detected.

Governance: ALT token holders can vote on governance decisions.

Protocol Incentivization: Operators in the AltLayer ecosystem can earn ALT tokens as rewards for their services.

Protocol Fees: Network participants will need to pay for intra-network services in ALT tokens.

AltLayer’s core offering of restaked rollups consists of three key products: 

VITAL: An Actively Validated Service (AVS), where operators verify blocks and the corresponding states committed by the rollup sequencer and raise fraud proof challenges if necessary.

MACH: A protocol to provide faster finality to rollups by allowing operators to restake Ethereum-based assets to back any claims on the rollup state.

SQUAD: Offer decentralized sequencing with economic backing. Decentralized sequencing eliminates short-term liveness concerns, bad MEV, rent extractions and other issues associated with rollups that operate with a single sequencer.

AltLayer has raised 22.8MM USD from two rounds of private token sales, where 18.50% of the ALT total token supply has been sold at 0.008 USD / ALT and 0.018 USD / ALT respectively.

AltLayer’s investors include Polychain Capital, Binance Labs, Jump Crypto, Breyer Capital, DAO5, Balaji Srinivasan (former CTO of Coinbase and former GP of a16z), Gavin Wood (Co-Founder of Ethereum and Parity), Sean Neville (Circle Co-Founder and USDC architect) and Ryan Selkis (Founder of Messari), among others.

As of January 17th 2024, the total supply of ALT is 10,000,000,000 and the circulating supply upon listing will be 1,100,000,000 (11.00% of the total token supply.)

Binance

Altlayer

Ethereum

Shiba Inu

Chainlink

Uniswap

UNUS SED LEO

Galxe

Arcblock

Reserve Rights

Mask Network

Illuvium

Lido wstETH

Aragon

Lido Staked ETH

Frax Share

OriginTrail

EscoinToken

Fjord Foundry

Musk Dao

XDAO

Ethlas

Manta Network

Dymension

Starknet

Pyth Network

Celestia

Pixels

Sleepless AI

Sui is a groundbreaking layer-1 blockchain platform designed to support the needs of global adoption by offering a secure, powerful, and scalable development platform. At its core, Sui leverages a novel object-centric data model and the secure Move programming language to address inefficiencies prevalent in existing blockchain architectures.

On top of strong technical foundations, Sui prioritizes user experience by eliminating barriers commonly associated with blockchain interactions. Through innovations like zkLogin, sponsored transactions, and programmable transaction blocks, Sui creates a higher standard for user experience within Web3 by ensuring applications are accessible and user-friendly.

Arbitrum is an Ethereum layer-two (L2) scaling solution. It uses optimistic rollups to achieve its goal of improving speed, scalability and cost-efficiency on Ethereum. Arbitrum benefits from the security and compatibility of Ethereum. Another benefit is the higher throughput and lower fees compared to Ethereum. That is made possible thanks to moving most of the computation and storage load off-chain.

Arbitrum’s native token is called ARB and is used for governance. Offchain Labs, the developers behind Arbitrum, announced the shift to a decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) structure — the Arbitrum DAO. ARB holders can vote on proposals that affect the features, protocol upgrades, funds allocation and election of a Security Council.

Arbitrum has an ambitious roadmap for 2023, which includes: Launching its own layer-three solution called Orbit; Enabling developers to deploy programs written in popular programming languages like Rust, C++, and more using Stylus; Expanding its validator set to include more independent institutional validators; Moving its protocol to layer two with Arbitrum One.

On March 16, 2023,  Arbitrum announced their highly anticipated airdrop of ARB. The token will be airdropped to early users and DAOs building on Arbitrum, with 12.75% of the total supply to be distributed. Recipients were rewarded on a point-based system depending on their interaction with the Arbitrum network until a cutoff date of March 1, 2023. The token generation event is on March 23, 2023.

Arbitrum

Ondo

ether.fi

Optimism (OP) is a layer-two blockchain on top of Ethereum. Optimism benefits from the security of the Ethereum mainnet and helps scale the Ethereum ecosystem by using optimistic rollups. That means transactions are trustlessly recorded on Optimism but ultimately secured on Ethereum.

Optimism is one of the biggest scaling solutions for Ethereum with over $500 million in TVL. It is home to 97 protocols, the biggest being Synthetix (SNX), a derivatives exchange, Uniswap (UNI), a DEX, and Velodrome (VELO), an AMM. Users can begin their journey on Optimism by adding the chain on their Metamask and bridging tokens like ETH to the L2. On May 31, 2022, Optimism conducted a highly anticipated airdrop of its OP token.

Optimism

ZetaChain is a novel L1 that has chain-agnostic interoperability built-in (EVM-compatible, Cosmos/IBC, Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Tron, etc.). Developers currently use ZetaChain’s messaging capabilities to send data and native value (without wrapping assets) between any chains.

ZetaChain will also support native smart contracts, which let developers build omnichain dApps that orchestrate funds across chains from a single contract.

ZetaChain

Aevo

Jupiter

Arkham is a blockchain analysis platform that uses artificial intelligence (AI) to deanonymize the blockchain and on-chain data.

The platform’s two main components are the Analytics Platform and Intel Exchange. The Analytics Platform covers analytics on various entities, exchanges, funds, whales and tokens. For instance, you can check the portfolio holdings, transaction history, exchange flows, network relationships and other on-chain analytics. The Intel Exchange allows anyone to buy and sell address labels and other intelligence, either through bounties, auctions or the DATA Program.

Arkham uses an in-house AI engine with various sources of data, such as public records, social media, web scraping and user submissions. The data is used to label addresses and provide entity analytics for ULTRA, the company’s AI algorithm.

Arkham’s platform can be used for various purposes, such as tracking stolen funds, identifying fraudsters, verifying counterparties, auditing transactions, investigating hacks, and more. Arkham claims that its platform can help combat the proliferation of crypto crimes and scams by incentivizing on-chain research.

However, Arkham’s platform has also raised privacy concerns among some crypto users and advocates, who argue that deanonymizing the blockchain violates the principles of anonymity and censorship-resistance that underpin the crypto movement. Arkham has defended its platform by saying that it does not collect or store any personal data from users, and that it only provides publicly available information that can be verified on the blockchain.

Arkham

Portal

Jito Network is a major contributor to the Solana ecosystem through its JitoSOL liquid staking pool, and its collection of MEV products.

Users can exchange their SOL for JitoSOL. In return, holders maintain SOL’s liquidity and DeFi opportunities while earning yield from staking. JitoSOL uniquely provides its holders with additional rewards from transaction revenue associated with MEV extraction on Solana.

Maximum extractable value (MEV) describes profit opportunities attributable to the specific order of transaction execution. For example, a large swap on Orca can lower the pool’s price below that of Raydium or Serum. Traders will race to profit from that price difference and this arbitrage is considered MEV.

The Jito Foundation was created to minimize the negative impacts of MEV, equitably distribute the profits and increase transparency. Jito published an open source validator client designed to create a competitive market for MEV extraction. The client enables auctions within each block for the opportunity to capture that block’s MEV. Traders submit bids, and the highest bidders within each block can harvest available MEV.