We are jazzed to announce our partnership with Polygon Labs, a key step toward realizing our shared vision of creating a unified liquidity layer combined with seamless cross-chain interoperability between integrated ecosystems. This collaboration opens up the design space for builders and innovators everywhere.
We truly believe that Rome and AggLayer were meant to collaborate since we share the same goal: solving blockchain interoperability. But our purpose doesn’t stop there. As you’ll learn in this article, by developing better interoperability tools, we’re also tackling other challenges across the internet of blockchains.
"Each blockchain ecosystem offers unique strengths, but true innovation comes from bridging these advantages" said Anil Kumar, CEO and Co-Founder of Rome Protocol.
"By integrating Rome Protocol with Agglayer, we’re enabling developers to harness Ethereum’s security and Solana’s speed without compromise. This seamless interoperability will drive decentralized technologies closer to mainstream adoption—delivering more scalable, secure, and user-friendly applications to market."
"This collaboration with Rome Protocol aims to connect Ethereum’s security with Solana’s speed, giving developers the best of both worlds,” said Marc Boiron, CEO of Polygon Labs. “This is a big step toward a truly seamless, high-performance blockchain ecosystem, one that works across all of Web3, not just within isolated networks."
Rome Protocol integrates Solana's composability and scalability into L2s, appchains, rollups, and network extensions, enabling them to leverage Solana’s speed, low costs, and sovereignty – while facilitating seamless cross-chain interoperability, empowering developers worldwide with atomic and asynchronous composability.
On the other hand, AggLayer is a cross-chain protocol that connects different blockchains through a unified bridge, giving each of them a common language that makes transferring cryptocurrencies and messages easier and safer. AggLayer also brings an important technology, known as ZK proofs. These proofs enable the cryptographic verification of cross-chain transactions, which makes them far more secure.
We’re sure that our readers can already imagine countless ways our protocols might work together. For now, this partnership will focus on three main areas:
1. Rome EVM will be configured to use AggLayer as its Canonical Bridge to Ethereum.
2. AggLayer will integrate the Rome Stack as a cross-chain asset and message transfer solution between Ethereum and Solana, including functionality for Hercules to post rollups’ states to Ethereum.
3. Rome RaaS Chains will be enabled to use AggLayer as their Canonical Bridge to Ethereum and other AggLayer-connected chains.
If this introduction feels a bit tech-heavy, worry not and stay with us, we’ll clarify everything soon. However, before we break down what each of these points means, we need to provide some background so our readers can fully grasp the potential of this partnership. So now, let's explore what interoperability means in a blockchain context.
The crypto ecosystem faces significant challenges on its way to achieving one of its ultimate goals: mass adoption. Among these challenges, two issues must be unavoidably addressed: scalability and interoperability.
Scalability is a challenge at the heart of the crypto ecosystem. Decentralized networks like blockchains naturally struggle to match the high throughput of centralized systems because every node must process transactions on its own. This means that each node requires powerful—and often costly—hardware to keep up. In addition, decentralized consensus mechanisms can take longer to agree on the state of a blockchain than a single centralized server can make decisions. Still, the benefits of decentralization have been clear since Bitcoin's launch. We all know the downsides of centralized systems, such as censorship, closed sourcing, and surveillance. That's why we're here, aiming to solve these problems. In this sense, Rome decided to rely on Solana. Among its unmatched qualities, Solana has the ability to process transactions in parallel, supported by a strong and distributed network of nodes, which allows it to process a 'not-so-low-for-a-blockchain' of 4,800 transactions per second.
The second challenge arises from the very solutions that were meant to fix the first one. Scalability solutions built for early blockchains like Bitcoin and Ethereum were focused on increasing transaction throughput. While some achieved that goal, they ended up being isolated from other networks, leading to a separation of users and—most importantly—fragmented liquidity. In other words, without proper interoperability, funds can become stuck, preventing users from moving their assets freely and securely.
We believe this partnership is designed to tackle both challenges at once, without ever losing sight of one of the most critical factors: security. You might be wondering, 'How exactly will the Rome-AggLayer partnership help move the crypto ecosystem forward?' Hang in there, and let’s find out.
Now that we have a good perspective of the challenges we're addressing, let's break down our partnership and see what it means in practice.
"Rome EVM will be configured to use AggLayer as its Canonical Bridge to Ethereum."
Rome has different components that can be implemented together or separately. As one of those components, Rome EVM allows the development of Ethereum-compatible dApps and rollups that can be run on Solana. That means dApps and rollups built with Rome EVM not only work with Ethereum but also enjoy Solana’s fast, scalable performance. So, this point of the partnership means that Rome EVM will use AggLayer as its main bridge to Ethereum. In simple words, all cross-chain communication and token transfers will be handled by AggLayer’s unified bridge. This bridge acts as a common language that, after implementing it, blockchains can understand. For everyday users, this means a simple and secure way to move tokens between an ever-growing number of blockchains. The interoperability benefits are just beginning to show.
“AggLayer will integrate the Rome Stack as a cross-chain asset and message transfer solution between Ethereum and Solana, including functionality for Hercules to post rollups’ states to Ethereum.”
This sentence, which can seem complicated, can be simply explained. The Rome Stack is made up of four components:
Rome DA: A layer that guarantees data availability, meaning that transactions of each dApp and rollup that integrates it are always available to be reviewed.
Rome EVM: As explained before, the component that allows developers to create Ethereum-compatible dApps and rollups that run on Solana, taking their scalability to the next level.
Rome Interop: The component focused on allowing communication between Solana and Ethereum, and potentially with other chains.
Rome Shared Sequencer: The shared sequencer can be imagined as a general coordinator, in charge of ordering transactions across multiple rollups.
This way, by integrating the Rome Stack, any blockchain that implements AggLayer will have a secure and simple way to communicate between Ethereum and Solana. Additionally, with Hercules, rollups can safely post their latest updates on Ethereum. This part of our partnership not only takes AggLayer’s interoperability to the next level but also gives them a secure and seamless communication channel with Ethereum.
“Rome RaaS Chains will be enabled to utilize AggLayer as their Canonical Bridge to Ethereum and AggLayer Chains.”
The time has come to tackle the last point of our partnership. Rome RaaS Chains are the blockchains built with the tools provided by the Rome Stack. This means that these blockchains will integrate AggLayer as their out-of-the-box native bridge. In practice, this enables cross-chain communication between Rome RaaS Chains and Ethereum. But the benefits don’t end there. By integrating the AggLayer bridge natively as their canonical bridge, Rome RaaS Chains will unlock instant communication and token transferability with every chain that implements AggLayer.
We are looking forward to seeing this collaboration rolling on, as we are two protocols that share the goal of making interoperability easy while keeping our users secure. It should be clear now, at least we hope it, that this partnership tackles two of the biggest challenges in crypto these days.
First, we have interoperability. By combining AggLayer’s unified bridge with the Rome Stack, we will make it easier for blockchains like Ethereum and Solana to talk to each other. No more isolated networks or users, everyone will be more connected.
Then, there’s the issue of fragmented liquidity. When blockchains can’t communicate with each other, funds get stuck in one place or another. Using AggLayer as the main bridge for both Rome EVM and Rome RaaS Chains means that users will move their crypto smoothly and securely across networks, bringing liquidity together.
And last but not least, security. AggLayer brings to the table techniques like zero-knowledge proofs. Having ZK proof means that every cross-chain transaction is cryptographically verified, improving users' security.
All in all, this partnership brings us closer to a blockchain ecosystem where everything works together safely and efficiently, a future that’s already starting to take the shape that we envision from the very first day.
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