Espresso Systems partners with Across to bring fast, secure bridging to Ethereum rollups
We’re thrilled to announce that we’ve partnered with Across to bring faster and more secure bridging to Ethereum rollups and L2s using the Espresso platform. Across is an intents-based interoperability protocol that leverages cross-chain intents to create a better bridging user experience. This partnership will see the Across Protocol leverage Espresso’s fast pre-confirmations secured by the HotShot consensus protocol, which reaches finality after two consecutive blocks. The integration will utilize the shared security and fast finality of HotShot for bridging between rollups.
We recently deployed a version of the Across Protocol on top of the Espresso platform’s Gibraltar testnet. During Beyond the Base Layer at ETHDenver, Espresso Systems CEO, Ben Fisch, demonstrated this integration with a bridge transaction between two Arbitrum Nova chains. The origin Espresso rollup received a pre-confirmation from HotShot within 2 seconds. The transaction was filled on the destination Espresso rollup in another 7 seconds. Overall, this demo highlighted the possibility of bridging between rollups in under 10 seconds, with strong safety guarantees for Across relayers.
Across is a bridging protocol that settles cross-chain user intents through its industry-leading bridge design to provide a superior user experience. Their model outsources equivocation risk to relayers, who opt-in to fill user transactions as fast as possible to earn fees from bridge transactions. To ensure that users do not have to wait for the transaction to finalize on the Ethereum L1, relayers take on the equivocation risk of the source chain.
By utilizing the pre-confirmations from Espresso’s HotShot consensus, Across relayers can fill users’ bridge transactions in seconds. In the event that both rollups involved in a bridging transaction share HotShot as a finality gadget, the relayer avoids risk entirely, as any equivocation would result in them being refunded. This can lead to more competition amongst relayers, which in turn will provide an even better experience and lower fees to the end user.
Espresso is able to provide a fast, secure pre-confirmation through the HotShot finality gadget. HotShot is an optimistically responsive consensus protocol, which means that it can product blocks as quickly as the network allows and reaches finality after two consecutive blocks. HotShot is a proof-of-stake protocol with economic security guarantees (slashing), similar to Ethereum. Moreover, Ethereum validators can contribute security to HotShot through restaking. HotShot can scale up to thousands of nodes, and is designed with the intention of reaching Ethereum-equivalent security.
We are building Espresso to create a platform for shared sequencing, pre-confirmations, and data availability, enabling L2s (rollups, based rollups, validiums, etc) to opt-in to the best sequencing and data-availability design for their use case. If you’re building a rollup, and want to support better bridging protocols for your users, or integrate with a marketplace of shared sequencers offering pre-confirmations for a richer set of user intents, we would love to hear from you. Head to our website at www.espressosys.com and get in touch via the “Participate” link.
About Across Protocol
Across Protocol an intents-based interoperability protocol, capable of filling and settling cross-chain intents. It includes the Across Bridge, for end-users, Across+ for chain abstraction and Across settlement for all cross-chain intent orderflow. Across leverages a competitive ecosystem of third party relayers, who fill orders almost instantly. As the multichain economy continues to evolve, intents-based settlement is the key to solving interoperability and Across is at the core of its execution.
About Espresso Systems
Espresso Systems are the developers of Ethereum’s marketplace for shared sequencing, supporting a wide range of Ethereum rollups and L2s. Espresso Systems has raised over $30mm from backers like Electric Capital, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, and Polychain Capital.
