Insights from co-founder Brendan Farmer
On May 24, Cointelegraph spoke with Polygon's co-founder, Brendan Farmer, to discuss the inner workings of Polygon Aglair. Brendan Farmer has a strong background in mathematics and cryptography.
According to Farmer's Mirror post, AggLayer can be defined as:
“[…] A decentralized protocol running on overlapping nodes that ensures low latency, cross-chain transactions, and converged bridge security.
Cointelegraph: How long will it be before we see AggLayer implemented?
Brendan Farmer: “I think we're going at a pretty good pace. I think a rough estimate is sometime in Q3.
Cointelegraph: How does AggLayer reduce latency and secure on-chain transactions?
BF: “So now there's this issue with Ethereum Layer 2s (L2s), we call this issue fragmentation. Now I think we probably have dozens of L2s and assets saved by Optimism (OP), Arbitrum, zkSync and so on. The problem is that each of these L2s cannot accommodate the demand of the blockspace for crypto usage.
“Nowadays, when you do a bridge, you don't put your assets on the destination chain, you get a synthetic version of that asset wrapped up. This is not how the world works. Ethereum takes 12 to 19 minutes to complete a block, and a chain should be able to safely cooperate with much less delay than that – this is what AggLayer provides. It allows chains to securely use a common bridge without having to transact on the Layer 1 (L1) blockchain.
Cointelegraph: What is the Chain Development Kit (CDK), and what part does it play in AggLayer?
BF: “You can think of the CDK as the building blocks for this ecosystem, which allows anyone to spin a chain. AggLayer expands to something that looks like using a single chain – even if you're running in a horizontally scalable space. Finally, developers will have the ability to use different execution environments.”
Cointelegraph: What are the main challenges in setting up AggLayer?
BF: “AggLayer is designed to allow chains to use a common bridge for low-latency interactions with security guarantees. Ensuring this secure interaction is inherently challenging. Unlike other ecosystems, AggLayer does not require revenue or profit sharing to use its technology.
Related: Web3 Needs More Layer 2s — Polygon Founder
Cointelegraph: Looking to 2025, what use cases or improvements might AggLayer offer?
BF: “In terms of use cases, I'd give them two classes of enablers. The first is how to reduce costs at a high level. If you think about what it would take to get 100 million people into decentralized finance (DeFi), it's not possible on any existing blockchain, but AggLayer provides a way to make it possible.
On a chain, you are bound by the limitations of the chained virtual machine (VM), and this implicitly limits your ability to design new applications. There's a really interesting DeFi chain launch on Cosmos called Penumbra that's creating private exchanges and private staking – implementing privacy for DeFi that's not really possible on Ethereum L1 or L2s.
However, you can have a chain with a completely different VM or state model on the AggLayer, but it still fits perfectly as if it were on the same chain. I think this flexibility and affordability of new VMs will change the game for developers and how they build.
Cointelegraph: What first interested you about zero-knowledge (ZK) technology?
BF: “I think at first I just studied math in school. I really wanted to do something mathematically interesting, and the way I was first exposed to and became more interested in cryptography was through the Snowden leaks and seeing this level of invasion and compromise. Privacy.”
“Knowing that we can use math to fix this fundamental social problem, I'm passionate about ZK restoring privacy to financial transactions and how we use the Internet. I think exploring financial privacy will be very important in the next few decades.”
Magazine: Historical turning point for crypto, Ethereum ETFs, FIT21, Trump: Hodler's Digest, May 19-25
