Canto, Astar blockchains plan migration to Ethereum ecoystem as layer 2s

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 mov­ing from the Polka­dot ecosys­tem to Ethereum. 

Can­to is a per­mis­sion­less gen­er­al-pur­pose blockchain, which is Ethereum Vir­tu­al Machine (EVM)-compatible with aims to onboard the tra­di­tion­al finan­cial sec­tor to decen­tral­ized finance applications.

Upon an offi­cial agree­ment reached by Can­to Com­mons — a frame­work where con­trib­u­tors coor­di­nate ideas and solu­tions to the pro­to­col — its core devel­op­ers will build a ZK rollup on Ethereum’s sec­ond lay­er, Poly­gon Labs explained on Sept. 18:

“By lever­ag­ing a shared ZK bridge, Can­to will even­tu­al­ly tap the liq­uid­i­ty of a uni­fied Poly­gon ecosys­tem with easy access to Ethereum.”

Poly­gon Labs said Can­to will “inher­it” Ethereum’s secu­ri­ty, enabling more decen­tral­iza­tion and trust­less guar­an­tees when bridg­ing assets over:

“User secu­ri­ty comes by way of a best-in-class and in-pro­duc­tion ZK prover, mean­ing com­mu­ni­ty secu­ri­ty is ensured by cryp­tog­ra­phy and inher­it­ed from Ethereum, rather than the social-eco­nom­ic incen­tives of fraud proofs.”

Neo­fi­nance at scale — Can­to is migrat­ing to a ZK-pow­ered Ethereum L2, built with @0xPolygon CDK.

The @CantoPublic com­mu­ni­ty will tap Ethereum’s deep liq­uid­i­ty via a shared ZK bridge with­out sac­ri­fic­ing user secu­ri­ty – a big stride toward neo­fi­nance.https://t.co/8uDhLYk1G9

— Poly­gon (Labs) (@0xPolygonLabs) Sep­tem­ber 18, 2023

There will be no changes to Canto’s val­ida­tors or stak­ing sys­tem, Poly­gon Labs added.

Canto follows moves from Astar

Can­to joins the likes of Astar, Gno­sis Pay, Palm and IDEX to have announced plans to build ZK lay­er 2s using Polygon’s Chain Devel­op­ment Kit in recent months, accord­ing to Poly­gon Labs co-founder Sandeep Nailwal.

On Sept. 13, the Astar team announced it will soon begin build­ing its own Ethereum layer‑2 scal­ing solu­tion, named Astar ZK-Ethereum Vir­tu­al Machine (EVM), also using Polygon’s CDK.

“We are build­ing a trust­less bridge to Ethereum with high EVM equiv­a­len­cy right out-of-the-box, so dApp devel­op­ers can use exist­ing tools to build solu­tions across our entire ecosys­tem,” the Astar team explained in a Sept. 14 statement.

I’m excit­ed to wel­come @AstarNetwork, the lead­ing @Polkadot chain to Ethereum. They are going to launch a zkEVM chain using @0xPolygon CDK, an Ethereum L2 secured by ZK!@AstarNetwork is the lead­ing blockchain of Japan. After launch, it quick­ly became among the most notable… pic.twitter.com/0SgYE6ENet

— Sandeep Nail­w­al | sandeep. poly­gon (@sandeepnailwal) Sep­tem­ber 13, 2023

Poly­gon Labs hopes the ZK-pow­ered chain will enable busi­ness­es to imple­ment Web3 solu­tions with increased speed, scal­a­bil­i­ty, and secu­ri­ty in Japan — where Astar is based — and around the world.

Ryan Sean Adams, co-host of Ethereum show Ban­k­less said the two most recent migra­tions to Ethereum could be the start of a rollup avalanche.

The largest chain from polka­dot just moved to Ethereum. (Astar)

The largest pub­lic com­mons chain from Cos­mos just became a Poly­gon Valid­i­um. (Can­to)

And…I hear the world’s first Solana Vir­tu­al Machine (SVM) L2 is drop­ping tomorrow. 

Ethereum rollups are eat­ing the world.

— RYAN SΞAN ADAMS — rsa.eth (@RyanSAdams) Sep­tem­ber 18, 2023

Not every protocol is sticking around on Ethereum

Mean­while, some pro­to­cols appear to mov­ing the oth­er way. 

Decen­tral­ized exchange dYdX announced its inten­tion to build a “pure­ly decen­tral­ized” order book exchange on Cos­mos as part of a plan to migrate away from Ethereum in ear­ly September.

Anoth­er Ethereum-native pro­to­col, Mak­er, sig­naled plans to move to cut ties with Ethereum and build a new, more “effi­cient” chain with Solana’s code­base in Sep­tem­ber too.

Relat­ed: Ide­al­is­tic Ethereum com­mu­ni­ty-built zkEVM Scroll launch­ing in weeks 

Maker’s co-founder Rune Chis­tensen added Solana cur­rent­ly stands as the “most promis­ing” ecosys­tem to explore as it proved its resilience dur­ing the FTX deba­cle and has a high-qual­i­ty pool of tal­ent devel­op­ers build­ing on Solana.

The last phase of Endgame is the launch of a native blockchain for Mak­er with the code­name NewChain

It will make the ecosys­tem more secure and efficient

After some research, I believe the Solana code­base should be con­sid­ered as the basis for New­Chainhttps://t.co/KyGxBBGlVH

— Rune (@RuneKek) Sep­tem­ber 1, 2023

Non­fun­gi­ble token col­lec­tion OnChain­Mon­key is also shift­ing its entire col­lec­tion of 10,000 NFTs from Ethereum to Bit­coin. The team behind the pro­to­col cit­ed a more secure base lay­er and a thriv­ing Bit­coin Ordi­nals ecosys­tem as the main rea­son behind the migra­tion plan.

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