[Music]
hello everyone um excited to be here uh
I am the CEO of polygon labs for those
of you who don't know polygon Labs or
specifically who don't know what polygon
Labs does because we do many things uh
we are a core contributor to the Ager
along with many others we've also
developed multiple blockchains being
polygon POS that pretty much everyone
knows as as well as uh polygon
zkm so I'm going to go through like a
little bit of of History before actually
kind of attacking what exactly we mean
by aggregation um and specifically when
I want to look at and people talk a lot
about like not kind of looking at
analogies but if we think of like what
we want web 3 to be um we really want it
to eat as much of web 2 up as possible
Right like we should be able to scale
web 3 to the size of web too and so the
question then becomes well you know how
did the internet become the internet and
if you think about it the internet
actually started very fragmented um it
very disconnected with multiple networks
unable to communicate and then new
protocols came along um and specifically
things like TCP IP came along and what
you now had what you suddenly had was
this diversity in uh what could be built
bu on the internet um and the
infrastructure underlying it but with
some common protocols um and
specifically what you get there is
tcpip and it's very important to
actually understand this because a lot
of people say like how are we going to
bring together all of web 3 when you've
got so much disperate technology in web
3 you've got different Stacks you've got
different VMS like everything looks
different but we actually have an
example of bringing together different
technology in a way that like unifies it
and actually feels like one so let's
talk about like specific problems we see
in web 3 and why this is actually very
relevant right we've got fragmentation
as an issue I think this is an obvious
one for everyone scalability security
and frankly just poor ux if we look at
each of these one by one what do we have
right now we've got a bunch of chains uh
and liquidity is fragmented across all
of these chains we really have no good
way of bringing them together at all
similarly we've got a scalability
problem if we want web 3 to scale to the
size of the internet then we should
probably compare to like what currently
is using the internet and when we look
at that what we see things is Mastercard
Visa NASDAQ um and I do not believe we
actually have a network that can handle
the load of any of those I think we've
heard many state that they want
blockchains to be able to handle um you
know a a load like NASDAQ and that is
250,000 transactions per second which no
network is even close to being able to
handle in any way whatsoever uh I
actually just as a little side note I'll
give you a few side notes during this
presentation but this is a little
interesting fact is let's just assume
that we could actually scale a
blockchain to the size of NASDAQ um
NASDAQ can execute transactions with
latency of 50 microc seconds um you are
not going to execute any transaction on
a blockchain in 50 microc seconds so I
think our dreams of bringing NASDAQ on
chain should probably recognize the fact
that there's some things that are
actually better in a centralized State
and there's some things that are better
in a decentralized state obviously this
does not mean that we don't want
decentralized exchanges it means that
there's specific technologies that serve
specific purposes and you know we should
probably focus on like more longtail
assets in a decentralized way when we
want perfect performance execution uh
and then when we just want censorship
resistance then we should probably bring
that onchain third one is security right
now you know when you look at like many
different networks and how they come
together you know we talk about concepts
of like shared sequencers and intents
and bridges and like most of that is not
actually very secure even though it
actually works decently in in some cases
and lastly the ux challenge we've got a
a ux problem whether it's cross wallets
Bridges and intents chains um basically
what you get is this this fragmented
feeling um across the board and so then
the question becomes what do you do
about this um and the first answer that
we tried to give or that many do still
give is let's just use a monolithic
chain salana can solve this for you
because something something something um
well you know most of the time that
something isn't going to be good enough
because literally we have seen that we
can't even scale to some of the the the
smallest networks that are good for
payments in the world or the biggest
ones uh and so like the idea that like
we're going to throw everything on one
chain is not happening and so we need to
go look at another
solution uh the other solution um was
why don't we just scale through modular
chains right but the problem is modular
chains increase fragmentation we see it
today you've got you know polygon zkm
polygon POS you've got ZK sync era
you've got you know arbitrum one you've
got open main net you could keep going
on and on and like great this is nice
like being able to choose how you want
to spin up a chain is great it actually
solves the scalability issue right
because now when you need more block
space What do you do you spin up a new
chain and with time this is actually
going to get easier and easier right
like right now people want to sell you
on the idea that spinning up a new chain
is easy like frankly it's actually not
that easy uh but if you fast forward 12
months from now and 24 months from now
and 36 months from now you're going to
get to a point where spinning up a new
chain is actually incredibly easy and
when you need to increase um throughput
and increase block space then you're
going to spin up a new chain to actually
be able to do that um and so through
like kind of the the modular approach we
can actually solve scalability the
problem is we still don't have one
unified web three if we do that and so
the answer to this is just aggregate all
the chains and so what does aggregation
actually allow for it actually allows us
to scale web 3 to the size of the
internet what are the things that we
need to do this first we need
practically infinite scalability and
that's what you get when you can spin up
new chains very easily when more demand
is needed because there's or when there
is more demand and so more block space
is needed uh and then the second one is
you need to be able to like unify State
liquidity
users and if you really think of like
the north star of what we should be
targeting we should really want to be
able to have a web 3 and an ethereum
that scales as much as you need in a
unified way making you believe that you
are using one chain while you are using
100,000 different chains at any point in
time and that that 100,000 chains can
become 125,000 chains at any point in
time and it still feels like one
internet so when we've thought about
this problem and how we want to solve
this problem exactly um we started
thinking about it um and we realized
that we needed to create like a neutral
platform um and so this is concept of
the a layer polygon Labs is a
contributor along with many others that
I will show you uh a little bit later
later but the general idea was that we
need some kind of like neutral
cross-chain settlement platform that
unifies liquidity users and state um and
that ultimately has finality on ethereum
now very importantly the a layer is
actually not intended to scale only
ethereum and there's a reason for this
which is that as amazing as ethereum is
what do people actually value in web 3
they value assets and there's always
going to be assets outside of ethereum
and we need to be able to get people to
come to ethereum and stay on ethereum
and the only way to do that is to allow
them to use or to receive or send assets
to another chain that is not ethereum
and the only way to do that is to
aggregate those chains along with
ethereum and all chains on them and so
that is a big part of kind of the Ager
is really bringing everything together
and ultimately having finality on
ethereum maybe let me talk to you about
kind of like the different components of
the agay really think about it in like
four different parts um a lot of times
when people hear the agay or anything
that has to do with
interoperability they immediately
default to it's a bridge it's nothing
but a bridge and this is simply because
when we think of the forms of
interoperability that we have had to go
cross chain over the last many years we
default to Bridges layer zeros the
wormholes things like that um and then
more recently people start thinking of
cross chain transactions as being things
driven by intents um but people don't
really think holistically about
everything that you need to get like
safety when fragmenting when there's a
fragmented web 3 that you want to bring
together so let me talk through kind of
these four different components of the a
layer uh first one is the pessimistic
proof
so the most important thing if you want
to bring chains together is to ensure
that no one chain can rug another chain
right like if I have gone to a chain I
have decided this is a chain that I
trust um or like many frankly haven't
paid attention but I'm still assuming
Trust on that chain and when I send a
transaction cross chain or I'm receiving
an asset from another chain I need to be
100% sure that the only thing I am
trusting is that chain that I am on and
this is basically what the pessimistic
proof does what it does is it looks at
all assets that come into a chain it
looks at all assets that are leaving a
chain and we call this chain level
accounting and basically what the
pessimistic proof does it then ensures
that when an asset wants to leave a
chain it is not an asset that is in
excess of any assets that have come into
it so if you've had you know 10 eth come
into a chain then you can't have more
than 10 eth leave that chain and this is
what the pessimistic proof enforces now
the interesting thing about this
pessimistic proof is that it is not just
enforcing uh it is not just enforcing
this for chains that have proofs right
so so a lot of times people think okay
the the layer or that polygon is working
on like ZK technology so like you you
you look at polygon zkm or exay and
you're like hey this uses execution
proofs and so the AG requires execution
proofs the reality is the AG is actually
completely agnostic to that um you could
have execution proofs you could have
fraud proofs you can have some form of
consensus that can be proven or you can
straight up have a
database pessimistic proof doesn't care
it's going to look at what assets came
in what assets have left and whether an
asset that wants to leave or be be
removed from there can and so that's
kind of like the guarantee you get the
pessimistic proof is that regardless of
what it is that a chain like the form of
a chain you can prove um facts about
that chain and specifically on on
something like a a polygon POS that has
a validator set you can prove the
consensus of polygon POS so that you can
confidently actually have transactions
go go cross chain uh next one is proof
aggregation
a lot of people think the proof agation
is whatow the interoperability in the
all proof agregation is it lowers C of
transacting on chains connected to the
AG and using the AG specifically what it
does is you get a ZK proof and this
could be the pessimistic proof or it
could be an execution proof on a chain
and what it does is it wraps those
proofs together and then wraps those
proofs together and then submits them to
ethereum if you were to submit each of
those proofs to ethereum on their own it
would be incredibly expensive and so
this is how you're able to lower the
cost so that it is incredibly cheap to
execute these cross-chain transactions
next thing is there's a unified bridge
this is a bridge on uh ethereum and that
bridge is uh the bridge used to create
canonical assets that allows for all
transactions going across the agay to be
done in fungible assets meaning that you
don't have wrapped assets and then
unwrapped assets and then lastly there's
this concept of fast interupt the a
layer with nothing else going between
two chains especially two l2s is going
to settle at the speed of of you know
ethereum settlement and so we're going
to be looking at like
15minute um cross chain transactions
which isn't good enough and so the goal
with fast interrupt is to lower that
Lany to just a few seconds rather than
minutes so like what are the benefits of
this um first of all is you get these
native tokens um look I I think Cosmos
has done many correct things but when
you go and you use Cosmos um the
experience of having many many unwrapped
tokens uh WRA tokens uh and moving those
around and figuring out what these
assets are and the same has become true
uh within the ethereum ecosystem as well
like that is not a good user experience
second is we need safe cross-chain
transactions you know as of right now
when we use bridges that we use like
most of the time these are not actually
very safe for inter operability and we
actually need something to add safety um
sometimes we talk about like shared
sequencers as providing like Atomic
composability again you need something
to actually make that safe and
trustless and importantly this is where
you get the concept of compatibility is
the AG layer often is viewed as like
competitive with all of these different
options that people hear about for
interoperability purposes um but it
actually really isn't it's a very
low-level base layer that is compatible
with most of these so if you want to do
an asynchronous transaction you use the
AG layer but if you want a synchronous
transaction then you would actually use
a shared sequencer with the added
security of the agay um if you want to
use intents those are expensive they
require capital on two different pools
you need to rebalance that Capital
rebalancing that Capital has risk and
time associated with it you can lower
that risk in time allowing for
rebalancing much quicker allowing for
users to get transactions at a cheaper
cost
um and so good good experience there and
so the goal when when we're thinking
about building the Ager with the other
contributors is really like how do we
make this the best uh experience
possible and that includes from a cost
perspective when working with other
Solutions out there next like the Ager
if you think about it is really like an
asset first protocol you're actually
passing assets from one chain to another
and this is different from other
interoperability solutions that are
generally passing messages but the AG
does allow for passing messages as well
which is necessary and something that
can be done um next is it actually
enables the concept of like chain
abstraction I think chain abstraction is
a very nebulous concept that if you ask
10 people what is chain abstraction 10
people will give you different answers
um the way that I often think about it
is like the the AG layer allows for um
easy use of chain abstraction and like
one example of this is a library that
we've built that we refer to as bridge
and call um and so this is a library
that uh allows for uh users to basically
execute uh one transaction themselves um
but they're actually executing multiple
transactions across chain so imagine
that you wanted to um Bridge funds from
ethereum to polygon Z KVM and then you
wanted to swap those assets um into
different assets and then transfer them
over to X layer and then buy an nft with
the bridge and call function you can do
that and so you can imagine a wallet
that abstracts that all away and
basically says hey do you want to do you
know this this bridge transfer and then
this Swap and then transfer it and then
buy this nft click one button and you
know it's calling multiple functions in
the background and you've abstracted
away the entire kind of cross-chain
experience um and then lastly it
provides for this low interoperability
uh low latency in terms of these
cross-chain transactions again it
doesn't provide synchronous um
interoperability that's something that
by working with shared sequencers
secured by the AG layer you can receive
but it's not something that the AG layer
gives
natively this is the AG layer ecosystem
multiple contributors um we're always
looking to work with more folks on this
one thing you'll notice is the agair is
not called the polygon agair uh this is
very intentional we've talked to every
big team in the ethereum ecosystem and
most outside of it goal is to get
everybody to contribute so that we can
have a non-fragmented web 3 as a whole
allowing for ethereum to grow and used
without actually needing to to leave
ethereum um a very important point is
that Ager is not rcking like if you look
at a lot of different interoperability
Solutions uh and a lot of different of
other ecosystems building out
interoperability um what you end up
seeing is um some form of of fee um that
is uh placed on on every transaction uh
and it really looks like kind of like a
middleman form of rent seeking um the a
layer has no fee for joining the a layer
there's actually no fee per transaction
on the AG layer instead what it is is
that chains are going to create uh with
as many transactions as they can include
um in in their in their consensus or or
that's part of like the consensus being
satisfied or as part of an execution
proof and they're going to submit that
to the agare they could choose to submit
that once a month they could choose to
submit that every two seconds they get
to choose how often they actually want
to submit a trans a a a proof um to the
Ager um and that allows for chains to
continue to remain uh Sovereign for
example you could think of like a gaming
chain gaming chain is going to say hey
our users don't actually care how often
we finalize this chain or they're going
to accept lower security requirements um
for some per perod of time and so we're
going to submit proofs much less
frequently than like a defi chain that's
going to say hey I want to submit proofs
every 2 seconds uh and so by having this
flexibility in the a layer um it allows
for um people to be able to execute
these transactions basically freely uh
and so basically what we see here is
that we've solved fragmented liquidity
you've got fungible assets across the
ecosystem you've solved scalability
because you have chains that can be spun
up at any point in time you've solved
security with the pessimistic proof that
you can safely go between chains and
you've solved the ux issue because you
can now seamlessly interoperate between
these chains with some of the kind of
greatest Technologies around Shar
sequencing and intent that are going to
be part of
this and what you end up with is really
a unified kind of web three allowing for
users to stay in ethereum benefit from
assets across every ecosystem
and what you see is a web 3 that ends up
actually being united under some common
protocol thank
you thank you Mark that was quite
insightful uh we do have a few questions
here so who will aggregate the
aggregators that's a good question um I
don't know um we see this all the time
of course I I have not been able to have
anyone point to me to another team that
is actually trying to aggregate um all
of web 3 um and so there is nothing that
prevents the a layer from um being
connected to a chain in the super chain
um you will actually see that happen
there is nothing that prevents the agair
from being connected to a chain on the
elastic chain there is nothing that
prevents it from connecting to a an
orbit chain and so um given that it's a
low-level solution you can call it the
aggregator of aggregators um and so
that's what the AG provides all right
and what is the difference with
ccip yeah uh that's a good question so I
would think of ccip more on the
messaging side of things than on the
asset transfer side of things um and so
specifically like when you think about
the the bridges that I was referring to
um that's kind of what currently exists
is is ccip one of the things that we're
actually working on right now on the AG
is trying to bring kind of bridge
standards within the Ager there's
actually nothing that prevents the Ager
from using some of the bridge standards
that we currently see um and adding to
it a level of security that currently
doesn't actually exist uh and so the
goal is actually to work with um
something like ccip rather than um
compete with
it all right where does Ager run and who
are the actors yeah that's a good
question so um the AG's going to be live
in 3 to 4 weeks and in its current in
its its initial form it's run in a
centralized way um the nice thing though
is that with ZK
technology you can be running a
centralized system in a trustless manner
and that's kind of what the agir is
going to look like in its initial form
but I fundamentally believe that not
withstanding how centralized we're
seeing everything in the space right now
um pretty much everything is going to
decentralize and this is either going to
happen because it's going to be forced
by some government actors in some way um
or it's going to happen because critical
issues are going to happen in
centralized systems and we're all going
to be reminded why it is that we
actually have decentralized systems um
and so our goal and it's on the road map
and it's actually a lot of work is
already being done is to decentralize
the agal and not keep it in a
centralized
form all right
uh is there any hope of optimistic
networks to get aggregated into the Ager
their optimistic nature that is waiting
periods Etc seems to be fundamentally
incompatible with composability
yes uh this is a good question and
something we spent a lot of time about
so I got two answers for you on that um
answer number one is all optimistic
Roll-Ups will be ZK rollups it's just a
matter of time everybody knows it um all
optimistic rups are working on that
already it's just a question of time um
and that frankly is what will create the
ideal user
experience um another alternative would
be to actually just just uh uh prove the
fraud proof okay that's the exact
question like you can't wait seven days
to go across train that's horrible um
but what I was also saying is that we
don't just need to prove proofs we can
prove other things for example um you
know the the centralized sequencers that
we have right now do reach consensus uh
in in a centralized way and you can
actually prove that consensus using the
uh pessimistic proof that's why I was
saying that even in this current state
where you've got fraud proofs on chains
that we will still see them on the agay
because we can protect against the the
the risk of any um of anything happening
within the fraud proof window using the
pessimistic proof all right we only have
time for one more question is my
understanding correct that existing l2s
need to migrate over all their AET
strings in the native Bridges to the
unified Bridge yeah that is a very good
question um it's something we spend a
lot of time on so I would say there's um
there's the ideal State and there's the
less the ideal State as I've mentioned a
few times we can currently connect any
existing chain and you will see existing
chains get connected without migrating
assets over to the Ager um and what will
happen when that happens is basically
you'll start issuing new assets on that
canonical that new canonical Bridge
being the AG brid bridge for any chains
that want the what I'll call Ideal user
experience you would actually want to
have them migrate all the assets over
this is actually something that um you
will see happening with polygon POS um
we have
6,500 or so assets on polygon POS they
will all get migrated over to the
unified bridge and there we're going to
be the first example of probably one of
the biggest chains definitely the
biggest chains the world from an assets
perspective actually migrating all of
those assets
over all right thank you again so much
can we get a round of applause for Mark
please