Caldera partners with Polyhedra Network to bring zkBridge to AppRollups
We're thrilled to announce our new partnership with Polyhedra Network, the team behind zkBridge, to bring zkBridge to Caldera rollups! With this integration, teams building on Caldera chains will be able to offer users efficient and secure cross-chain infrastructure for L1 and L2 interoperability.
What problem does zkBridge solve?
Current cross-chain bridges face two major issues: efficiency and security. On the efficiency side of things, the basic approach for bridging between Ethereum and other chains requires verifying single block headers with more than 20,000 validators on Ethereum, which costs in the ballpark of 64 million gas (which equates to around $6,000).
Needless to say, that's very expensive!
To work around this, many bridge protocols have turned to a committee-based approach to reduce the cost, in which a smaller set of validators are trusted to sign off on all state transfers. But, validator centralization introduces significant vulnerabilities and security concerns. Not only do these extra trust assumptions in the committee mean bridged assets aren't as secure as native ones, but relying on a small committee can also lead to single-point failures, as we've unfortunately seen exploited through hacks like Wormhole, Ronin, and others.
In 2022 alone, over $1.6B in assets were lost due to bridge exploits. Not good.
Introducing zkBridge and its solution to Caldera AppRollups
zkBridge solves these issues by offering trustless and efficient cross-chain interoperability whose security relies on zero-knowledge proofs (powerful cryptographic tools ) rather than vulnerable committees (external trust assumptions).
With zero-knowledge proofs, zkBridge not only guarantees correctness, but also significantly reduces on-chain verification costs through a novel, highly optimized recursive proof scheme.
Polyhedra Network has further implemented the zkBridge system to prove the Ethereum full PoS consensus (~$40 billion USD total ETH staked currently). zkBridge for both Ethereum and its layer-2 networks (including Caldera AppRollups) will be equipped with Ethereum full consensus ZK proving. Using their efficient proof system, deVirgo, the prover time for Ethereum full consensus is as fast as 8 seconds, which is enough to catch up with the block time of Ethereum. To further improve the crypto-economic security for zkBridge on Ethereum optimistic rollups, Polyhedra Network has partnered with EigenLayer and Lagrange Labs to incorporate the ETH restaking mechanism into zkBridge for Ethereum optimistic rollups.
Caldera and Polyhedra Network
Through this partnership, developers building with Caldera will be able to deploy performant app-specific rollups that utilize zkBridge powered by Polyhedra Network for interoperability, bringing further security and efficiency to our modular stack that should enable teams to build their dream applications without compromises!
We’re ecstatic about this partnership with Polyhedra and what it means for our developer community. For those interested in building on a production-ready Caldera chain with zkBridge, please reach out!
Getting Started!
Interested in launching an interoperable rollup, equipped with zkBridge with high efficiency and security? Don’t hesitate to contact us!
To keep up with both teams:
🐦 Follow @CalderaXYZ
🐦 Follow @PolyhedraZK