Blockchain
Blockchain development company Recursive is bringing a new addition to the overcrowded Ethereum Layer 2 ecosystem that aims to connect rollups like Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync, and Starkware, among others.
By sending messages from one scaling solution to another, Recursive’s new Omni Network aims to facilitate communication between disparate rollups and make it easier for users to navigate and interact between the different options.
“Omni sends messages from one rollup to another,” explains Recursive co-founder Austin King. “Users make a transaction on a protocol that integrates Omni, which is then observed by Omni validators who are responsible for passing the message to the recipient.”
The project ultimately aims to enable use cases such as cross-rollup stablecoins and other DeFi primitives that can pool liquidity from different Layer 2 rollups.
“Omni enables developers to think globally, not locally,” said King, who previously ran Strata Labs. “This has significant implications for them in terms of reaching a broader user market and providing fundamental economic benefits such as liquidity aggregation across rollups.”
Plans for a public testnet
Recursive has announced plans to launch a public testnet in Q3 2023 and is aiming for a mainnet launch in 2024. The Omni Network will work with major rollup partners such as Arbitrum, Polygon’s zkEVM, Scroll, ConsenSys’s Linea, and Starkware to launch the first version of the platform in the coming year.
The Omni platform is being designed to build on top of EigenLayer, another blockchain protocol. Omni will use EigenLayer for its security needs.
Recursive (previously called Rift) raised $18 million in 2022 from investors such as Pantera and Two Sigma. Before that, Recursive co-founder Austin King co-founded Strata Labs, a crypto payment project that was later acquired by Ripple’s investment arm Xpring in 2019.
