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Omni is an Ethereum-native interoperability protocol that establishes low-latency communication among all Ethereum Rollups, enabling Ethereum to function as a highly cohesive system in the modular era. Developed by a team with extensive industry experience, Omni aims to unify the fragmented Rollup ecosystem of Ethereum with the following significant features.
(1) Security
Interoperability protocols have been striving to address security challenges. The first-generation protocols relied solely on a set of trusted participants who validated and relayed messages across networks. Over the years, these protocols have been breeding grounds for numerous vulnerabilities, resulting in cumulative losses exceeding $1 billion.
Second-generation protocols have improved this design by applying cryptographic economic security to the network. Under this approach, participants stake native assets of the protocol to engage in the validation process, taking a step in the right direction. However, reliance on native assets may destabilize the security guarantee of the protocol.
Utilizing EigenLayer, Omni introduces a novel security model for interoperability protocols. Omni secures its validator set by staking re-staked ETH, allowing the security of the protocol to scale according to Ethereum L1's security budget. Ethereum's current security budget exceeds $100 billion, an order of magnitude larger than any other PoS network. By leveraging re-staked ETH (a highly liquid, low-volatility asset), Omni's security exhibits greater stability compared to its predecessors. Moreover, by obtaining security from Ethereum, Omni aligns its security foundation with the Rollups it connects to, achieving a security model that grows synchronously with Ethereum's modular ecosystem.
Omni is setting operational standards for EigenLayer's Active Validation Service (AVS). Omni becomes the first protocol to reach agreements with Liquidity Restaking Providers (LRTPs), agreeing to lease $600 million worth of re-staked ETH from EtherFi. The Omni team has reached agreements with several other LRTPs, pushing its initial security budget to over $1 billion. This will allow Omni to provide industry-leading security at launch without incurring excessive network launch costs. As the only AVS operating on the testnet besides EigenDA, Omni is positioned as the most production-ready AVS in the market.
(2) Sub-second Validation
One of the key advantages of integrated blockchains like Solana compared to modular systems is low-latency transactions. Users are gradually accustomed to sub-second transaction times, reflecting the superior user experience of today's cloud-based web applications. For Ethereum to compete with these alternative platforms, cross-Rollup message latency must be comparable to the transaction speed of integrated systems.
Omni brings this experience to Ethereum Rollups using a novel protocol architecture that achieves sub-second cross-Rollup message validation. After processing 7.5 million transactions from 550,000 wallets on previous test networks, Omni Labs thoroughly redesigned the network architecture. At the core of the design is Octane, a new open-source framework that combines EVM with CometBFT consensus. Octane creates a clear separation between the execution and consensus environments of Omni nodes using Ethereum Engine API and ABCI++, isolating components bottlenecks in the existing EVM<>CometBFT architecture. |
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