Comparison with other market offerings

There are several RaaS or related providers in the market. They can be categorised into three potentially intersecting groups: - Rollup SDK providers - Shared Sequencer providers - No-code deployment tool providers

However, AltLayer is uniquely positioned to all three and in fact a lot more.

Rollup SDK providers

This includes projects such as OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Sovereign Labs, RollKit, ZK Stack (by ZKSync) and others that provide SDKs to launch application-tailored rollups.

These SDKs are often low-level and therefore require end users to host nodes and manage the underlying node infrastructure such as sequencers, RPC endpoints, explorers, etc. AltLayer’s Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) launchpad integrates these SDKs into a no-code dashboard and offers a managed service making it possible to spin up a rollup within minutes without needing to run any of the underlying infrastructure.

AltLayer therefore builds an abstraction on top of these SDKs. This encourages rapid innovation and experimentation while saving substantial capital and development resources. RaaS no-code products

This includes projects that aim to offer a no-code dashboard to launch application-tailored rollups. However, unlike AltLayer, none of them offer ephemeral rollups.

Moreover, most of these offer a simple no-code UI wrapper around a given rollup SDK packaged as a software-as-a-service. There are other projects that also provide a service to their clients to build bespoke app-tailored rollups. These products and services mostly rely on an underlying rollup SDK and therefore also inherit its limitations.

In addition to supporting third-party rollup SDKs like other RaaS providers, AltLayer also offers its own custom-built optimistic rollup tech stack which makes it possible to support decentralised sequencing and fraud proofs from the get go. This also makes it feasible for us to offer new types of rollups such as ephemeral rollups which are ideal for applications and usecases that need a dedicated app-specific infrastructure but only for a short-period time.

The table below highlights AltLayer’s differentiation and its competitive edge over similar service providers in the market today.

Rollup middleware providers

This includes shared sequencer providers and interoperability providers.

AltLayer 2.0 protocol natively provides many of these middleware services in its design via a network called the Beacon Layer. To enable decentralised sequencing and execution, the Beacon Layer acts as a marketplace for sequencers. The Beacon Layer can also be used to verify different rollup blocks and therefore enable interoperability across rollups and faster withdrawals to any network.

Compared to shared sequencers that only offer transaction ordering services, AltLayer’s rollups not only order but also execute the ordered transactions. As a result, it is possible to outsource the ordering of transactions to an external shared sequencer provider and then execute the ordered block by leveraging AltLayer’s protocol.

However, note that any rollup outsourcing a task such as sequencing to an external network has to take into account the security assumptions under which the external network operates. Furthermore, an external shared sequencing network introduces network latency as the executor on the rollup needs to wait for the external shared sequencing network to finish sequencing transactions. Another key advantage of decentralised sequencing via Beacon Layer over shared sequencing is that Beacon Layer gives flexibility to the rollup owner to decide on a set of hand-picked sequencers and enforce any desired sequencing policy. A third-party shared sequencing network does not offer such flexibilities.

Rollups launched via AltLayer do not share these issues as all rollups are enshrined directly to AltLayer. Having said that, AltLayer will give the possibility to use external middleware providers in its RaaS offering particularly for rollups launched via third-party rollup SDKs. So, it will be possible to outsource the sequencing of a set of transactions to a shared sequencer network and then execute the ordered block within the AltLayer protocol.

The table below summarises the different features and their benefits of the AltLayer's offerings.

Beacon Layer Features	Benefits
Decentralised sequencing	Unlike shared sequencer networks which impose a sequencing network upon a rollup, decentralised sequencing on the other hand gives a rollup complete freedom in choosing its sequencer set.
Decentralised execution	Shared sequencers do not execute transactions for end users and therefore rely on the rollup nodes to execute transactions.
Decentralised verification	This allows for instant withdrawals as a decentralised network verifies the rollup state.
Staking/Slashing	Allows nodes to stake different tokens to become node operators and slashing keeps the nodes accountable.
Interoperability Layer	As the Beacon Layer verifies blocks across all tethered rollups, it can facilitate cross-rollup messages.
Common governance layer	As all rollups are tethered to the Beacon Layer, the network can act as a common layer to govern all rollups
Forkless Upgrade	Beacon Layer allows for forkless upgrades as it is much easier to change the VM or make any network-related changes for the rollup.