5P;1R Stackr: Micro-Rollups
Modular Micro-Services for Web3 (build app-specific rollups on Ethereum in web2 programming languages)
This is a post in a series of articles I’m writing called “5 points & 1 resource” (think tl;dr but 5p;1r), where I summarize a list of 5 concepts that would have helped me start learning or re-learning a certain topic. It is intentionally far from a complete source of data.
Edit: Thank you to Kautuk (founder of Stackr ) for reviewing this post.
Micro-rollups (MRUs) are the answer to “a blockchain is too slow and expensive” for my use case, but “I still want some eventual Web3 security guarantees” in progressively porting a Web2 app to Web3.
Micro-rollups can be seen through different lenses for different stakeholders:
As a smart contract developer, it is akin to writing a smart contract unconstrained to a specific blockchain, execution or development environment.
As a DevOps engineer, it is similar to deploying a serverless functions whose inputs are user Actions and outputs are state transitions on L1 or L2 blockchains.
As a member of society, is it like an external procedure (e.g. a tax audit) involving various parties that eventually settles on a shared system (e.g. a bank).
Stackr is a framework that enables modularity across the entire stack. This ranges from the selection of a Data Availability network, proof & verification mechanisms, execution environments, sequencing architecture, settlement requirements, app-specific frameworks and more.
Security is a spectrum of tradeoffs that can be customized based on the app's needs. User Actions are Acknowledged (C0), Batched (C1), Verified (C2), Finalized (C3) and ultimately Settled (C4), which range from milliseconds, seconds, minutes, hours and days, respectively.
The verification layer, Vulcan, creates a permissionless marketplace that is proof-type agnostic; fraud/validity or optimistic/pessimistic/ZK. Centralized and permissioned applications enable a smooth onboarding transition for the Web2 ecosystem. They are enabled by a decentralized and permissionless set of auditors with a financial incentive to compete in increasing the security of an app’s state transition.
The best reference is (obviously) the Stackr whitepaper itself.