The Rise of RAAS: Which RAAS projects do you need to know?| CryptoSnap

Binance Launchpool's 45th Project AltLayer Goes Online Soon, and RAAS as an industry track has attracted a lot of attention.

In the current multi-chain trend, leading Blockchain such as Optimism, Arbitrum, zkSync and Polygon have launched Rollup SDKs, which has also spawned many service providers to help projects build Rollup chains. This type of service is called RAAS (Rollups-as-a-Service).

This week, Dr. DODO will introduce AltLayer and 5 other early RAAS projects for everyone to explore the multi-chain universe together.

AltLayer

The first introduction is AltLayer, which recently got listed on Binance exchange. AltLayer's main product is Restaked Rollups combined with EigenLayer's restaking service, which can strengthen the security, decentralization and user experience of Rollup chains through EigenLayer's Actively Validated Services (AVS). It also provides temporary execution layer services suitable for temporary chains for specific short-term purposes, such as resolving Ethereum mainnet congestion when Yuga Labs issued Otherdeed for Otherside NFTs. In addition, AltLayer's platform is designed for a multi-chain and multi-VM world, so it supports both EVM and WASM (used by Cosmos, Polkadot, etc.), and also plans to support Solana VM (Sealevel) and Move VM.

Gelato

Gelato has been participating in providing various backend infrastructure services for EVM public chains including Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon, Avalanche, etc. Gelato has been deeply involved in smart contract automation services and also joined the RAAS track last year, focusing on zkRAAS services for zkRollup chains with Polygon CDK integration to provide one-click zkRollup upgrades for projects. Its core features include hosting, monitoring and operating rollups. It is currently building zKatana (Astar zkEVM testnet) for Astar Network. Recently it also announced support for OP Stack, Optimism's Optimistic Rollup SDK.

Conduit

Conduit focuses on being an RAAS platform for Optimistic Rollups. It raised a $7M seed round led by Paradigm last March, initially focused on OP Stack and successfully built OP stack Rollup chains such as Zora Network, Aevo, Lyra and Orderly Network. Recently it has also added support for Arbitrum Orbit and helped Parallel Network successfully build an Arbitrum-based L2 Rollup. For the data availability layer (DA), Conduit also supports both Ethereum and Celestia. With Conduit operating and maintaining the Rollups, projects can focus more on building products rather than infrastructure.

Caldera

Caldera also focuses on being an RAAS platform for Optimistic Rollups. Last September, it raised a $9M seed round led by Sequoia Capital and Dragonfly with participation from 1kx, SevenX Ventures, etc. Caldera positions itself as a one-stop service to provide projects with all the tools and resources needed to build Caldera Chains based on OP Stack or Arbitrum Orbit frameworks. In Caldera’s architecture, the settlement layer allows EVM-compatible chains such as Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon and Avalanche. The data availability layer (DA) also supports Ethereum, Celestia or EigenDA.

Currently, Loot Chain (OP Stack) launched by Adventure Gold DAO, Manta Pacific (OP Stack) launched by Manta , Rari Chain (Arbitrum Orbit) launched by NFT platform Rarible, and HYTOPIA (Arbitrum Orbit) launched by the former NFTworlds team are all built with technical support from Caldera.

Lumoz

Lumoz is a zkRAAS platform, which raised a $4M seed round led by Web3.com Ventures with participation from NGC Ventures, Puzzle Ventures in April last year. It utilizes an innovative hybrid consensus mechanism including PoS and PoW. Lumoz also supports multiple chains as the base settlement layer. It can settle on Ethereum, BNB Chain, Polygon or Lumoz itself, and can be paired with multiple zkEVM solutions such as Polygon zkEVM, zkSync, Scroll or StarkNet. The data availability layer (DA) can also choose Ethereum, Celestia or EigenDA freely. The recently very popular L2 Chain ZKFair is built by Lumoz.

Cartidge Slot

The Slot platform launched by StarkNet game infrastructure provider Cartridge allows developers to deploy manageable Katana sequencers and Torii indexers to build L3 chains with StarkNet as the settlement layer. It is the first RAAS specifically designed for the needs of full on-chain games (FOCGs). Not much information has been disclosed yet. It is currently helping to build L3 game chains based on StarkNet for Realms and Dope Wars.

Author's Perspective

The multi-chain development direction set since the last bull market has become more prominent in this bull market. The development direction of modular blockchains makes building chains much simpler. Technologies previously required to build public blockchains now each have corresponding teams and services that can achieve the goal. The RAAS track is created for the multi-chain universe and application chains trend.

The narrative is great, but the author has big doubts about the practicality and real users. Chains exist only to serve applications. Apart from GameFi chains and Defi Perp futures contract tracks where interoperability can be excluded, current blockchain projects, especially in the DeFi field, are Lego products built on top of a handful. They don’t have the capability to build an independent chain.

Therefore, developing applications oriented towards mass adoption should be higher priority than these alternative chain services in the author’s opinion. Of course, whether to develop infrastructure or products first is like the “which came first, the chicken or the egg” question where the two are interdependent. However, before killer application products appear, the author is not very optimistic about the medium-term development of such projects in the short term. They can gain attention by following new narratives, while in the long run they may benefit from the launch of hit applications.

How to incubate or discover products with the capability to develop independent application chains and how to create sustainable revenue including empowering token holders are high walls these RAAS projects need to break through.

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