Unveiling the Polymer Partnership Program

Polymer launches its Partnership Program.
Polymer Labs

Blog

The need for a unified interoperability standard between blockchains is more pressing now than ever before. The lack of a secure interoperability standard has resulted in billions of dollars in hacked token bridges, dozens of non-neutral standards, vendor lock in, poor developer UX, and liquidity fragmentation. 
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Last week we announced the close of our $23M Series A funding. This raise is a major milestone for Polymer and significantly empowers our mission of building and standardizing an open, neutral, and permissionless interoperability layer connecting all blockchains.
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Building new standards for interoperability will require thoughtful collaboration from a wide variety of contributors and skill sets across a dozen ecosystems and hundreds of blockchains. For those of you compelled to shape the future of blockchain interoperability, we invite you to join the Polymer Partnership Program.
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The Polymer Partnership Program is designed to enable users with varying technical skill levels and interests to contribute meaningfully to Polymer, whether to applications or infrastructure complementing Polymer, or to open source core protocol contributions. We’ve organized the program into three main groups; Early Adopters, Insiders & Launch Partners.
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Early Adopters:
Be a Pioneer
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Start here – you can become a Polymer Early Adopter by participating in the Polymer Incentivized Testnet (“PIT”). Early Adopters are those who engage with Polymer before the mainnet launch. That means you, yes you, can easily become a Polymer Early Adopter! By being an Early Adopter and contributing to the PIT, you have the opportunity to earn rewards. Be on the lookout for our PIT blog where you can learn more about how to become an Early Adopter.
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Insiders:
Deepen Your Impact
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For Early Adopters who show a high level of meaningful participation in our testnet, you can graduate to the Insiders program. As an Insider you’ll gain access to a number of exclusive features including: engineering support through office hours and our private telegram, the opportunity to participate in user research, and priority rewards. Your testnet participation could qualify you for the Insiders program. Stay active, and you may be contacted to help with further testing or with new opportunities and features!
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Launch Partners:
Shape the Future
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This group is composed of visionaries and leaders in the industry. As a Launch Partner you will be considered one of the Polymer “power users”. Launch Partners will have the opportunity to collaborate directly with other leading partners and will have dedicated support from the Polymer team. You’ll enjoy enhanced visibility into the network, strategic input into product development, and priority support. This program is designed to best enable partners who are catalysts for the mission to revolutionize blockchain interoperability
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Stay Connected with Us! 

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We’re excited to continue accelerating towards a public testnet with you all. More information will be available soon. In the meantime, to better understand the needs and preferences of potential testnet developers like you, we have created a focused developer survey.
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Why Your Participation Matters: 
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• Your feedback will directly influence the development of Polymer, guiding our key decisions.
• Be part of a pioneering group shaping the future of the testnet environments.
• Gain exclusive early insights and the opportunity to be among the first to access and test new features!: 

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Click here to take the survey. It will only take a few minutes of your time, but your insights as early contributors will be instrumental in shaping an outstanding experience for a public testnet launch.
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Thank you for being a vital part of this journey.

Polymer Labs Raises $23M to Build Ethereum’s Interoperability Hub

Polymer Labs raises $23M in Series A funding to build Ethereum's Interoperability Hub.
Polymer Labs

Polymer is excited to announce that its closed $23M in Series A funding. The round was co-led by Blockchain Capital, Maven 11, and Distributed Global with contributions from Coinbase Ventures, Placeholder, Digital Currency Group, North Island Ventures, & Figment Capital. 
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“Polymer’s mission is to establish the next generation of the internet by ensuring that the interoperability layer connecting all blockchains is neutral, open, modular, and permissionless across ecosystems,” said Peter Kim, Polymer Co-founder.
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Ethereum has established itself as the most vibrant and robust network in Web3, hosting a diverse community of developers and users. However, its scalability challenges have prompted the creation of a growing number of Layer 2 solutions including rollups, DApps and bridges. 
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While Layer 2s offer scalability benefits, they also introduce challenges related to interoperability and composability including liquidity fragmentation, end user friction, and complexities for developers. Existing interoperability solutions such as token bridges are widely used but have proven unreliable and susceptible to hacks, leading to a lack of standardization within the Ethereum ecosystem with billions lost in exploits. 
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Polymer is set to launch a Layer 2 that employs the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) Protocol and Optimism Stack to serve as the Interoperability Hub for Ethereum, connecting billions of dollars in value across rollups. 
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“We are thrilled to back Peter, Bo, and the Polymer Labs team on their mission to bring IBC, the most battle tested and used interoperability standard, from Cosmos to Ethereum and the rest of the crypto ecosystem," said Yuan Han Li, investor at Blockchain Capital.
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Polymer's solution is designed for developers and businesses building a wide range of Web3 solutions, including DeFi, NFTs, and real world asset tokenization. Additionally, Polymer's customizability and robust security features make it ideal for traditional and crypto institutions alike. Polymer serves as the transport hub between different blockchain networks at the kernel level, enabling seamless information exchange. Initially compatible with Ethereum and all chains currently under the IBC protocol, the transport hub will grow to support all chains in the future.
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Polymer recently announced a partnership with leading Ethereum data availability protocol EigenLayer to substantially improve the scalability and cost effectiveness of their interoperability solution.
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“We are really excited that Polymer is bringing the generalized IBC primitive into the Ethereum rollup landscape by building a versatile transport hub, and thrilled that we at EigenLayer have the pleasure of partnering with the passionate team at Polymer” said EigenLayer founder Sreeram Kannan. 
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With a professional team experienced in distributed and database systems at scale coming from Google, Citadel, McKinsey, Coinbase, Amazon, Verizon, Twilio, EY, and Uber, Polymer's team is uniquely positioned to innovate within this space.
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As the creators of the Ethereum Interoperability Hub, the first modular IBC-based networking Layer 2, Polymer sets a new standard in blockchain technology. The funds raised in the Series A round will be used to further develop Polymer's protocol and expand its offerings. 
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Maven 11 Managing Partner Balder Bomans said, “As big believers in a rollup future, we think rollup interoperability with standardization is a key piece of the modular stack. We are convinced the setup by Polymer will enable the next 1,000 rollups to seamlessly and securely interoperate with each other at scale and bring more adoption into the crypto industry.” 
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We'll be releasing our public testnet soon. Developers interested in exploring the capabilities of Polymer are encouraged to sign up for early access.
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For more information about Polymer Labs and its vision for interoperability, please visit their website and follow the company on X. 

Polymer’s Multi-Hop IBC Spec Merges into IBC Repository

Polymer announces multi-hop IBC specification is now merged into the IBC repository.
Polymer Labs

‍TLDR; With the addition of Polymer's multi-hop specification to the IBC repo, the IBC protocol is armed for expansion to all ecosystems and for aggressive scalability while optimizing network topology.
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The multi-hop upgrade simplifies the way IBC channels communicate by significantly reducing the total number of connections required. This allows for more efficient cross-chain connectivity without the need for numerous individual links. As a result, any chain choosing to opt into the IBC network can easily interoperate with all other enabled counterparties via a single plug-in.
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The Polymer OP Stack rollup will leverage multi-hop to serve as a middle hub that aggregates these IBC connections, creating more efficient and secure message paths between the expanding Ethereum rollup ecosystem.
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Overcoming Direct Chain to Chain Connection Limitations

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Before the multi-hop upgrade, the IBC network was designed to grow organically with Cosmos-SDK appchains launching direct 1:1 connections with each other to enable interoperability. The result: a dense network topology with multiple redundant connections (i.e., multiple paths between any two chains) and suboptimal network scalability. 
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Source: Map of Zones
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A snapshot from Map of Zones shows that any chain currently joining the IBC network is forced to establish a connection with every other chain of interest one by one. Consequently, IBC as an interoperability network has been continuously limited to exponential time complexity.
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The idea behind multi-hop is to reduce the number of redundant connections by redesigning IBC topology as a sparse network. The upgrade substantially increases the efficiency of connectivity through a middle hub where any chain can establish a single IBC connection and indirectly access and submit state update requests to any other chain in the network.
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Source: The Multi-Hop IBC Upgrade Will Take IBC to Ethereum and Beyond
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The sparse IBC network enabled by the multi-hop upgrade reduces interoperability to linear complexity, meaning that the total required connections for the entire network to be interoperable scales linearly with every new chain.
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How Multi-Hop Routing Works

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The technical approach behind multi-hop IBC leverages the inherent properties of an IBC connection, specifically the ability to store the consensus state of a counterparty chain via light clients. By forming a linked list of connections pointed to a specific chain, relayers can prove the entire series of IBC connections using Merkle inclusion proofs, without requiring additional writes to intermediate hops.
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These components are key in understanding how Polymer can serve as the de-facto interoperability rollup for the Ethereum rollup ecosystem.
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Relayers in Multi-Hop IBC

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Relayers act as the messengers of information along the route from the source to the destination chain. With the multi-hop upgrade to IBC, relayers can use a linked list of an IBC channel’s pre-existing connections to authenticate all intermediate steps. Merkle inclusion proofs verify correctness of the list and eliminate the need for strictly direct chain-to-chain messaging.
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In simpler words, multi-hop enables IBC connections to be stored more efficiently, which allows a channel to operate across multiple paths to different chains instead of being stuck to one. As a result, there can be any number of connections in the middle steps between the source and destination chain, and the proving logic will remain the same. In the future, dynamic path aggregation for the most efficient message route is the potential next step.
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Streamlining Intermediary Processes

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One of the significant advantages of multi-hop is the elimination for the need to maintain additional record-keeping or changes at the intermediate chain hops. By avoiding the complexity of modifying each chain in the hop sequence, the Polymer rollup hub ensures a smoother and more efficient relay process from the source to destination chain.
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Maintaining Compatibility and Minimizing Changes

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Furthermore, the multi-hop upgrade is meticulously designed to ensure backward compatibility. In other words, multi-hop does not render existing connections and protocols obsolete; instead, it seamlessly integrates with them. The need for minimal changes to the existing IBC specification ensures that the transition to multi-hop is as smooth and disruption-free as possible for all stakeholders.
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History Rhymes

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The current state of Ethereum rollup interoperability mirrors the dense connectivity and suboptimal scaling strategies used in 1:1 connections. The current process for achieving interoperability between two rollups requires deploying smart contract endpoints of a general message passing (GMP) protocol on both chains. The route from source to destination assumes that the GMP protocol will handle the complete verification of a cross-chain message correctly.
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The process is suboptimal for two reasons:
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1. Non-Standardized Transport Layer: as new rollups emerge with different VM types and execution engines, deploying contract endpoints becomes increasingly difficult.
2. Slow Interoperability Scaling: the current mechanism still requires rollups to use 1:1 connections with each other in order to enable interoperability.

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If Ethereum rollups are to form a cohesive ecosystem, a similar redesign of the topology will be required.
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Evolving Ethereum Interoperability

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As crypto applications improve and develop cost-effective ways to enhance on-chain user experiences, their corresponding infrastructure stacks will trend more and more towards complete modularity. Early evidence can be observed in the quantity of Layer 2 services popping up in the Ethereum ecosystem to provide abstracted execution environments, data availability layers, and ZK-proving systems. And as more Layer 2 rollups enter the market, the average user transaction fee in EVM world will asymptomatically trend towards zero.
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Scalability roadmaps are on their way to a big green check mark, but the job isn’t finished until the thousands of Layer 2s that are likely to exist in the future are able to inherit an enshrined interoperability standard. Protocol fragmentation and multi-sig bridging techniques fail to meet the standards for a robust user environment, leaving the Ethereum rollup market ripe for a secure and neutral alternative: IBC.
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The Polymer rollup serves as an IBC hub and multi-hop router that makes the entire Ethereum rollup ecosystem look like a tightly coupled mesh network of execution environments, data availability layers, oracle providers, and so forth. Any two Ethereum rollups can establish secure IBC connections by connecting to Polymer, greatly reducing total costs of interoperability. Each IBC connection can also have different security properties. 
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Rollups Together Strong

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Polymer plays a key role in facilitating the multi-hop routing of IBC packet data, laying the foundation for a potential mesh network of interoperable Ethereum rollups.
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In mesh design, a network of securely interconnected rollups is centered around a middle hub that enables any new rollup added to the network to immediately start transmitting messages to existing participants through a single IBC connection to the Polymer hub. The design shifts scalability from an exponential to a linear model, enhancing interoperability in a more manageable and efficient way.
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In addition, novel rollup designs combining modular components will benefit from being able to use Polymer to completely abstract away the transport layer. Rollups with modular components, such as an SVM engine in the case of Eclipse, can focus on building fast execution environments while delegating cross-chain processes to a standardized IBC network facilitated by Polymer.
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Source: Polymer: Ethereum's Interoperability Hub
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The combination of these two factors will significantly improve the scalability of interoperability by enshrining interoperability into the Ethereum ecosystem. 
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The multi-hop IBC breakthrough not only enhances the efficiency of data packet transmission across various networks but also paves the way for a seamless, unified rollup landscape. These advancements promise to revolutionize the way we approach rollup interoperability, setting a novel standard for the Ethereum ecosystem.
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Polymer Labs is a team of experienced distributed systems / infrastructure engineers, crypto OGs, and skilled business operators building the Ethereum Interoperability Hub, the first blockchain interoperability solution providing Ethereum rollups cross chain connectivity powered by Ethereum security. Polymer is also a contributor to Inter-Blockchain Communication and an active steward of the IBC community, including spearheading IBC Summit and OpenIBC.
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‍Follow us on X and sign up for our newsletter on our website to learn more. If you would like to join us in building an interoperable future for crypto, check out our careers page.