Polymer has launched the Polyverse Testnet, bringing IBC to Ethereum

Polymer, an Ethereum rollup that is hoping to become the interoperability hub of Ethereum, has launched the Polyverse Testnet, becoming the latest group hoping to tackle blockchain interoperability.

The testnet will be launched in three phases named ‘Basecamp’, ‘Into the Unknown’ and ‘Discovery’. The first phase, Basecamp, will go live today and is designed to incentivize developers to facilitate liquidity on the testnet from other rollups.

Phase 2, Into the Unknown, will begin next week, in which Polymer will select several decentralized applications to promote to end users, who will also be able to receive rewards. Then the final phase, Discovery, will focus on refining and optimizing incentive mechanisms to drive engagement.

Blockchain interaction problem

Like many crosschain communication and connectivity protocols today, Polymer was created to solve the problem of blockchain interoperability.

Today's blockchain ecosystems remain relatively isolated from each other, meaning they cannot communicate or interact with each other – creating a poor user experience for their customers.

An example of this in Web2 is not being able to send emails from your Gmail account to your Outlook account.

To solve the communication barrier, crosschain communication protocols and other interoperability solutions have emerged as a means of allowing blockchains to securely transmit valuable information to each other.

This type of infrastructure is critical to blockchain scaling, as evidenced by the interest and attention it has received from investors.

Wormhole, one of the largest croschain communication solutions today, raised $225 million in a private token sale, receiving interest from Brevan Howard, Coinbase Ventures and Multicoin Capital late last year.

Similarly, LayerZero successfully launched a seven-figure Series B fundraising, in which investors from a16z, OKX Ventures, and Sequoia Capital gave the protocol $120 million to expand operations.

Polymer also recently revealed that it acquired $23 million to bring the Cosmos SDK's Inter-blockchain communication (IBC) protocol to Ethereum.

Polymer's approach to interoperability

Unlike many interoperability protocols today, Polymer is not designed as a third-party bridge but as an Ethereum rollup layer 2 solution that serves a similar purpose as the ‘interaction hub’ on Cosmos. It aims to provide IBC for Ethereum and connect with other layer 2 solutions.

Devain Pal Bansal, product analyst at Polymer Labs, says that IBC, unlike many other interoperability solutions today, is not a bridge application but a network standard.

“The biggest benefit of introducing it to Ethereum, especially Ethereum rollups, is that it expands the capabilities of how a rollup settles on Ethereum through the native bridge and extends it across rollups – without The third party attests to the data or its validity by simply using the shared source of truth for all rollups – Ethereum,” Bansal said.

Tommy O'Connell, senior product manager at Polymer, explains that applications can build their own bridges and control incoming and outgoing messages using the layer 1 trust layer. This eliminates the need for additional assumptions about third-party trust.

“This also allows us to focus on allowing chains to participate in Polymer's chain ecosystem with a single connection to the hub, minimizing Polymer being a drag on growth.”

This is different from Wormhole, for example, which relies on a 13 out of 19 supermajority to authenticate a message before it is created or sent. It also differs from Axelar, which relies on authenticators for authentication.

However, it is important to note that Polymer's minimum viable product (MVP) will be limited to Base and Optimism at testnet launch.

Despite this, O’Connell noted that they plan to directly expand to other OP stack chains and soon other chains such as those in the Cosmos ecosystem.

“The main benefit of OP stack rollups is that we have built an IBC client for OP geth, allowing us to extend the capabilities of the native L1<>L2 bridge across rollups. It is especially attractive because we can unlock other chains built on the OP stack with minimal scaling effort,” O’Connell emphasized.