Union: The Sovereign Interoperability Layer of the Interchain Future

The vision for an interconnected and composable future

Web3 is advancing toward a rollup-centric future where maturing modular building blocks enable an ecosystem of optimized and highly performant rollups and app-chains. In this scalable, modular world, every product has its own state machine, making interoperability the most valuable technology.

However, current interoperability protocols are slow, insecure, operating outside the Interchain Stack via off-chain actors. Union is the first step towards a world where thousands of heterogeneous app-chains, L2s and monoliths are connected through one single sovereign standard.

The need for asynchronous interoperability across the Interchain Stack

The modular thesis, pioneered within the interchain ecosystem, is the idea of stripping apart the core functions of a blockchain into distinct interchangeable layers. Within these functional areas, specialized players build application-specific infrastructure to perform specific network functions. This concept shows significant potential as the idea of shared security, fundamental to modular execution layers, provides substantial economic security assurances. Additionally, execution proofs and specialized data availability & sequencing layers enable scale while maintaining network resilience and censorship resistance.

Today, the modular thesis appears more idealistic than practical. While it offers scalable and secure execution layers, it also fragments users and liquidity across numerous ecosystems.

Simply put, modularity disrupts composability.

Despite attempts to address this with generic message passing solutions, asynchronous composability lags behind synchronous composability in monolithic stacks. Centralized control over interoperability and composability based on business considerations is not viable. Permissionlessness is crucial for hyperscale, and interoperability in the Interchain Stack should be a fundamental right accessible to all. Without an efficient sovereign interoperability layer, the modular interchain thesis fails.

Union: The sovereign interoperability layer unifying L1, L2s and appchains

Union has built a sovereign, fully permissionless interoperability layer, fostering horizontal hyperscale throughout the Interchain Stack. Union’s mission is to utilize consensus verification to forge unstoppable, decentralized connections, enabling secure asset and data transfers across chains for anyone. Harnessing the compression capabilities of ZK proofs, this system can achieve massive scalability.

As the primary IBC hub for the interchain ecosystem, Union acts as a specialized co-processor for Ethereum, focusing on bridging and settlement to facilitate seamless connections between rollups and app-chains. Union’s ultimate goal is to extend IBC support to all L1s and L2s. This expansion is evidenced by its diverse partnerships within and beyond the interchain ecosystem, including Movement, Noble, and Celestia, as Union’s interoperability layer expands into the EVM universe with L2s such as Scroll.

Union’s utilization of ZK proofs makes bridging cheaper, more secure, and faster than its competitors. The multisig structure employed by other blockchain bridges creates a centralized point of failure susceptible to hacks. Since the multisig model relies on validator participation to sign transaction requests, the number of validators tends to be small, thereby reducing the number of keys required to be compromised for a hack to succeed. This risk is exacerbated when a single entity controls the majority of signatures, resulting in an even more centralized structure.

Union’s ZK proof technology maintains independence from centralized actors and enables a multi-chain future by removing multisig wallets. This future encompasses thousands of heterogeneous chains with varying consensus protocols across different ecosystems, all capable of seamlessly integrating themselves into an IBC-powered, permissionless interoperability layer. With a single zk-powered integration, instant asynchronous composability can be achieved, which provides more democratic access to connectivity with no reliance on centralized actors.

In its current iteration, Union generates numerous ZK-powered consensus proofs and distributes them across all connected chains. This process introduces significant overhead in proof generation and verification, which escalates with the increasing number of chains. To enhance the efficiency of the system, the Union research team is exploring ways to implement a proof aggregation layer, which consolidates all light client updates across chains into a single proof. This approach will further simplify the proof generation process, requiring only 230k gas per block to achieve full-scale interoperability with an unlimited number of chains.

Union envisions a future where anyone can seamlessly connect to thousands of chains at the same cost as connecting to one. Union believes modularism is here to stay, powered by Union.

About the team

Union is composed of builders. We contributed to CosmWasms and our team contributed to implementing IBC within DotSama and the first trustless bridge between Kusama and Polkadot. Our founders include ex-Composable Finance, ConsenSys, Polygon and US Navy leads.

Join the Union, engage in the Discord and follow us on Twitter.

To learn more, check our Docs.