The AggLayer’s Key Benefits

Look alive—everyone’s talking about “onboarding the next billion users to Web3” (we’ve been guilty of this in the past, too). 

But the truth is that, until recently, there simply wasn’t the infrastructure to grow crypto to the size of the Internet. No single chain can handle Internet-level traffic, and a fragmented landscape of many different chains actually fractures liquidity and users (not to mention user experience). When every chain is a moat, crypto simply can’t create an Internet-like environment. Instead, there are awkward bridges foisted on users, and demands on developers to redundantly launch projects or lock into certain blockchain landscapes. 

It doesn’t have to be like this. The aggregated approach to blockchain scaling offers a different way forward: Unifying fragmentation. The AggLayer’s main benefits can solve crypto’s biggest problems. 

The goal? Aggregate chains, liquidity, and users in a single environment, so that any connected AggChain receives the benefits of all. 

There are a lot of resources to get you started in understanding what the AggLayer is, but the tl;dr: 

• The AggLayer connects sovereign chains together, unifying liquidity, users, and state, but with the feel of a single chain. A multichain web that is better for UX, better for network effects, and better for security.   

Building the AggLayer is and has been a collaborative effort. Look around, and you’ll find it’s the most mature aggregated blockchain solution out there—and the one many people think most likely to succeed. And it’s made possible only with bleeding-edge ZK technology.

Let’s start at a high level: What are the main benefits of the AggLayer?

1. Unified liquidity, users, and state. The biggest benefit of all: The AggLayer unifies connected chains while imposing as few requirements as possible. Credibly neutral and designed for maximum sovereignty, modularity, and the best user experience. This means asset fungibility. Users won’t end up with a bunch of wrapped assets and different standards or security assumptions. Because all connected chains are unified on a bridge to Ethereum, moving assets across chains means moving native assets. This is what unified liquidity truly looks like. 
2. Improved user and developer experience. AggChains will enjoy some of the easiest onboarding for users, turning the AggLayer into a hub for consumer crypto. Here’s why: Onboarding to any one chain in the AggLayer means onboarding to every chain in the AggLayer. It’s really that simple. So when Polygon Proof-of-Stake connects to the AggLayer later this year, every user of Polygon PoS is now also connected to X Layer and any chain connected to the unified bridge. Consumer crypto has never been easier—exchanges connected to Polygon PoS give consumers an entry point to all AggChains. And developers retain chain sovereignty: they can build what they want, how they want, without compromise.
3. Secure, fast, and gas-optimized cross-chain communication. By taking ZK proofs of chain states and aggregating them together, the AggLayer provides a way to optimize and amortize gas across the entire ecosystem. Direct chain-to-chain transfers don’t have to touch L1, further reducing fees. AggChains tap secure, fast chain-to-chain interoperability and communication. For users, this abstracts away the hassle of bridging—no long withdrawal times. For developers, this opens up brand-new design spaces for new projects to grow to the size of the Internet. 

This is the 30k foot view of the AggLayer’s primary benefits. Below, let’s break it down even more atomically: How does it benefit users, and how does it benefit devs?

The AggLayer main benefits for users: a future case study 

Let’s break down the main advantages that can be unlocked, and then give a narrative example that demonstrates this below:

• Easy consumer crypto onboarding due to CEX connections
• No hassle for bridging—shared state means one-click swap, trade, and buy, for NFTs or RWAs or whatever
• Abstracts away wrapping/unwrapping assets, for better security
• Deep liquidity because it’s shared across connected chains
• Amortized gas fees and speed for crypto-wide experiences and interoperability

Now, a story: It’s 2025. Alice has funds on OKX but wants to play a game on a new AggChain, ScreamingKitty zkEVM. The gameplay looks killer. Sadly, ScreamingKitty isn’t connected to OKX. There’s no easy way to get the native ScreamingKitty token to buy a character skin and start playing.

But Polygon PoS is connected to OKX! 

So Alice sends POL from OKX to Polygon PoS. Because Polygon PoS is connected to the AggLayer, it is also seamlessly interoperable with ScreamingKitty.

In a single click, Alice can buy a character skin on ScreamingKitty zkEVM from Polygon PoS.

That’s the AggLayer’s magic abstracting powers. No cumbersome bridging, no wrapped assets, no multiple steps. Click and go.

How is this possible? 

Under the hood, what happens is that, using the bridgeAndCall() feature, POL is transferred to ScreamingKitty zkEVM, then swapped for its native token, which in turn is used to buy the character skin that lets her start playing. 

All in one click, and Alice is up and going in minutes—or faster.

These are big wins, and you can imagine a plethora of chains offering a rich diversity of experiences to users, from consumer crypto, focused on capturing more web2 users, to enterprise chains, to hardcore DeFi or ReFi experiences.

Now let’s see what developers can anticipate as the main benefits for building dApps or launching appchains or migrating existing chains to the AggLayer.

Developer main benefits: Build what you want, tap network effects

• Bootstrap liquidity. Focus on the fundamentals of your project. Devs can focus on what they do best: Building things, without the need to worry about how to get users or what blockchain has the best liquidity. This helps accelerate time to market and lets devs build. 
• No rent or value extraction. Chains don’t have to pay up to be part of the aggregated network. No extractive, rent-seeking practices as price of admission. Which is part of…
• Chain sovereignty. Chains don’t hand over governance to some supernetwork. AggChains are deployed and governed on their own terms, but still securely connected to one another. Sovereignty means each community or project gets to decide governance frameworks that are right for them.
• Aggregated user bases. By connecting to the AggLayer, developers tap into the user bases of all other connected chains. This significantly expands the potential audience for applications, enabling growth without demanding lock-in. 
• Reduced development complexity. Whenever a chain connects to the AggLayer, joining the unified bridge and submitting chain states, that chain is automatically connected to every other chain in the network. In other words, developers don’t have to manually toggle on connections. It’s all out-of-the-box. The AggLayer handles the complexity involved in cross-chain interactions, allowing developers to focus on building their applications rather than worrying about interoperability.
• Build cool things with new features. The bridgeAndCall() smart contract library opens up new design space for developers by allowing them to build dApps and functionalities that automatically execute a transfer from one AggChain to another (bridge) and then execute some action on the next chain (call). Good for developers innovating and growing their projects across an aggregated network.
• Permissionless. Core developers are building toward a future where any chain will be able to connect to the AggLayer, so developers can design, launch, and grow their chains to specific needs. The goal is to make the barrier to entry as low as possible. No chain laws that govern entry, no extractive fees. Just good ZK proofs to secure the entire multichain.some text
  • Psst: If you want to be nerdsniped on how the AggLayer secures many chains in the unified bridge—without risking draining the entire bridge—check out the deep-dive on the pessimistic proof. The tl;dr is that by treating each chain suspiciously, the entire unified bridge remains safe. 

• Sovereign chain development. Developers can use tools like Polygon CDK (Chain Development Kit) or other kits to create custom, sovereign chains tailored to their specific needs. 
• Deploy any contract from any asset, automatically. This is a biggie: The AggLayer means universal native contract interoperability. That’s a mouthful, so what does it mean? Suppose a contract is launched on one chain; whenever it’s called on by a different chain, it’s automatically launched there, too. 
• Network effects. As the AggLayer grows and more chains plug in, applications built on connected chains will benefit from increased network effects.
• Cost-effective scaling and gas optimization. The AggLayer aggregates proofs of chain states and posts a single proof to Ethereum, amortizing costs across the entire multichain network. This makes it more cost effective for developers.
• Cryptographic security. The pessimistic proof is a novel zero-knowledge proof ensuring cryptographic safety for cross-chain transactions. To keep this network safe, the AggLayer guarantees that at no point can any chain withdraw more from the bridge than what has been deposited on the chain’s L1 contract. 
• Open source and modular. The AggLayer and associated technologies like Polygon CDK and Plonky3 are open source and modular. This allows developers to contribute to the ecosystem, customize components, and build on top of a transparent and community-driven technology stack.

Whew. That’s a comprehensive list, but surely not complete. 

What you should know is that the main benefits of the AggLayer apply to each component piece—every chain, every app on every chain, each user of every app on every chain—as well as to the entire whole. 

It’s the most mature system, with the best benefits around, to truly create the conditions for Web3 to onboard the next billion users. 😉

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