Rome Raises $9M to Serve Ethereum Layer-2s Through Solana

Shared sequencers and data availability (DA) are services that Rome could provide, as blockchain builders increasingly rely on "modular" networks

Crypto startup project Rome, which is aiming to use Solana as an auxiliary network to provide services to layer-2 blockchains built atop Ethereum, has emerged from stealth and announced that it has raised $9 million in funding.

The financing was provided by top-tier investors, including Hack VC, Polygon Ventures, HashKey, Portal Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot VC, LBank, Anagram, TRGC, Perridon Ventures, as well as several notable angels, according to a press release shared first with CoinDesk.

Among the angels participating in the round are Solana co-founder Anatoly Yakovenko, OpenSea co-founder Nick White, Eden Network co-founder Santiago Santos, Comfy Capital, Austin Federa, Jason Yanowitz and others.

Rome, which was founded by Anil Kumar and Sattvik Kansal, is aiming to set up Solana as the network underpinning shared sequencers as well as data availability (DA), according to the release.

A sequencer is the component of a layer-2 blockchain that batches up transactions and sends them to the base Ethereum blockchain to be settled, and some experts say these sequencers need to be decentralized to eliminate what can be single points of failure. A DA project is designed to store the reams of transactional data generated by Ethereum layer-2s, and to do so at a lower cost than what it takes to put the data onto the main Ethereum chain.

"The main thing is, a shared sequencer needs to be its own chain, and it takes a lot of time, a lot of effort to do that, so we were looking for what chain we should use," said Kumar in an interview with CoinDesk. "If we look at Solana as a state machine, it is the best state chain, in comparison to Bitcoin, Cosmos, Ethereum. And also, we can do atomic transactions between L2s."

The project will also aim to allow "atomic transactions" between Ethereum layer-2 networks, said Kumar. This is where multiple legs of a transaction are made on different blockchains. If any part of the transaction fails, none of it goes through, and the user is only out the cost of a Solana transaction, which is typically very low, he said.

Modular blockchains have become a key area of interest in the web3 space, as they unbundle certain functions that were previously handled exclusively by the main Ethereum chain and allow them to be handled instead by alternative projects. Some projects are working to develop shared sequencers, while others are focused on DA.

Metis, an Ethereum layer-2 project, already runs a decentralized sequencer, while Espresso Systems is building what it describes as an "L2 sequencing marketplace."

Last month, NEAR Foundation, which supports the alternative layer-1 blockchain NEAR Protocol, spun out a project with $13 million in funding called Nuffle Labs that aims to provide DA. Another project, Avail, is using its own network for DA and disclosed in April that there are plans for it to be integrated as an option into five Ethereum layer-2s, including Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, StarkWare and zkSync.

Rome says a closed network will be open to developers starting this month, with plans for a test network at the end of 2024 and a main network launch in mid-2025.

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