Lagrange Labs, a zero-knowledge (ZK) company, today announced the integration of its light client protocol, Lagrange State Committees (LSC), for Mantle Network. LSCs are a ZK light client protocol for optimistic rollups (ORUs) designed through combining Lagrange’s ZK MapReduce Coprocessor and EigenLayer restaking. Each state committee borrows security from Ethereum by dual staking, both through EigenLayer restaking and with the rollup’s native token.
Modeled after the Ethereum Sync Committee, the Lagrange State Committees serve as a foundation for secure and trustless light client-based cross-chain bridging and messaging. This creates a “fast-mode” for all interoperability protocols integrated with Mantle Network, by providing a secure guarantee of Mantle Network’s state before the end of the fraud proof window.
Augmenting developer experience and cryptoeconomic security on Mantle Network, the LSC is deployed as a core primitive to enable trustless and efficient cross-chain access to Mantle. This delivers additional benefits such as capital efficiency of liquid staking derivatives like Mantle Staked Ether ($mETH), while providing a new source of native yield to Mantle token ($MNT) holders.
A New Primitive for Mantle Developers
Lagrange State Committees provide a new primitive that simplifies the developer experience of integrating Mantle contracts with cross-chain applications. Rather than requiring developers to bootstrap their own isolated security guarantees, LSCs create a transparent and easy-to-integrate hub for cross-chain security. Integrating LSCs as a light client protocol will unlock a myriad of key benefits for the Mantle Ecosystem, including an enhanced developer experience, ecosystem expansion, fast messaging, new cross-chain pathways, enhanced liquid staking token (LST) and yield rates — all culminating in a permissionless interoperability hub.
Enhanced Developer Experience
Currently, developers building a cross-chain interoperability protocol must independently run a network of client nodes or watchers that verify the state of each optimistic rollup supported, often resulting in increased security overheads as they scale. The integration of the Lagrange State Committee on Mantle Network mitigates this by allowing developers to outsource their security and fully focus resources on optimizing their product features. By not relying on additional trust assumptions for state access, developers can build more expressive applications without the shackles of cross-chain functionality constraints.
Mantle Ecosystem Expansion
The increased security on Mantle Network’s state cross-chain will further empower developers to build a range of new emergent applications. This includes cryptographic primitives such as decentralized identification (DID) which attests to a user’s digital identity, and financial primitives, such as cross-chain portfolio risk management which optimizes capital allocation. Coupled with the deployment of LSC, Lagrange’s ZK MapReduce Coprocessor and Recproofs will dramatically reduce latency costs, cheaply compute risk updates, and allow for efficient rebalancing owing to secure cross-chain access.
Beyond the LSC integration, Lagrange is committed to using its MapReduce coprocessor to empower developers on Mantle Network. Future integrations of Lagrange’s proving stack with Mantle Network may include contract-secured revenue, DEX VIP programs, and sequencer transaction ordering commitments.
Fast Messaging
In optimistic rollups, asset withdrawals can only be finalized after the challenge window required for fraud proofs has passed, thereby introducing message latency. The LSC network directly addresses this by design. Each state committee acts as a “fast-mode” for bridges and messaging protocols by accelerating attestations to finality and removing the need to wait out the challenge window. Optimistic rollups also directly benefit from the LSC’s fast-finality property as it solves a key UX pain point for layer-2 (L2) users without introducing additional security assumptions. Correct attestations to finality from LSC nodes are incentivized by the fact that slashing of malicious nodes can happen on-chain, based on the pre-existing process.
New Cross-Chain Pathways
Using state proofs, cross-chain protocols can more easily consume Mantle Network state without any additional overheads or reliance on the security of intermediary protocols. This opens a window of opportunities for developing new cross-chain pathways with Mantle Ecosystem, that are secured by the strength of Mantle’s native assets. Mantle Network’s cross-chain partners will also be able to safely integrate with the Mantle Ecosystem by relying on cryptoeconomic security directly provided by Mantle.
Enhanced LST Rates
With the integration of the LSC on Mantle Network, liquid staking token (LST) contracts like Mantle Staked Ether ($mETH) and decentralized exchanges can offer better primary market rates for swapping between $mETH and ETH. Instead of relying solely on a bridge or messaging protocol, which introduces latency and an additional messaging fee, exchange and staking liquidity protocols can use state proofs to effectively reduce the spread of redemptions on both the Ethereum L1 and the Mantle Network L2.
Enhanced Native Yield
Holders of $MNT can participate as operators of nodes in the Lagrange State Committee or delegate their stake to other operators. Participation in the state committee protocol will generate yield back to $MNT stakers from the fees paid by cross-chain protocols that consume the security provided by the committees. This in turn provides additional cash flow to $MNT holders, creating a new yield source and providing additional utility for $MNT tokens for doing their part in contributing to securing the broader Mantle Ecosystem.
Permissionless Interoperability Hub
LSCs create an easy-to-integrate interoperability hub that offers fast-finality bridging and messaging based on transparent cryptoeconomic guarantees. Today, every interoperability protocol must independently build a quorum of nodes to secure the state it uses for cross-chain bridging or messaging, which incurs increased operating costs and communication overheads. In contrast, Lagrange State Committees enable any arbitrary cross-chain protocol to integrate with a single hub of shared cross-chain security that can dynamically scale in size, based on demand.
Security of the Mantle LSC therefore becomes summed into a single large shared pool, making Mantle Network a holistically secure ecosystem — enabling decentralized application (dApp) developers to build on Mantle Network easily without compromise to cross-chain message security or asset transfers.
“Incorporating Lagrange State Committees as a light client protocol for Mantle Network is a pivotal step towards revolutionizing cross-chain security and messaging. By simplifying the developer experience and enhancing the security of Mantle’s ecosystem, we’re empowering developers to create innovative applications and offering new avenues for $MNT token holders to participate and reap additional rewards,” said Ismael Hishon-Rezaizadeh, founder of Lagrange Labs.
“We’re excited to continue strengthening Mantle Network’s appeal to developers, traders and liquidity providers with the integration of Lagrange Labs’ light client on Mantle. As the current evolution of the Ethereum ecosystem has shifted the bulk of user activity and asset volume to L2 solutions like ours, there is a salient need to facilitate secure interoperability of more dApps and user assets as L2 ecosystems scale. Lagrange Labs’ solution addresses product-market fit while bringing multiple benefits to the Mantle community, and we believe this will fundamentally expedite the unlocking of DeFi’s potential on Mantle,” said Arun Devabhaktuni, lead researcher at Mantle.