In the multi-chain world that crypto has become, there is no greater frontier than that of chain abstraction.
The complexities of moving funds across networks, from one bridge to another, using different gas tokens, and using a vast array of different wallets are just too much for the average normie brain to handle.
If we want the great transfer of boomer wealth to us young peasants to take place on our beloved blockchain rails, then all of these technical barriers must be left in the history books.
The issues that arise from the existence of a million different networks go beyond that of just the average degenerate and their user experience. Developers must also make careful and sometimes painful choices as to where they should deploy their applications and weigh the pros and cons of doing so.
As an ape, you want the ability to move seamlessly from one application to another without worrying about getting stuck halfway because you lack the required gas token or the adequate bridge.
As a developer, you want access to the best services, like deep pools of liquidity and oracles, and the ability to write your application in a coding language that gives you the flexibility to actually build what you want.
Luckily enough, there is a team of chads with a deep understanding of all these issues, gained from years of building in the web2, Ethereum, and Cosmos worlds, who seem to have found a solution.
Enter Initia.
What is Initia?
Initia is a network built from the ground up to support optimistic interwoven rollups. The end goal is to produce a protocol demonstrating how a real multi-chain ecosystem should look.
The team at Initia took all the best aspects of networks like Ethereum and Cosmos and decided that the only way to get the job done was to start from scratch and rebuild the entire tech stack.
A noble endeavor, if ever there was one.
In its simplest form, Initia is a layer-1 [L1] that allows for the spinning-up of layer-2 [L2] application chains, otherwise known as Interwoven rollups (IRs). These IRs can seamlessly connect with the entire application ecosystem.
Building this modular infrastructure style from top to bottom gives Initia the flexibility to make changes on the fly, future-proofing the network as new and improved technologies come online.
The ability to upgrade your network at will cannot be overstated in an industry that moves so quickly that Einstein himself would struggle to formulate it.
Now I know what you’re probably thinking… Do we really need more L1s in this already saturated space?
And it’s a valid question. But Initia differentiates itself from the rest by providing some solid abstraction features and onboarding novel applications that don’t exist anywhere else in the cryptosphere.
Some of the interesting applications built on Initia that are worth checking out are:
Initia’s co-founder, Zon, comes from a web2 software engineering background and found himself pivoting to the world of crypto. After spending some time playing around in the Ethereum DeFi trenches and helping build applications on Cosmos, he realized these networks had some problems.
As good as Cosmos is, it was simply too complicated to traverse its landscape with all of its bridges and wallets, not to mention the complexities of spinning up your own chain on the network with dedicated validators and subsequent token inflation.
The OP tech stack was certainly a better way to get this job done but lacked the fungibility and composability between rollups. In hindsight, the need for third-party oracles and bridges was a real pain in the ass for builders.
How is it that every L2/app chain professes to be “Ethereum aligned,” yet depending on which stack you are built on (OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, etc.), there is a huge vendor lock-in that breaks composability? That doesn’t feel very aligned to me.
By redesigning and rebuilding the entire stack, Initia was born.
The inner workings of Initia
It's worthwhile taking a deeper look at what is going on under the hood in order to truly understand what makes Initia different from other L1s out there.
As we now know, Initia was built from the ground up and takes into consideration all the best aspects of networks like Ethereum and Cosmos.
Essentially, you end up with an L1 protocol that is specifically designed with the core goal of supporting the L2s built on top of it.
The entire Initia stack, which is basically the L1 and L2 architecture combined, is known as Omnitia. Initia itself is the L1, and the interwoven rollups are the L2 applications built on top.
Because Initia has full control over the entire tech stack, it is better equipped to provide incentives and rewards to those who use and build on it. A network like Ethereum struggles to do this beyond the inherited security that comes from building on ETH.
The Initia L1 acts in a similar fashion in the sense that it provides security to its L2 applications.
In addition to this security, it also provides much-needed liquidity, routing, and full interoperability between the applications built on it.
Its design utilizes a VM-agnostic optimistic rollup framework, aptly named the OPinit stack. This is built using the Cosmos SDK with CometBFT (previously Tendermint) underneath.
Being VM-agnostic means that developers can integrate various virtual machines into their applications. Ethereum’s VM, moveVM, and wasmVM are all viable options for deploying smart contracts on the Initia L2.
Not only this but by using Celestia’s Data Availability (DA) layer and the Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC) protocol, developers can build incredibly powerful and scalable applications that can be easily connected across the ecosystem.
Other interesting features include native USDC, instant bridging ability, cross-chain interoperability, fiat on-ramping, decentralized sequencers, and enshrined oracles that don’t require third-party permission to use.
All these are readily available for all applications built in the Initia ecosystem.
Enshrined liquidity
Perhaps one of the most interesting features of the Initia network is its enshrined liquidity mechanism.
The easiest way to understand enshrined liquidity is that the Initia network has its own native DEX (InitiaDEX) where tokens are paired with the native INIT token, for example, INIT-wstETH, and are then staked with validators on the Initia L1.
This creates a novel way of securing the network and at the same time builds out a large liquidity hub on the L1 that the L2 applications can then access.
The InitiaDEX sits at the center of the entire Omnitia ecosystem. It provides a platform for swaps as well as a variety of liquidity pools like weighted pools and StableSwaps.
INIT and INIT paired tokens can be staked via the InitiaDEX interface and staking not only secures the network and provides liquidity but also counts toward votes in Initia governance proposals.
The fun doesn’t end there, though.
Omnitia Shared Security (OSS)
Initia’s OSS mechanism is designed to ensure the security of every interwoven rollup.
If something goes wrong at the L2 application level, then the main Initia L1 validators can step in and sort it out.
This is all possible thanks to Celestia’s data availability infrastructure and the use of light nodes that can easily verify data without needing to pull in all the information contained within the block that houses the dodgy transaction.
As you can imagine, this streamlines the entire process and takes up far less time and computing power.
Understanding the L2 (interwoven rollups)
The entire point of Initia’s existence is to facilitate the building of applications on their interwoven rollup layer. It therefore goes without saying that diving into how these interwoven rollups work is pretty important stuff.
At their core these interwoven rollups are their own blockchains that use optimistic rollups for settlement. Thanks to the use of this rollup tech and the CosmosSDK infra, they’re capable of some pretty impressive speeds.
How does a 500ms block time and the ability to process 10,000 transactions a second sound? This speed is crucial for developing awesome applications that provide a first-class user experience.
As mentioned earlier, these interwoven rollups are VM-agnostic, allowing for the development of smart contracts in various coding languages, such as Solidity and Move.
The optimistic rollup framework they use (OPinit) is a first of its kind as it's the first OP rollup framework specifically designed for the Cosmos ecosystem.
Builders of interwoven rollups on Initia also have access to a wide range of cool plug-and-play features that make creating some kick-ass applications easy.
Rollup plug-ins
A big issue of other L1s that Initia has addressed is the need for third-party service providers for things like bridging, data management, fiat ramps, and oracles.
By using Initia L1 as a type of native service provider, L2 rollups can simply plug in all the features they will need directly from the L1 itself.
This removes the need for developers to outsource to the different service providers needed to build the application they dream of and drastically simplifies the entire application creation process.
Some of the features available to developers from the get-go are:
- Instant bridging
- Access to native USDC and CCTP token fungibility
- A variety of frontend widgets to improve the UX
- Token fungibility across all available virtual machines
- Oracle access
- Fiat ramps
- Built-in wallets
- A deep tool kit for simplifying the building process
If you have any sort of dev instinct, your brain is probably beginning to spin thinking of all the possibilities.
These features allow developers to build top-notch application chains that span across Cosmos, the EVM, and more with just a few hours of work.
Minitswap
Anyone who has had the pure pleasure of using an optimistic bridge would have experienced the joy of waiting forever to receive their tokens on the other side.
This wait time can literally be days while moving funds from an L2 to an L1, as there is a challenge-period to verify whether the transaction is legit.
There are also risks involved with the use of single sequencers and the inherent centralization that occurs because of them. Not to mention that changes in liquidity can make for terrible slippage and sub-optimal price points.
Initia has a solution to this. Minitswap.
The Minitswap DEX allows for rapid bridging between the Initia L1 and the rollup of your choice.
When bridging in the opposite direction, which usually takes hours, if not days, a user can simply use Minitswap to swap their tokens back to the INIT token without having to wait for any challenge periods to expire.
The combination of all this Initia tech makes for a simple-to-use application chain that abstracts away many of the pain points that users have had to deal with until now.
Winning!
Final thoughts
It’s probably fair to say that purpose-built application chains are the future.
General purpose chains have likely spread themselves too thin and will, therefore, struggle to attract new and interesting applications.
Initia has positioned itself well within the purpose-built app chain meta. Thanks to its simplistic and practical design, it should easily find a solid product-market fit for developers and users alike.
These guys seem to provide the entire ecosystem experience and have managed to cover the entire product stack needed to do so.
The stats speak for themselves.
Having their own multi-chain block explorer (InitiaScan), their own app (InitiaApp), and providing a native wallet alongside social features like Initia usernames, they seem to have most angles covered going forward.
Abstracting away the need for complicated bridges, multiple token standards, fungibility, multiple wallets, and gas fees has been discussed for some time as crypto’s endgame.
It appears the Initia team is well on its way to achieving this and will likely be able to compete with Cosmos and Ethereum over the longer term.
Despite the valid concerns of liquidity fragmentation across the insane amount of different chains and tokens we currently have, any crypto degenerate has to welcome a platform that provides total abstraction and cool new applications to bring us that sweet normie exit liquidity that we so desperately need.
To dive deeper into all things Initia, make sure to check out their website. There, you can read through their documents and Medium articles to stay in the loop and keep up with everything that's going on.
