Waves founder unveils Units protocol for layer-2 interoperability

Waves founder Sasha Ivanov is gearing up for what he believes to be the “end game for layer-2 scalability” as he pushes through with a new blockchain protocol called Units. 

At the Future Blockchain Summit event in Dubai, Ivanov told Cointelegraph about how they are solving the interoperability problem within the Web3 space with the Units project, which they will launch at the end of October. 

The executive brought up some problems with the current state of blockchains. He explained: 

“If you want to transfer tokens from one layer to the other layer-2, you need centralized bridges. And this is very wrong. […] This problem should be resolved.”

Throughout the years, major hacks have revealed the risks associated with cross-chain bridges. In 2022, incidents involving the Wormhole and Ronin bridges led to almost $1 billion in combined losses. 

The importance of blockchain interoperability

Ivanov argued that if the problem remained unresolved, the industry would be unable to “move forward because this ecosystem is not complete.” The executive said there should be a “final solution” where all chains are interoperable and there would be no centralized bridges. He said: 

“Interoperability is very important because otherwise, you don’t have a holistic, tightly connected ecosystem. It’s very disjointed.”

Because of this, Ivanov said their team created Units to solve the interoperability problem. The executive said all blockchains created through the protocol are interoperable by default.

“If you have the same economic guarantees that are established on the base layer in connected layers, they become interoperable by default because you don’t have any like other economic incentives,” he said. 

Ivanov added that interaction between these layers would happen on the same terms as interactions with the base layer itself, which makes them work on the same terms as the base layer. Because of this, the blockchains become interoperable. 

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Interoperability in decentralized finance 

Regarding decentralized finance (DeFi), Ivanov said that liquidity will be fragmented if there is no interoperability. Ivanov reiterated that this has already led to the creation of cross-chain bridges, which carries many risks. 

The executive believes that one solution would be to create a cross-chain decentralized application (DApp) that runs on top of the Unit’s base layer. Ivanov is hopeful that a project will soon create this. 

“Once we have launched the ecosystem itself, uh, we’re going to provide grants for launching in the ecosystem,” he explained. 

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