We’re excited to announce that Variant has co-led delta’s seed investment alongside DBA.

Throughout the past decade, the blockchain industry has continuously debated the right set of architecture tradeoffs – on Twitter/X, in research forums, and through the actual implementation of these multi-billion dollar systems. We have seen a proliferation of networks exploring this new paradigm, aiming to cement themselves in a unique position within the competitive landscape.

It is more clear than ever that Layer-1 blockchains, as monolithic execution environments, will not scale to the inevitable onchain future with billions of active users. Ethereum first formally acknowledged this in 2020 when Vitalik published “the rollup centric roadmap.” Rather than scaling the Layer-1 network horizontally through sharding or increasing hardware requirements, Ethereum embarked on a path of vertical scaling. Sharing similar architecture characteristics, Solana has positioned their version of rollups and a vertical scaling roadmap as “Network Extensions.” There is even meaningful momentum to build similar systems on top of Bitcoin on the backs of increased awareness for op_cat and the taproot wizards cultural phenomena.

These trends are obvious and pervasive. The current landscape of multi-billion dollar infrastructure projects are all having to adapt to supporting the next generation of onchain applications and users on the fly – dealing with substantial technical debt and the difficult reality that they must ensure backward compatibility above all else. Ultimately, this is leading to suboptimally designed solutions that, in hindsight, may look more like Rube Goldberg machines than the future of finance.

But the last decade of research and hard work has proven fruitful. We now have an understanding of how to vertically scale blockchain networks through zero-knowledge cryptography and verify computations succinctly without re-executing them. We have many virtual machines and execution environments that offer differentiated functionality beyond the Ethereum Virtual Machine. By combining these insights without the burden of technical debt or preserving backwards compatibility, we can create a new foundation for the future of applications.

Introducing: delta

delta is a novel network of networks, striking a balance between interoperability, customizability, and sovereignty – designed from the ground up with a clear opinion on how blockchains should vertically scale using the past decade of research and latest zero-knowledge cryptography.

delta takes the best features of integrated architectures like Solana and combines them with the expressivity and customization of more modular ecosystems. Developers of all skill levels can utilize application-specific “domains,” which can run any type of custom logic, in any programming environment. These domains can be as simple as a cloud function running in a hosted environment, a fully permissionless rollup, or anywhere in between. As long as a domain adheres to a minimal set of globally defined rules – like providing a specific proof that transactions have a valid signature and comply with the account’s spending permissions – it will be able to utilize this infrastructure, share accounts and assets, and interoperate with other domains. Fundamentally, the shared state, along with improved interoperability, addresses the cold start problem affecting those that wish to launch their own application specific infrastructure but do not yet have sufficient adoption, distribution, or awareness to attract an initial user base. This solves one of the major friction points of modular ecosystems (fragmentation) while allowing for the scale and seamless UX of integrated solutions.

We believe delta will power the next generation of application-specific infrastructure and usher in a new era of innovation. The network’s implementation of a CRDT-based state model and an “order-less” consensus protocol allows for unique performance optimizations not yet seen in the tradeoff space. The team is the right mix of technical and commercial to bring this vision to market, composed of computer scientists, protocol engineers, and former research directors at major digital asset institutions. 

We’re excited to support Ole, Ria, Myles, and the broader team on this journey.

Read more: https://www.delta.network/articles/introducing-delta

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