Overview
What is Layer?
Layer is the easiest platform to create, deploy, and secure an AVS. Using next-generation, WASM-based smart contracts, Layer offers top-tier tooling and component libraries, enabling developers to launch AVSs quickly and securely. Commitments open up new possibilities for security and governance through customizable interwoven restaking flows. Leveraging the power of WASM, Layer empowers you to build full-stack decentralized applications.
How Layer works
Layer has 3 key components:
-
AVSs (Actively Validated Services): Off-chain computational services that can be verified on-chain.
-
Commitments: Security for AVSs built on EigenLayer’s pooled security and restaking model, allowing for the creation and configuration of complex, interwoven commitment flows with pre-made components.
-
The Layer SDK: a high-performance, rust-based blockchain capable of running Wasm smart contracts.
Each component of Layer is built to be generalized and highly customizable, enabling builders to configure any part of the stack to fit their particular needs.
AVS
AVSs (Actively Validated Services) are computational services that are run offchain and that can be verified onchain. Services are run by operators that can listen for onchain events to trigger an offchain task. Operators run the task, come to a consensus, and submit the result onchain. With Layer, services can choose their preferred operator sets, configure their verifier contracts, and select their security preferences.
Conventional smart contracts are limited by onchain VMs. Layer AVSs supercharge the power of smart contracts, extending verifiable functionality to offchain compute. Services built with Layer are highly performant: they are are run as WASM components, which are lightweight and can be run at near-native speeds. Because Layer AVSs are fully customizable, a service can be created to theoretically run any verifiable application, including decentralized frontends, defi applications, and even decentralized AI agents.
To learn more, visit the AVS page. Follow the Layer tutorial to start building your service in 5 minutes.
Commitments
Just as AVSs represent an evolution of smart contracts, commitments are an evolution of staking and restaking. Layer commitments consist of composable components that can be linked together to create configurable, interwoven flows supporting multiple assets for securing AVSs. To learn more, visit the Commitments page.
Layer SDK
The base level of the Layer stack is the blockchain. The Layer SDK is a developer-friendly blockchain written in Rust and built for exceptional stability and speed. The Layer SDK can be used to easily launch a customizable, tailor-fit blockchain to suit your needs. Built with IBC compatibility in mind, chains built using the Layer SDK will be interoperable with most popular ecosystems. The Layer SDK is designed to run WASM-based smart contracts for reliable and performance-critical executions. A Layer chain provides the necessary framework for AVS and commitment contracts to run, as well as any generalized smart-contract applications.