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Earlier this month we debuted the Polymer Partnership Program, designed to enable users with varying technical skill levels and interests to contribute meaningfully to Polymer. Within our Partnership Program, we outlined a pathway for our most engaged and capable partners to collaborate more closely with us.
Our launch partners are organizations we consider Polymer power users, that also innately understand the space we’re building in, and closely collaborate with us to shape our product. Today we’re excited to announce an integration with our first launch partner, Catalyst, a permissionless cross-chain AMM for the modular future.
Why Catalyst?
As the number of Ethereum L2s increase, liquidity continues to fragment. With new rollups launching and their dApps looking for adoption, it becomes increasingly important to enable easy flow of not just messages but also liquidity across them.
Catalyst’s goal is to enable swaps between any assets and any chains, effectively acting as a liquidity layer to transfer value cross-chain. Their solution provides a global liquidity layer that is amplified by cross-chain messaging, making Catalyst an ideal partner for Polymer.
As Polymer takes care of establishing a messaging standard i.e Inter-Blockchain Communication (IBC), Catalyst gets the right infrastructure to build out their token bridging application, both together boosting the adoption of rollups and helping Ethereum scale.
How Does Polymer Enable Catalyst?
Catalyst implements token vaults between chains to facilitate swaps. These vaults need to communicate with each other in-order to perform the AMM logic developed by Catalyst. This is where Polymer steps in with our IBC standard. Polymer Hub enables Catalyst vaults to communicate with each other, acting as a transport layer to settle the AMM logic for swaps. All of this is settled on Ethereum with the Native L1 <> L2 bridge acting as an IBC client.
In essence, this leverages the same security as the rollup native bridge. Instead of exiting an L2, waiting for a 7 day challenge period, and then bridging / swapping on another L2, with Polymer, Catalyst is able to leverage the same security and provide the end user a single-leg swapping experience across multiple L2s. This greatly decreases friction for end users. They can seamlessly navigate across the growing Layer 2 landscape more freely and securely.
In addition to connecting the expanding Superchain ecosystem, It’s critical to connect new chains without involving permissions. Polymer's design gives Catalyst the freedom to continue expanding pool liquidity across the Superchain in a permissionless manner. Since Polymer serves as the central interop hub for the Superchain - any pools Catalyst establishes on a new chain are automatically linked to the broader Superchain network through a single connection to the Polymer Hub.
What’s to Come?
As an early launch partner, Catalyst received a direct line of communication to Polymer’s engineering and product team, where Catalyst seamlessly integrated with Polymer’s network. This enabled Catalyst to successfully send cross-chain messages securely via IBC, allowing permissionless expansion across OP-stack rollups. Polymer will be launching a public testnet in the coming weeks. If you’d like to participate, or become a launch partner and collaborate more closely with the team at Polymer, please reach out to Tommy.
About Cata Labs
Cata Labs is a software development company that contributes to open-source technology, including Catalyst Protocol. Cata Labs is backed by prominent investors such as Spartan Group, HashKey, Polygon and Circle. Check out our website here and read more here.
Catalyst Protocol is an AMM purpose-built to connect all chains. Its mission is to empower individuals to acquire any asset on any chain. Using Catalyst, any chain can swap assets with major blockchains like Cosmos, Ethereum and its rollups. Catalyst Protocol is operated by Catalyst Foundation, based in the Cayman Islands.
About Polymer Labs
Polymer Labs, composed of skilled distributed systems and infrastructure engineers, crypto pioneers, and accomplished business operators, is at the forefront of advancing Ethereum interoperability with IBC. With technical values based on TCP/IP, Polymer’s mission is to establish the next generation of the internet by ensuring that the interoperability layer of the decentralized web is neutral, open, permissionless, and uniform across ecosystems. As the creators of the Ethereum Interoperability Hub, the first Layer 2 focused on enabling IBC interoperability, Polymer sets a new standard in blockchain technology.
Follow us on X and sign up for our newsletter on our website to learn more. If you would like to join us in building an interoperable future for crypto, check out our careers page.