One article to understand Delta: seed round raised tens of millions of dollars in financing, building a global state sharing network

Author: delta official website

Compiled by Felix, PANews

On October 10th, Delta, a network aiming to create a globally shared state, announced the completion of a $11 million financing. The financing consists of two stages, including a pre-seed round led by Figment Capital and Maven 11, and a seed round led by Variant and DBA. Other investors include Reverie, Castle Island Ventures, Credibly Neutral, Ambush Capital, Robot Ventures, Delphi Ventures, Public Works, Komorebi Collective, etc.

The Delta network provides developers with a balance of sovereignty and interoperability by separating execution and data availability. The system also introduces Zero-Knowledge Proof's Settlement method to achieve seamless multi-domain interoperability.

What isdelta?

delta is a network composed of autonomous execution environments, connecting through the basic layer of Decentralization and censorship resistance. delta separates ① execution and ordering from ② data availability and Settlement. Execution and ordering occur on the domain (similar to rollup / execution Sharding), while data availability and Settlement are provided by the validator network operating the basic layer. The combination of these components forms a unified global state machine.

Although the global state is shared, domains will have full control over their Block space. They can be specific to an application or a general computing platform; they can use any existing Virtual Machine or develop their own custom programs; the operating model can be Decentralization, centralized, or even licensed. Any application, enterprise, or service provider can set up their domain without permission. Their users can pay fees with any Token through off-chain subscription, or not pay fees at all.

Users obtain the ability to resist censorship at the basic level. They decide how to use their assets and maintain the ability to self-custody - their funds are secure and have the right to exit the domain without permission. Assets exist on the basic level, so there is no need to implement each domain separately.

The base layer promotes native interoperability between domains. For users, Delta provides an instant, almost free, and bridgeless experience for transferring assets from one domain to another.

The key to achieving these features is zkSettlement. Similar to rollups, domains can take various forms, but all settle to the same underlying layer. Unlike rollups, they achieve Settlement by directly integrating Zero-Knowledge Proofs into the underlying layer through verification. This 'fixed' zkSettlement method achieves unprecedented levels of global interoperability between local networks. Domains can interact with each other, even atomically, without the need for global coordination like blockchains.

The state model of delta implements leaderless Consensusprotocol, whose performance far exceeds any blockchain. The domain in delta essentially isolates the ability to change the global state based on expenditure. Due to this restriction, full ordering of transactions is not required at the base layer. If there is no ordering, the domain can use the minimal Byzantine reliable broadcast (BRB) protocol to continuously flow out its state changes. In addition to the communication overhead of dropping each transaction, delta's leaderless and unordered Consensus is more powerful and scalable than the full ordering Consensus implemented by all blockchains so far. Unlike these systems, delta only needs to add more machines to linearly scale throughput.

Solving the Biggest Problem of Cryptocurrency

Platforms and applications have as many options as Web2, and can be combined with Smart Contracts on the same blockchain. However, application chains and rollups require complex interoperability solutions to 'glue' independent blockchains together. The drawbacks of this approach currently far outweigh the benefits of sovereignty.

For example, consider the challenges faced by the new chain in guiding users.

All on-chain applications should provide a seamless experience for new users to deposit stablecoins and other assets. However, to achieve this experience, new chains face significant challenges in selection:

1. In terms of cost and process, it is very important for stablecoin issuers to deploy locally on-chain. This option is only suitable for well-funded projects.
2. Users are required to bridge from the Settlement layer of Rollup, which has strong security, but will bring significant resistance to users who do not yet have stablecoins on the Settlement layer of Rollup.
3. Application chains and Rollups can collaborate with third-party bridge connectors, but this approach requires significant trade-offs. Using a single vendor may pose unbearable security risks, but the user experience with multiple vendors would be poor, as users would have to consider multiple versions of the same underlying asset.

As an integrated system, delta solves the most important challenges related to launching AppChain or rollup:

Allocation

• When integrating on-chain, attracting users and Liquidity is a common goal between the chain and its applications. When applying on-chain, builders can only rely on their own efforts - users and assets cannot be shared.
• On delta, assets and users are globally shared - once they are loaded onto delta, they can be accessed by all domains built on delta. At the same time, domains retain maximum control, owning and optimizing their own user experiences.

Interoperability

• Users want to interact with multiple applications simultaneously without friction. To facilitate this experience, AppChain must reintroduce intermediary services (third-party infrastructure and Liquidity providers) to abstract away a lot of complexity. The Block chain aims to eliminate these intermediaries, and every layer of abstraction will move away from the original value proposition.
• On delta, as the state is globally shared, domains no longer need an intermediary to connect with other domains. Users can move from one domain to another without encountering any friction caused by intermediaries or routing complexities.

Admission Threshold

• Compared to integrating a set of Smart Contracts on-chain, building and maintaining an AppChain or rollup requires more costs and resources.
• On delta, the domain can be more lightweight than other forms of AppChain and rollup. Unlike rollup, the domain does not need to prove the complete execution path and/or handle long withdrawal periods related to fraud proof disputes. Unlike independent AppChain, the domain does not require bootstrapping validator set.

Returning to the accessibility challenges of Stable Coins mentioned earlier, this challenge does not exist for domain builders on Delta. On Delta, Stable Coin issuers only need to deploy once, and all domains can equally access their holders and Liquidity, without sacrificing control and reasoning about interoperability complexity.

The Vision of delta

Delta will enhance the vision of application chains and horizontal expansion more broadly. But delta not only solves the problems of existing methods, but also creates a whole new design space.

delta provides its users with two inalienable rights - the right to self-custody and the right to exit without permission. With these guarantees, delta can safely reintroduce a range of trust models at the execution layer. For the first time, Blockchains can provide permissioned services while still ensuring that user funds are completely secure and can be withdrawn at any time. This enables a new category of enterprises, games, and even government Blockchains to coexist on public networks with trustless and Decentralized Blockchains, reaching unprecedented levels of interoperability.

Related reading: Data exploration of the user value of seven major public chains: ETH's single Address deposit is $3500, Sui is catching up with Solana with strong momentum, and TON has no Whale?