Action Items
- Follow Gelato on Twitter
- Learn more about Roll-ups-as-a-Service
- Follow Hilmar on Twitter
- Follow Luis on Twitter
- Deploy your Gelato chain
What is Gelato
Gelato is a decentralized automation protocol, often described as the "backend" for web3, enabling enhanced functionalities for smart contracts across multiple EVM-compatible blockchains. It provides developers with the tools to create augmented smart contracts that can automate processes, operate without gas fees, and interact with off-chain data. Gelato's services are aimed at overcoming the inherent limitations of EVM-based blockchains, such as Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, Arbitrum, BNB Chain, Optimism, and others, by providing:
- Web3 Functions: These allow smart contracts to connect with off-chain data and computation by running decentralized cloud functions.
- Automate: This service automates smart contract operations, ensuring transactions are executed automatically in a decentralized and developer-friendly manner.
- Relay: Gelato Relay offers scalable gasless transactions, providing users with a robust and reliable experience through an easy-to-use API.
- Gasless Wallet: By combining Gelato Relay with Safe's Smart Contract Wallet, developers can employ an SDK to enable Account Abstraction, significantly improving user experience.
Gelato's mission is to drive the global adoption of smart contracts and web3 technology by addressing issues of reliability, scalability, and centralization. It aspires to assist developers in onboarding the first billion users to web3 by handling backend services, allowing developers to focus on creating superior user experiences that can compete with traditional web2 services.
The platform supports over 200 web3 projects, facilitating the execution of millions of transactions in sectors such as DeFi, NFTs, and gaming. Well known web3 entities like MakerDAO, Safe, Connext, Optimism, Olympus, PancakeSwap, Beefy Finance, and Abracadabra use Gelato for various automated functions.
What is Gelato's Roll-up-as-a-Service (RaaS)?
In the episode Hilmar and Luis introduced their Rollup as a Service (RaaS), offering production-grade Layer 2 solutions with Account Abstraction to streamline the deployment of scalable and user-friendly Ethereum applications. With Gelato RaaS, users can deploy, monitor, and scale custom Layer 2 solutions in a single click, promising Visa-like scalability and a familiar Web2 user experience.
Gelato RaaS integrates seamlessly with major infrastructures like OP Stack and Polygon zkEVM, and features a comprehensive suite of Web3 services, including native Account Abstraction and out-of-box services for a complete Web3 experience. The platform boasts a 99.9% uptime, round-the-clock monitoring, smart contract compatibility, no developer overhead, autoscaling RPCs, and DDOS protection.
This turnkey solution is already powering custom Layer 2s for customers such as Astar Network, with the potential to significantly reduce development resources and optimize processes.
10,000 Rollups for All Apps
The idea behind the RaaS is to make it as simple as possible to deploy and run an L2 for any service. One example the Gelato team gave during the interview was dYdX, which started out on Starknet, and has transitioned to Cosmos specifically to run their Appchain. The decentralized perp dex now runs their own validator set to provide specific network functionalities to their users that are tightly controlled and monitored.
With the onboarding and creation of thousands of new apps in the future, it makes sense for certain projects to deploy their own L2. Frax is yet another example of a protocol which sees the benefit of running its own network. With the deployment of Fraxchain, it can tailor and build apps specifically to support the latest and most cutting edge services for its users.
In Gelato's idea, they believe that deploying and running an L2 should be as simple as spinning up an AWS instance, which all can be done with a couple of clicks. Infrastructure should not be a limiting case for builders who want to deploy on different networks. We don't require smartphone devs to create new hardware for each app idea, and we shouldn't need to require devs to develop and run infra for each new web 3 app.
Gelato is at the forefront of an oncoming wave of new L2 infrastructure that will radically transform how we use web 3. Listen to the full interview to learn all the details about RaaS and Gelato in our latest episiode
