Achieving optimal bridging and interoperability is considered to be the ‘holy grail’ of blockchain advancements and is encapsulated by two significant trilemmas: the Bridging Trilemma and the Interoperability Trilemma. Current bridging and interoperability protocols typically achieve only two out of the three desired properties of each trilemma. 

However, ZKM’s ‘Entangled Rollups’ design presents a novel solution that can potentially achieve all three properties in both trilemmas.

The Bridging Trilemma involves:

• Unified Liquidity: Ensuring that liquidity is not fragmented across different chains.
• Native Assets: Supporting the transfer of native assets without the need for wrapping or synthetic versions.
• Instant Guaranteed Finality: Providing immediate and irreversible transaction finality. 

Most existing protocols manage to achieve only two of these properties simultaneously. For instance, some protocols offer unified liquidity and native assets but fail to provide instant finality due to reliance on external validators and consensus mechanisms that introduce latency and potential finality issues.

The Interoperability Trilemma involves:

• Trustlessness: Ensuring that no additional trust assumptions are required beyond the underlying blockchain security.
• Extensibility: The ability to interact seamlessly with multiple blockchain networks.
• Generalizability: Supporting a wide range of applications beyond simple asset transfers, including smart contracts and data exchanges.

Current solutions often sacrifice one of these properties. For instance, some achieve trustlessness and generalizability but lack extensibility due to protocol-specific limitations and the need for extensive modifications to support additional chains. Entangled Rollups leverage a zkVM (zkMIPS) to generate zero-knowledge proofs (SNARKs) that prove that executions (such as a burn/lock) happened on a source blockchain, and as a result, enable a reciprocal action (such as mint/unlock) to happen on a target blockchain. This fundamental mechanism addresses both of the aforementioned trilemmas comprehensively.

How Entangled Rollups meet each property of the bridging trilemma:

• Unified Liquidity: Entangled Rollups synchronize state across multiple chains using recursive validity proofs, eliminating liquidity fragmentation.
• Native Assets: Transactions involve native assets directly without requiring wrapping. This is facilitated by shadow contracts that lock/unlock assets across chains, ensuring seamless asset transfer without synthetic versions​.
• Instant Guaranteed Finality: The use of SNARKs ensures that once a transaction is validated and included in a rollup, it is final and cannot be reversed, thus providing instant finality​.

How Entangled Rollups meet each property of the interoperability trilemma:

• Trustlessness: By utilizing the mechanics found in zkRollups, Entangled Rollups maintain the inherent security of the underlying blockchains without introducing additional trust assumptions. The proofs generated for transactions on one chain can be verified on another chain, maintaining trustlessness across the ecosystem.
• Extensibility: The architecture allows for scalable interactions between different Layer 2 platforms and supports efficient management and verification of transactions across multiple chains. This extensibility is facilitated by a shared sequencer pool and a decentralized relayer network​​.
• Generalizability: Entangled Rollups are not limited to asset transfers. They can handle various types of data and smart contract executions, supporting diverse applications like NFT transfers, cross-chain authentication, and multi-chain smart contracts.

By addressing the core challenges of both trilemmas, Entangled Rollups provide a robust and efficient solution for multi-chain interoperability and bridging, promoting a more unified and flexible blockchain ecosystem.

For a comprehensive deep-dive into ZKM’s Entangled Rollups design, the LitePaper can be viewed here: https://whitepaper.zkm.io/entangled_rollup_light_paper.pdf

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