Layer 2 & Scaling Solutions

Solayer is building InfiniSVM, a hardware-accelerated SVM blockchain that borrows high-frequency trading techniques such as RDMA, InfiniBand networking, FPGAs and programmable switches to target one million transactions per second and sub-second confirmation. It is a separate Layer 1 rather than a Solana Layer 2. InfiniSVM's alpha mainnet went live in January 2026, alongside a $35 million ecosystem fund for projects building on it, so it suits teams that need ultra-low-latency settlement and are willing to build early. The chain is still young, and its initial consensus mixes Proof-of-Authority with Proof-of-Stake, a more permissioned design than Solana mainnet.

Rome Protocol offers Ethereum Layer-2 teams Solana as a shared sequencing and data availability layer, giving rollups a fast ordering service without running their own validator set. Its sequencing stack is split into named components: Rhea for blind first-come-first-served ordering, Remus for atomic cross-rollup transactions, Romulus for operations spanning Solana and rollups, and Hercules for delivering ordered blocks to rollup clients. Rollup builders and teams wanting their own EVM chain, with a custom gas token and fee model that still settles on Solana, are the natural audience. The trade-off is maturity: a mainnet was targeted for mid-2025, yet official pages still described devnet and testnet networks into 2026.

Sonic SVM is a Solana chain extension built by Mirror World on HyperGrid, a concurrent scaling framework that lets independent "Grids" process transactions in parallel while staying atomically composable with Solana mainnet. Programs and accounts do not need to be redeployed, and assets and state flow back to Solana natively. A formal Validator Program opened in May 2025 with partners including Restake, Stakin and Adrastea. Teams building consumer apps whose traffic would otherwise compete with DeFi for block space, such as games, social apps and creator platforms, are the natural fit. The trade-off is maturity: the 30-40x throughput gain under game workloads is the team's own claim, and the validator program is described as only a first step toward decentralizing consensus.

MagicBlock scales Solana applications with Ephemeral Rollups, temporary Solana Virtual Machine runtimes that take over specific mainnet accounts for a session and then commit the final state back to Solana. Inside a session, applications run at 10ms block times with gasless transactions, and because execution stays in the SVM there is no bridge and no separate pool of liquidity to manage. It makes most sense for teams whose app needs many fast state changes, such as real-time games or a derivatives venue like Flash Trade, which uses the rollups for trading. The trade-off is that accounts have to be delegated to the ephemeral runtime first, and the final state is committed to mainnet when the session ends, so this is a layer for specific high-frequency accounts and not a speed-up for everything a program does.

SOON Network is an Ethereum Layer 2 rollup that runs the Solana Virtual Machine as its execution engine, separating the SVM's parallel transaction processing from Solana's consensus. SOON Mainnet settles on Ethereum with EigenDA for data availability, and SOON's own documentation cites 50-millisecond block times and roughly 5,000 transactions per second today. Alpha Mainnet and the SOON token both went live in January 2025. Developers who want Solana-style execution with Ethereum settlement are the natural audience, as are teams comparing SVM rollups such as Eclipse. The trade-off is that SOON currently relies on optimistic fraud proofs, so withdrawals face a challenge window; ZK proofs that would shorten it are still on the roadmap, and ecosystem activity remains well below that of longer-established L2s.

Light Protocol represents a significant advancement in Solana's scaling capabilities, offering a Layer 2-like scaling solution through its innovative ZK compression technology. By enabling up to 99% reduction in on-chain storage costs, the protocol effectively addresses one of the key scaling challenges faced by data-intensive applications on Solana, without sacrificing the security and composability benefits of the base layer.The protocol's scaling solution is particularly valuable for applications handling large amounts of data, such as NFT projects, gaming applications, and DeFi protocols. Through its sophisticated compression algorithms and zero-knowledge proof systems, Light Protocol enables these applications to scale efficiently while maintaining full compatibility with Solana's programming model. The protocol's approach to scaling through data compression, backed by zero-knowledge proofs, offers a unique solution that maintains the performance advantages of Solana while significantly reducing the resource requirements for large-scale applications.

Yona Network represents a groundbreaking Layer 2 scaling solution for Bitcoin that leverages Solana's Virtual Machine (SVM) to enable high-speed operations. By incorporating Solana's proven scaling technology, Yona allows Bitcoin users to perform thousands of transactions per second with near-instant finality, dramatically improving upon Bitcoin's base layer throughput limitations. The platform achieves this while maintaining Bitcoin's fundamental security guarantees through its sophisticated bridging mechanism.The platform's scaling capabilities extend beyond simple transactions to enable complex DeFi operations, including DEX trading, perpetuals, and lending - all operating at Solana-like speeds. Through its innovative architecture, Yona demonstrates how Layer 2 solutions can preserve the security of the base layer while significantly expanding its practical utility. The implementation of the Solana VM on a Bitcoin Layer 2 represents a novel approach to blockchain scaling that could serve as a model for future cross-chain scaling solutions.

Eclipse stands as a pioneering Layer 2 scaling solution for Ethereum that uniquely leverages the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) for execution. By combining Ethereum's security with Solana's high-performance capabilities, Eclipse enables unprecedented transaction throughput of hundreds of thousands of transactions per second while maintaining costs as low as $0.0002 per transaction.The platform's modular architecture represents a significant advancement in scaling technology, utilizing Celestia for data availability and RISC Zero for fraud proofs. This innovative approach allows developers to deploy Solana programs that benefit from Ethereum's security guarantees while achieving sub-second settlement times. Eclipse's efficient state handling mechanism and concentrated sequencer set further optimize performance, making it an ideal solution for applications requiring high throughput and low latency.

Termina stands out as an innovative Layer 2 scaling solution for Solana, offering enhanced performance and customization through its Network Extension (NE) platform. The platform's modular architecture enables parallel transaction processing and specialized computational capabilities while maintaining seamless integration with Solana's main network, ensuring unified liquidity and ecosystem composability.Through its SVM Engine and zkSVM Prover modules, Termina enables developers to achieve superior scalability without creating separate chains or fragmenting the ecosystem. The platform processes complex SPL transactions efficiently while maintaining Solana's security model, making it an ideal solution for applications requiring high throughput and privacy-preserving computations. Its native integration with Solana's validator set and state ensures that all operations remain anchored within the main network's security and consensus mechanisms.

Scaling is a core strategic axis for BNB Chain, addressed through both Layer 1 optimization and a dedicated Layer 2. opBNB, built on the OP Stack using Optimistic Rollup technology, provides a parallel execution environment that inherits BSC's security while enabling dramatically higher throughput and transaction fees as low as $0.001. At the Layer 1 level, successive hardforks (Lorentz, Maxwell, Fermi) compressed the block interval to approximately 0.45 seconds, and the BEP-675 upgrade pushed tested throughput from 1,237 to 2,324 TPS — an 88% increase — ahead of planned mainnet deployment. The opBNB roadmap expands block gas limits from 100 million to 1 billion, projecting a path to 10,000 TPS on the rollup. BNB Chain's 2026 technical roadmap sets a mainnet target of 20,000 TPS with sub-second finality. A longer-term architecture — described internally as a next-generation trading chain — targets approximately 1 million TPS over the 2026–2028 period, incorporating a register-based execution engine with AOT/JIT compilation, conflict-less parallel transaction processing, and a redesigned storage layer optimized for parallel reads. The client strategy is dual-track: a Geth-based client for EVM compatibility and a Reth-based client built on Ethereum's Rust execution layer for high-performance operation, with a production-ready Reth validator client planned for 2026. These improvements position BNB Chain's combined L1 and L2 stack to serve high-volume applications at costs competitive with centralized systems.

Bullet is Solana's first application-specific network extension, purpose-built to offload performance-sensitive trading operations from Solana's base chain while settling final state back to L1 via zero-knowledge proofs. The full architecture spans four layers: a Rust-based matching engine (Bullet Core) for execution, Celestia for cost-efficient data availability, Succinct Labs' SP1 ZK framework for cryptographic verification, and Solana L1 for settlement and finality. This stack allows Bullet to inherit Solana's validator security without introducing an independent trust assumption. By restricting scope to a single application domain—trading—Bullet can optimize aggressively in ways that general-purpose rollups cannot. Its application-specific sequencer runs native Rust with no VM overhead, enabling 30,000 orders per second and sub-1ms execution latency. The FIFO sequencing model is itself a scaling choice: by removing mempool priority auctions, Bullet eliminates an entire class of latency and fairness problems that affect general-purpose chains. The project describes itself as infrastructure that makes Solana more capable as a trading venue, extending rather than competing with the base chain.

Gelato's Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) lets development teams deploy a custom Ethereum L2 in minutes, selecting from supported tech stacks including OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK, and Succinct's ZK proving infrastructure. Settlement layers span Ethereum, Base, and Arbitrum, with data availability options across Celestia, EigenDA, Avail, and NEAR DA — giving builders full configurability over rollup architecture without managing sequencer operations. The Turbo Sequencer targets throughput-intensive applications, with Gelato documenting up to 1 gigagas per second and 5-millisecond block times; Reya, a derivatives platform built on Gelato's RaaS, reported sub-100ms block times and more than 400 Mgas/s throughput in production. Managed rollup infrastructure covers sequencer operations, 24/7 monitoring, and 99.99% uptime commitments, with the Snap Deploy plan starting at $99 per month. Kraken used Gelato infrastructure to launch Ink, its high-performance rollup, demonstrating suitability for institutional-scale deployments. More than 2.5 million EOAs use infrastructure running on Gelato rollups, and the broader platform reports $600 million in total value secured across its relay and rollup products.

Avail provides a purpose-built data availability layer that enables rollups, validiums, and sovereign chains to publish transaction data cheaply and with cryptographic verifiability, without routing that data through Ethereum or another L1. The layer combines KZG polynomial commitments, erasure coding, and data availability sampling so that light clients can verify data availability by requesting small random chunks rather than complete blocks, with sampling capacity growing horizontally as more clients join. Avail DA achieves 250-millisecond preconfirmations and 20-second DA finality, with a validator network that launched at 1,000 validators and is designed to scale to 10,000. The layer is compatible with major rollup frameworks including Arbitrum Orbit, OP Stack, ZK Stack, Polygon CDK, and StarkWare's Madara, and more than 70 chains and projects have integrated or partnered with it, including Monad, Lens Protocol, and Sophon.

Monad is a Layer-1 blockchain engineered to sustain 10,000 transactions per second in production, targeting the throughput ceiling that has constrained most EVM networks. Its performance stack combines MonadBFT consensus with 400-millisecond block times and 800-millisecond deterministic finality, asynchronous execution that decouples consensus from transaction processing, and parallel execution that runs independent transactions concurrently across multiple threads. A custom state database, MonadDb, removes the overhead of general-purpose storage to keep state reads off the performance-critical path. The chain launched its public mainnet in November 2025 and processed over 140 million transactions in its first months of operation while sustaining full TPS output. By mid-2026, total value locked exceeded $450 million—evidence that the throughput architecture attracts real application deployment. Monad achieves these gains without sharding or rollup dependencies, positioning it as a standalone high-throughput settlement layer built entirely within EVM semantics.

Polymer Hub is an Ethereum Layer 2 built on a hybrid architecture combining the Cosmos SDK, the OP Stack rollup framework, and EigenDA as a data availability layer. Settling to Ethereum L1 via the Optimism Stack gives all cross-chain state transitions a canonical finality anchor, while EigenDA boosts cross-rollup bandwidth for data-intensive applications without adding overhead to mainnet. The Cosmos SDK contributes native IBC packet-routing, channel management, and application primitives including interchain accounts and ICS-20 token transfers. As an Ethereum rollup, Polymer Hub functions as shared protocol-layer infrastructure for the broader multi-rollup ecosystem rather than an application-layer product. Its OP Stack foundation means it shares a derivation specification with Base, OP Mainnet, Mode, and World Chain, enabling a single ZK circuit to cover the entire OP Stack family without requiring custom code per connected chain. Sequencer pre-confirmations extend its utility to latency-sensitive use cases like cross-rollup order routing and real-time solver settlement.

Lumio is Pontem Network's Layer 2 framework and most architecturally ambitious product, described as the first VM abstraction framework for blockchain scaling. It allows developers to build with any virtual machine — Move VM, EVM, or the Solana Virtual Machine — and settle transactions on any supported Layer 1, including Ethereum and Solana. The Lumio Canary Mainnet operates as an optimistic rollup on the OP Stack, joining Optimism's Superchain alongside Base and opBNB. Multiple Lumio instances are live or in active testing: an Ethereum Mainnet canary, a Move VM Testnet, and a Solana Devnet deployment. The network has processed over 43,000 daily transactions at average fees of approximately $0.00007. Lumio decouples execution from settlement, supporting multiple VM environments and positioning itself as cross-ecosystem interoperability infrastructure rather than a single-chain protocol.