The Aligned Roadmap: Ethereum as a financial backend

After a year of work and the delivery of our first product, the scope of our mission is now expanding. In this post, we share an updated roadmap for Aligned and explain our vision and plans for the coming years. We started building a very specialized piece of infrastructure to reduce zero-knowledge proof verification costs, but today, we are sharing our next steps to complete a full stack around Ethereum as a financial backend. We are constantly learning and talking with developers and financial institutions, so this is a vision we have in mind, but we will learn from the market. The mission is clear: offer all the services needed so people can build on top of Ethereum to build the best financial services possible.

Markets have been chaotic recently, and we've noticed a shift in narratives and business models. We know we will remain conservative in our spending, keep a small but strong team, and continue building at the fast pace we've sustained so far. This does not, however, change our focus, which remains on creating the services necessary for the general public, countries, and institutions to access Ethereum.

We understand that while trends may change, ZK will only become more important over time. In a world where trust in institutions and systems is eroding, ZK offers guarantees of integrity. We started Aligned because we saw a major barrier to the mass adoption of ZK technology: proof verification on Ethereum, or any decentralized settlement layer, is expensive. We knew we had to build the core infrastructure to reduce verification costs and increase throughput. Once this infrastructure was in place, we could begin to complete the stack. As usage increases, economies of scale and proof batching techniques will drive verification costs down even further.

The Updated Aligned Roadmap

This updated roadmap of products and improvements we plan to build over the next few years reflects our belief that developers need better tools and infrastructure to build useful products for end users. We are offering a complete vertical stack solution for Ethereum, offering services for scalability, UX (wallet), and interoperability. This is going to be essential to offer developers and institutions the best tools possible to access Ethereum’s security and liquidity.

Proof Verification Layer (Fast Mode)

• Decentralized network of ZK verifiers  
• High verification throughput  
• Supports multiple proof systems
• Already live on mainnet  

The proof verification layer enables the fast settlement of ZK proofs on Ethereum at a lower cost. It handles high throughput without requiring additional proving, resulting in lower latency. This is ideal for services that require low latency or that use proof systems where recursion is inefficient.

Aggregation Mode

• Combine your proofs with others for settlement on Ethereum  
• Use standalone or in dual mode with Fast Mode
• Leverages recursive proofs  
• Alpha version coming to testnet soon  

The aggregation mode allows users to reduce the cost of verifying ZK proofs by aggregating multiple proofs into one. It uses recursive proving, which introduces some latency and works best when the aggregated proofs are of the same type. This is well-suited for services that can tolerate higher latency but need the full security of Ethereum for settlement, such as rollups.

Improvements for both modes

• Subscription model, also applies to Aggregation Mode  
• Improved SDK and API  
• L2 settlement  

We still need to improve the payment system for both modes. This will unlock higher throughput for the Proof Verification Layer. We chose to build both modes to give developers the flexibility to choose what is best for their protocols. To support that, we need great tooling and SDKs so these modes are easily accessible.

Rollup as a Service

• Launch an L2 using zkVMs with one click, using ethrex as the client 
• Include a shared wallet protocol  
• In the future, it will offer Based rollups as an option

This product enables users to launch rollup services with minimal friction, offering all the necessary tooling. We believe L2s will increasingly run with Rust-based execution clients (in particular ethrex) and be proven by RISC-V zkVMs. To provide the best infrastructure for developers, we are building this product from the ground up with that vision in mind.

We already have clients across different regions, countries, and also crypto native projects that need this solution in the near future. We have been building many of the features we are offering with them in mind. 

Meta proving services

• Provide a simple interface to access both centralized and decentralized proving from external parties.
• We will offer a centralized distributed proving service to accelerate the proving needs from various customers.

We know that many developers will want to build programs on Aligned using zkVMs but they will want to delegate their proving to different service providers. Since we started building zkRust we saw a need to build a simple SDK that will allow developers to just code in rust and send their programs to get proven to the services they prefer.

Interoperability Protocol

• Intent-based bridge protocol
• Easily integrated with the rollup stack offered by our RaaS

We will build a native interoperability solution for our rollup stack so developers can choose to allow users and financial institutions to build markets to move liquidity across the space. This solution will be based on a first architecture approximation we came up with in the past, you can read more about it here.

Wallet as a Service

• Easily create your own wallet for any rollup  
• Simple integration for mobile services 
• Support for EIP-7702 and RIP-7212

Most developers will not only want to launch their own rollups or ZK applications but they will also need to offer a good UX, especially for based rollups. Taking that into consideration, we will offer wallet services using the latest account abstraction technology that will be supported by our stack.

Closing Thoughts

Instead of slowing down because of market conditions, we are choosing to build and iterate faster. We are creating a vertically integrated suite of services for developers—tools that give them greater access to Ethereum’s trust. We believe ZK is the best way to do it, and that developers deserve a great, focused product experience.

We are sure Ethereum will become increasingly more important in the future and that people will demand access to it. We might be incorrect on the exact services we build, but we will iterate and listen to developers in order to offer them the best possible tools.

Society needs technology built on trust, and Aligned is in the business of giving developers the best tools to access Ethereum’s trust.

Send proofs.

Stay tuned:  🐦 Twitter | 🗨️ Telegram | 👾 Discord | 🌐 Website | 📝 Manifesto