TL;DR
- Web3 Landscape has changed a great deal since the Moonriver and Moonbeam Network launches
- Moonbeam Foundation is looking for feedback from the Community to help chart a strategic direction forward
- Proposal is to explore a potential expansion to the Ethereum ecosystem by building on the research work streams described in the Moonrise product roadmapGo to page [object Object] 77Go to page [object Object]
- After collecting feedback from the community, a more concrete proposal will be developed along with a referendum in order to formally ratify community support
Background
A lot has changed in Web3 since the launch of the Moonriver and Moonbeam networks 2.5 to 3 years ago. Even before then, Polkadot and Cosmos had the foresight to begin building interoperable networks of blockchains. While initially dismissed by maxis of other chains, at this point all other major ecosystems have shifted in this direction (eg. Ethereum L2s, Polygon AggLayer, etc). However, each of these ecosystems are seeing varying levels of success in terms of traction, ability to scale and complexity faced by application developers.
Polkadot has indeed achieved a model for scale but this has come at the cost of higher complexity requiring builders to apply asynchronous design patterns that come with UX challenges. This in turn has led to lower levels of traction/adoption. DOT holders are also recognizing that in the current model, value will tend to accrue toward parachains rather than DOT itself. (Interestingly, a similar realization seems to be occurring within the Ethereum community with regards to L2s following the Dencun update - see The Chopping Block episode 692Go to page [object Object] 8Go to page [object Object], Bankless episode from September 4Go to page [object Object] 8Go to page [object Object].)
This is more or less the thesis laid out in Rob’s Plaza Blog PostGo to page [object Object] 27Go to page [object Object] and the reason for advocating for a shift in direction for Polkadot toward a vertically integrated architecture which would in theory lead to more value accretion to DOT holders. DOT holders overwhelmingly supported this shift in direction in Referendum 885Go to page [object Object] 30Go to page [object Object].
There are some community members that view Plaza as being potentially competitive with Moonbeam and other parachains. Indeed, many ideas have been thrown around within the Polkadot and parachain communities relating to Moonbeam and Plaza’s shared future.
However, Moonbeam and Plaza have fundamentally different design goals. Moonbeam’s focus is full Ethereum compatibility and providing a deployment environment for Ethereum developers with all the tooling they expect and virtually no changes required to their applications. This is primarily achieved by way of the “Frontier” pallet. Meanwhile, Plaza will be based on PolkaVM, optimized for higher throughput. EVM support is achieved using a transpiler resulting in a trade-off of compatibility for performance.
It is the Moonbeam Foundation’s view that while there may be some overlap, there is absolutely a place for Moonriver and Moonbeam alongside Plaza for the foreseeable future. Moreover, the Foundation is committed to a continued spirit of cooperation across the broader Polkadot ecosystem.
What’s Next for Moonbeam
At the same time, we’ve heard from many in the community that Moonbeam must continue to evolve, continue to build traction and seek out new users, communities and use cases. This is why an initiative was included in the Moonrise Product RoadmapGo to page [object Object] 24Go to page [object Object] to open new research workstreams to extend Moonbeam and bring the Ethereum and Moonbeam ecosystems closer together.
Moonbeam brought Ethereum to Polkadot. Now, it’s time to bring Polkadot technology to Ethereum.
Although still in the research phase, the idea would be to launch some form of the Moonbeam Network in the Ethereum ecosystem with links back to Moonbeam on Polkadot. This could take many forms but ideally would preserve the core technology including the underlying substrate pallets leaving Moonbeam’s key capabilities intact (eg. Fast Finality, Governance, Proxies, special precompiles, etc).
With that assumption, available options begin to narrow somewhat. For example, launching an L2 based on the OP stack would not allow for a porting of the substrate framework and pallets. Instead, the result would be more or less a vanilla EVM with Optimistic finality. Moreover, the L2 space is growing increasingly crowded and without a strong differentiation, it is unlikely that Moonbeam as an L2 would gain significant traction.
The recent Announcement of Tanssi’s partnership with SymbioticGo to page [object Object] 28Go to page [object Object] is an interesting development and presents a potential path forward. For example, a Moonbeam runtime could be launched as an AVS (actively validated service) via Tanssi using restaking for security. In this way, the core of Moonbeam would be preserved while leveraging Ethereum validators for security via staking in place of Polkadot validators.
Among the key principles driving the momentum behind AVSes is the need to support services requiring a high degree of decentralization, customization, or interoperability. All three of these characteristics have been foundational for Moonbeam throughout its history.
Moreover, the restaking/AVS ecosystem is still nascent and we believe that there is plenty of room for a Moonbeam deployment to be a key venue for trading and providing utility for LRTs (liquid restaking tokens) through new use cases. A Moonbeam deployment would provide a cheaper venue than Ethereum mainnet while also being a native member of the restaking ecosystem.
Moonbeam’s cross-chain capabilities also provide for an interesting opportunity in the Ethereum ecosystem. At this point, Ethereum is a splintered landscape of varied rollup systems. Each L2 faction is working on some sort of interoperability framework for their particular stack. However, they’re not incentivized to create something interoperable across these stacks, instead preferring to build something proprietary as they fight for a bigger piece of the Ethereum pie.
At the same time, developers choosing a particular layer 2 framework don’t want to limit themselves to a particular segment of the market. With its open standards, cross-chain technology, Moonbeam would allow application developers to build across the landscape of siloed L2 ecosystems in spite of their proprietary nature.
This could be especially valuable to AVS deployments. With its EVM compatibility and cross-chain capabilities, Moonbeam has been the gateway between app-specific, heterogeneous blockchains deployed to Polkadot and the rest of web3. Moonbeam could also play this role in the re-staking ecosystem allowing Actively Validated Services to extend their services and assets out to other chains using open standards and advanced x-chain abstraction frameworks such as GlacisGo to page [object Object] 9Go to page [object Object].
Community Call to Action
This represents a bold and ambitious plan, targeting a launch in perhaps Q2 or Q3 of 2025. It would also require the diversion of some resources toward this new project, thus it may come at the expense of some planned initiatives.
At this stage, the community is asked to provide feedback around the strategy to ensure that there is at least directional alignment within the community. Assuming feedback is generally positive, the Moonbeam Foundation would continue to work with our partners to develop a more detailed proposal to present back to the community and ultimately, an on-chain referendum so token holders can formally approve or reject it.