Rome, a crypto startup, secured $9 million in funding to transform the way Ethereum layer-2 (L2) blockchains operate by using Solana as an auxiliary network, according to a recent CoinDesk report.

This investment round saw contributions from Hack VC, Polygon Ventures, HashKey, Portal Ventures, Bankless Ventures, Robot VC, LBank, Anagram, TRGC, and Perridon Ventures. Prominent figures such as Anatoly Yakovenko, Nick White, Santiago Santos, Comfy Capital, Austin Federa, and Jason Yanowitz also participated as angel investors.

What is Rome:

Rome's approach involves modularizing Solana's consensus into a set of integrated services, aiming to enhance the speed and decentralization of Ethereum L2s. 

The startup's architecture is centered around a shared sequencer with three main components: Rhea-Hercules, RaaS, and the Rome SDK. These elements leverage Solana's fast transaction confirmation, high throughput, low costs, and immutable transaction ordering, supported by Solana's entire stake.

Key Components

Sequencer (Rhea-Hercules): The sequencer batches transactions from Ethereum L2s and sends them to the Ethereum blockchain for settlement. Decentralizing sequencers is crucial to avoid single points of failure.

Rome SDK: This development kit facilitates the integration of Rome's services with Ethereum L2s, ensuring smooth and efficient operation.

RaaS (Rollup as a Service): This service uses Solana to process and sequence rollup transactions, providing a robust and decentralized solution.

Rome's solution involves executing rollup transactions on Solana, updating the rollup state, and using Solana's efficient state machine for transaction ordering. Hercules, a key component, accepts blocks from Solana and processes the payload on the rollup, thus advancing the rollup state. 

Data availability is ensured by posting data to Solana, Celestia, or Ethereum, depending on the rollup configuration. Settlement is achieved by committing the state to Ethereum.

Decentralization and Security

Rome's use of Solana as a state machine reportedly provides a highly efficient and decentralized platform compared to other blockchain options like Bitcoin, Cosmos, or Ethereum. 

The startup Rome was founded by Anil Kumar and Sattvik Kansal and aims to facilitate "atomic transactions" between Ethereum L2 networks, ensuring that transactions across different blockchains either succeed or fail together. As per reports, this mechanism minimizes the cost of failed transactions, typically to the low cost of a Solana transaction.