Why Specular?
When considering Ethereum scaling solutions, it can be a daunting task for developers to choose the right Layer 2 solution to build on. There are numerous factors to weigh, including compatibility, transaction speed, cost-efficiency, security, and the long-term support and engagement of the development team and community.
This is where Specular stands out as your ideal choice:
the system
Specular is an intent-driven L2, designed to enable the operation of next-generation intent-based dApps in a secure, trust-minimized fashion. To achieve this, the protocol enables intent-driven block building, EVM-native execution, and secure settlement—backed by a trust-minimized proof system.
intent-centricity
An intent can be defined abstractly as a user’s expression of their desired end state, with minimum transition constraints. Fulfillment of an intent generally requires counterparty discovery and solving. Optimal fulfillment of an intent, through competitive forces, requires decentralized counterparty discovery and solving.
In practice, an off-chain intent is eventually served by a solver, by producing a satisfying bundle of transactions for inclusion in a block. To ensure these bundles are included, a solver must trust the block builder. Mitigating this trust requires a form of real-time censorship-resistance guaranteed by the protocol, i.e. at the block-level. Furthermore, to ensure the user’s intent is served by the best solution—without additional trust—the protocol must enable sequencing programmability. Specular does so by enshrining a censorship-resistant programmable intentpool, and ensuring that every block must include space for the transactions produced from it.
Account abstraction (AA), introduced through a series of proposals, complements intents. Eliding the differences in these designs, AA provides users greater control, security and flexibility than EOAs today, through programmable fulfillment validation. Intents go hand-in-hand with account abstraction to enable a user-centric future for dApp development. Specular provides native AA in a form that augments intent functionality, enabling a new design space for user-centric dApps.
Settlement layer security
Optimal intent-solving requires a secure, low-cost settlement layer to reduce the operating cost and risk for solvers. While L2s today provide low cost execution, they introduce several risks. This primarily includes bugs in the protocol implementation and/or proof system, as well as governance attacks. To mitigate such risks, the system must be trust-minimized and credibly neutral. Specular’s proof system is designed to achieve these properties.
Trust minimization means that a bug or exploit in one client software stack should have no impact on the system’s overall security. To minimize software trust and provide resiliency, the correctness of a rollup should only depend on conformance of a single implementation to the L2 protocol specification. Trust is minimized when operation of the protocol depends on the fewest components possible.
Credible neutrality means that the protocol should not be in the position of picking winners and losers. The protocol should not canonize one particular software stack over another at any level of the settlement protocol. To maximize credible neutrality, the protocol should only enforce minimal constraints over L2 execution semantics—only what is necessary to guarantee correctness. This means that a validator should be able to, just as in the case of Ethereum, operate permissionlessly using any client software stack—existing or new—of their choosing.
Technologies
If you have experience in Ethereum development, transitioning to building on Specular will feel seamless and straightforward. You can use existing technologies like Foundry, Hardhat, Brownie, Truffle, etc. Head to our Developers section to get started!
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