Midgard is a modular framework for deploying optimistic rollup Layer 2s on the Cardano blockchain, designed to enhance transaction throughput, reduce costs, and enable advanced decentralized applications.

We have Hydra as our native state of the art state channel solution, we have partnerchains as our native evolution of sidechains, Midgard aims to be our native evolution of rollups.

The UTxO system is a match made in heaven for rollups. It allows us to build true L2 rollups that inherit maximal security from Cardano. This cannot be replicated in account based systems. It’s not a coincidence that Fuel, the first general purpose L2 to receive a decentralization rating of stage 2 (highest possible) is UTxO based.

Fraud proofs for global state systems like Arbitrum and Optimism are extremely difficult to implement and very expensive and complicated to conduct onchain (and require multiple parties);this is why to this date despite spending millions in R&D neither of those protocols has working fraud proofs, and they all rely on centralized permissioned sequencers and operators.

On the other-hand, fraud proofs on Cardano are extremely straightforward and require only a single party (no challenge-response proofs) due to the local state properties of the ledger.

Not a single blockchain has managed to achieve true permissionless general purpose rollups. At the end of the day, the top “L2s”in the blockchain space right now are all custodial multisigs. The Midgard framework is a first of its kind, in its capabilities to deploy completely permissionless rollups that inherit the full security of Cardano. No centralized sequencer No challenge response “proofs” No custodial multisig Permissionless fraud proofs (open to anyone) Permissionless operator set Deposits and withdrawals cannot be censored (inherits the full censorship resistance of Cardano)

This is all made possible by Cardano’s unique local state EUTxO architecture.

UTxO contention, small block size, local state, transaction determinism, all of these “problems” may have led you to question why these design choices were made.

Midgard aims to show you that these are actually not problems at all. In-fact quite the opposite, they are extremely powerful properties that, together, provide unique value that simply does not exist in any other ecosystem. These are, in actuality, the core pillars that make Midgard even possible in the first place.

You cannot build Midgard on Ethereum, Solana or Sui. It is a protocol that is only possible on Cardano.

Midgard has a tokenless design. All transaction fees on Midgard are paid in Ada, and every Midgard block is published to the Cardano L1. Where Hydra moves transactions offchain (and thus does not contribute consistently in fee revenue to the Cardano L1) Midgard keeps transactions onchain but in a more compact form (ie. rolls up transactions offchain into a compact representation that is published onchain, thus the name rollups). This means that increased economic activity on Midgard directly translated to increased economic activity on Cardano, this represents a significant source of fee revenue for the Cardano L1. Midgard does not have independent consensus or economic security, instead it inherits economic security and consensus from Cardano.

The framework achieves mainnet readiness and can be used to deploy L2s to the live network. The fraud proof system is complete and comprehensive. The onchain smart contracts for managing and ensuring the correctness of the rollup state and the offchain code required to construct the transactions to interact with them are complete. The permissionless operator system is complete such that anyone can become a L2 operator by submitting the required bond.

The tangible deliverables are:

1. Midgard L2 smart contracts - complete onchain code for mainnet readiness
2. Midgard Node - mainnet readiness
3. Midgard Mithril DA / Midgard DAC - mainnet readiness
4. Midgard Tx Builder
5. Midgard Preview Deployment - a Midgard rollup is deployed to preview (and thus can also be deployed to mainnet)

Onchain: $215,000 Offchain: $215,000 Mithril DA / DAC: $215,000 Midgard Node: $645,000 Midgard Tx Builder: $215,000

Onchain - 4 FTEs Offchain - 2 FTEs Mithril DA / Midgard DAC - 1 FTE Midgard Node - 3 FTE Midgard Tx Builder - 2 FTE

Anastasia Labs is at the forefront of research & development on Cardano for over two years now. We have been involved in the development of nearly every large dApp on Cardano. We have made contributions to many of the core repos, and we actively maintain over 50 different open-source libraries, tools, and public infrastructure for Cardano.

You can read more about our work here: https://www.anastasialabs.com/

Furthermore, Midgard is already in active development, and we have already made significant progress towards our goal of EOY mainnet readiness.

Many teams will depend on the framework to launch their own L2s and fund the framework's continued development and maintenance accordingly. Furthermore, Midgard rollups are designed to be economically self-sustainable through fee revenue.

Midgard likely has the single highest community endorsement out of any proposed roadmap item.

There are no strict dependencies, Midgard is on schedule to deliver by end-of-year. However, Midgard could be greatly improved via the implementation of the following CIP: https://github.com/cardano-foundation/CIPs/pull/964