Rollups fragment liquidity by design. Each L2 operates as an isolated state machine, forcing users to rely on slow, trust-minimized bridges like Across or Stargate for asset transfers, which breaks atomic execution.
future-of-dexs-amms-orderbooks-and-aggregators
Blog
Why Shared Sequencers Will Redefine Cross-Rollup Liquidity
Current cross-rollup bridges are slow and risky. Shared sequencers enable atomic execution across chains, creating unified liquidity pools and solving fragmentation at the ordering layer.
introduction
THE LIQUIDITY FRAGMENTATION PROBLEM
Introduction
Shared sequencers solve the atomic composability crisis that is crippling the multi-rollup ecosystem.
Shared sequencers enable cross-rollup atomicity. A single sequencer network, like Espresso Systems or Astria, orders transactions for multiple rollups, allowing a swap on Arbitrum and a loan on Optimism to settle as one atomic bundle.
This redefines liquidity as a network effect. Instead of siloed pools, capital becomes fungible across chains, creating a unified liquidity layer that mirrors the UX of a single chain like Solana.
Evidence: Without atomic composability, a simple cross-L2 arbitrage fails, leaving millions in MEV on the table. Shared sequencing captures this value by guaranteeing transaction ordering across rollup boundaries.
key-trends
THE LIQUIDITY FRONTIER
Executive Summary
Shared sequencers are the critical infrastructure that will unify the fragmented rollup ecosystem by solving atomic composability and MEV capture at the network layer.
01
The Problem: Balkanized Liquidity Pools
Today's rollups operate as isolated islands. A user swapping on Arbitrum cannot atomically interact with a lending pool on Base or zkSync. This fragmentation forces capital inefficiency and creates a poor UX, locking $30B+ in rollup TVL into silos.
- High Latency: Cross-rollup messaging via bridges takes ~10-20 minutes.
- Capital Inefficiency: Duplicate liquidity across chains increases opportunity cost.
- MEV Leakage: Value extracted from cross-domain arbitrage is lost to external searchers.
20min
Bridge Delay
$30B+
Siloed TVL
02
The Solution: Atomic Cross-Rollup Execution
A shared sequencer like Espresso or Astria acts as a single, neutral ordering layer for multiple rollups. It enables atomic transaction bundles that span domains before final settlement, creating a unified liquidity mesh.
- Atomic Composability: Execute swaps, loans, and mints across rollups in a single state transition.
- Native MEV Redistribution: Cross-domain arbitrage value is captured and can be shared with rollups/users.
- Fast Finality: Cross-rollup actions achieve economic finality in ~1-3 seconds, not minutes.
~1-3s
Cross-Rollup Finality
Atomic
Execution
03
The Catalyst: Intent-Based Architectures
Shared sequencers are the perfect settlement layer for intent-centric protocols like UniswapX and CowSwap. Users submit declarative intents ("get me the best price across Arbitrum and Optimism"), and solvers compete on the shared sequencer to fulfill them atomically.
- Optimal Routing: Solvers access a unified liquidity graph across all connected rollups.
- Guaranteed Execution: Atomicity prevents partial fills and failed cross-chain transactions.
- Efficiency Leap: Reduces gas costs for complex cross-rollup trades by ~40-60% versus current bridge-hop methods.
-50%
Gas Cost
Unified
Liquidity Graph
04
The New Battleground: Sequencing Markets
The value capture shifts from L1 gas auctions to the sequencing layer. Projects like SharedStake and Radius are building decentralized sequencer sets that compete on liveness and censorship resistance.
- Economic Security: Sequencer bonds and slashing protect against malicious ordering.
- Revenue Stream: Sequencers earn fees and a share of cross-domain MEV, creating a $100M+ annual fee market.
- Decentralization Frontier: The race is on to build the most robust, credibly neutral sequencing network.
$100M+
Fee Market
Decentralized
Sequencer Set
thesis-statement
THE ARCHITECTURAL IMPERATIVE
The Core Argument: Ordering is the Bottleneck
Atomic composability across rollups is impossible without a shared source of truth for transaction ordering.
Cross-rollup atomicity is broken. A user swapping ETH on Arbitrum for USDC on Optimism requires two independent sequencers. The failure or reordering of one transaction destroys the atomic guarantee, forcing users to trust slow, custodial bridges like Across or Stargate.
Shared sequencers unify state. By providing a single, canonical ordering layer for multiple rollups, protocols like Espresso Systems or Astria enable atomic bundles. This turns cross-chain actions into a single, verifiable event, eliminating the race conditions inherent to today's fragmented model.
Liquidity fragments on intent. Without atomic execution, liquidity pools must be replicated on every chain. A shared sequencer enables native cross-rollup liquidity, allowing a single pool on Arbitrum to serve users on Base or zkSync via atomic swaps, mirroring the efficiency of UniswapX but for L2s.
The bottleneck is coordination, not execution. Rollup throughput (e.g., Arbitrum Nitro's 40K TPS) already exceeds demand. The real constraint is the lack of a coordinated mempool. Shared sequencers solve this by providing the sequencing primitive that Ethereum L1 intentionally omits for rollups.
LIQUIDITY EFFICIENCY MATRIX
The Fragmentation Tax: Current Cross-Rollup vs. Shared Sequencer Future
Quantifying the cost of fragmented liquidity and settlement risk across rollups, comparing the status quo to a future with a shared sequencer network.
| Key Metric / Feature | Current Cross-Rollup (e.g., Across, LayerZero) | Optimistic Shared Sequencer (e.g., Espresso, Astria) | ZK-Based Shared Sequencer (e.g., Espresso + RaaS, Radius) |
|---|---|---|---|
Settlement Finality Time | 20 min - 7 days | ~12 seconds | < 1 second |
Capital Efficiency (TVL Lockup) | Low (Billions locked in bridges) | High (Native asset re-use) | Maximum (Atomic composition) |
MEV Leakage per Cross-Chain Swap | High (5-30+ bps to searchers) | Contained (1-5 bps within network) | Eliminated (ZK proofs of fair ordering) |
Atomic Composability Across Rollups | |||
Developer UX (Cross-Rollup Calls) | Complex (oracle relays, timeouts) | Simplified (single sequencer API) | Native (treated as local call) |
Trust Assumption for Cross-Rollup Tx | 1-of-N Validators / Multi-sig | Economic (sequencer bond, fraud proof) | Cryptographic (ZK validity proof) |
Protocol Revenue Capture | Extracted by Bridge LPs & Searchers | Retained by App & Shared Sequencer | Optimized for App & User |
deep-dive
THE EXECUTION PIPELINE
Mechanics: From Intents to Atomic Settlement
Shared sequencers transform user intents into atomic cross-rollup settlements by decoupling transaction ordering from execution.
Shared sequencers ingest intents from applications like UniswapX or CowSwap, which express desired outcomes without specifying execution paths. This shifts complexity from the user to the network's solver layer.
The sequencer's mempool becomes a global state for pending cross-domain actions, unlike isolated rollup mempools. This enables solvers to discover and compose interdependent transactions across chains like Arbitrum and Optimism.
Atomic settlement is guaranteed by the sequencer's ability to order and attest to a batch of transactions before any execution occurs. This prevents the partial failure states that plague traditional bridges like Stargate or Across.
Evidence: Espresso's testnet demonstrates sub-second finality for cross-rollup bundles, a 100x latency improvement over optimistic rollup challenge periods that currently bottleneck liquidity.
protocol-spotlight
SHARED SEQUENCERS
Architectural Approaches: Who's Building What
Shared sequencers are emerging as the critical coordination layer, transforming isolated rollup liquidity into a unified, atomic execution environment.
01
The Problem: Isolated Liquidity Pools
Rollups today are sovereign silos. A swap from Arbitrum to Base requires a slow, expensive, and risky bridging step, fragmenting capital and user experience.\n- Capital Inefficiency: Liquidity is trapped, increasing slippage.\n- User Friction: Multi-step flows with settlement delays of ~10 minutes.\n- MEV Leakage: Each hop creates separate arbitrage opportunities.
~10 min
Settlement Delay
>2x
Effective Slippage
02
The Solution: Atomic Cross-Rollup Composability
A shared sequencer sees all transactions across connected rollups in a single mempool, enabling atomic execution. Think UniswapX but for entire rollup states.\n- Atomic Arbitrage: Capture MEV across chains in one bundle.\n- Unified Liquidity: A single pool can serve users on Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync.\n- Native Experience: Users sign one intent; the sequencer orchestrates the rest.
<1 sec
Atomic Window
100%
Success Rate
03
Espresso Systems: The Decentralized Coordinator
Espresso is building a decentralized sequencer network with HotShot consensus, providing censorship resistance and credible neutrality. It's the infrastructure for rollups to share sequencing without a single point of failure.\n- Data Availability: Integrated with EigenDA for scalable blob storage.\n- Timeboost: A fair, efficient ordering mechanism to mitigate MEV.\n- Ecosystem Play: Adopted by Caldera, Gelato, and AltLayer rollup stacks.
~500ms
Finality Time
Decentralized
Model
04
Astria: The Execution Layer Abstraction
Astria provides a shared sequencer as a service, allowing rollups to outsource block building while retaining sovereignty over execution and settlement. It focuses on fast, soft-confirmations for UX.\n- Sovereignty Preserved: Rollups keep their own DA and settlement.\n- Fast Soft Confirms: Sub-second inclusion guarantees.\n- Interoperability Focus: Native intent is cross-rollup atomicity via its sequencer.
<1 sec
Soft Confirm
Sovereign
Rollup Control
05
The Risk: Recreating L1 Consensus
A dominant shared sequencer becomes a new, centralized L1. The goal is coordination, not a new monolithic chain. Failure modes include censorship and extracting maximal value.\n- Centralization Pressure: Economies of scale favor a single sequencer.\n- Protocol Capture: The sequencer could become the ultimate MEV auctioneer.\n- Solution: Force competition via sequencing markets and decentralized validator sets.
New L1 Risk
Centralization
Critical
Trust Assumption
06
The Endgame: Intents & Settlement Networks
Shared sequencers evolve into intent-based settlement layers. Users express desired outcomes (e.g., 'best price across 5 rollups'), and a network of solvers competes to fulfill it atomically. This is the UniswapX or CowSwap model applied to rollup state.\n- User Abstraction: No more manual bridging or routing.\n- Solver Markets: Efficient price discovery across all liquidity venues.\n- Ultimate Compossibility: Any asset, any rollup, one transaction.
Intent-Driven
Paradigm
Universal
Liquidity Access
counter-argument
THE REALITY CHECK
The Bear Case: Centralization, MEV, and Coordination Hell
The promised land of shared sequencing is paved with unresolved trade-offs that threaten to re-create the problems they aim to solve.
Sequencer centralization is inevitable. The economic and technical complexity of running a high-performance, cross-rollup sequencer node creates prohibitive barriers to entry. This leads to a de facto oligopoly, replicating the trusted operator model of AltLayer or Espresso Systems but at a systemic layer.
Cross-domain MEV becomes a superpower. A shared sequencer with a global view of pending transactions across multiple rollups creates unprecedented MEV extraction opportunities. This centralizes economic power and risks creating a more toxic environment than the current isolated Ethereum and Solana MEV landscapes.
Protocol coordination is a governance nightmare. Achieving consensus on upgrade paths, fee models, and slashing conditions across sovereign rollup teams like Arbitrum, Optimism, and zkSync is a political quagmire. The Cosmos ecosystem's fragmentation illustrates this coordination failure.
Evidence: The leading shared sequencer proposals from Astria and Radius already demonstrate a tension between decentralization and performance, opting for permissioned validator sets to guarantee low-latency execution—a direct trade-off.
risk-analysis
SHARED SEQUENCER FRAGILITY
Execution Risks: What Could Go Wrong
Centralizing transaction ordering across rollups creates new, systemic failure modes that could freeze billions in cross-chain liquidity.
01
The Single Point of Failure
A shared sequencer like Astria or Espresso becomes a lynchpin for dozens of rollups. Its downtime or censorship doesn't just halt one chain—it freezes a coordinated ecosystem.
- Risk: A single bug or DoS attack can halt $10B+ in cross-rollup liquidity.
- Impact: Breaks atomic composability, stranding assets in bridges like LayerZero or Across.
1
Critical Node
100%
Ecosystem Halt
02
The MEV Cartel Problem
A dominant shared sequencer set can form a centralized cartel, extracting maximum value and undermining the credibly neutral base layer.
- Risk: Cartelization leads to proposer-builder separation (PBS) failures at the sequencer level.
- Outcome: Users face inflated costs, and protocols like UniswapX lose their anti-MEV guarantees.
>51%
Stake Concentration
$1B+
Annual Extracted Value
03
Liveness vs. Consistency Trade-Off
To guarantee cross-rollup atomicity, shared sequencers must choose between fast liveness (speed) and strong consistency (safety)—you can't optimize both.
- Dilemma: Prioritizing speed risks chain reorganizations that break atomic swaps.
- Consequence: Forces rollups like those using OP Stack or Arbitrum Orbit to accept weaker security assumptions.
~500ms
Fast Liveness
12s+
Safe Finality
04
The Interoperability War
Competing shared sequencer networks (e.g., EigenLayer, Near DA) will fragment liquidity into incompatible clusters, recreating the very silos they aim to solve.
- Risk: Rollup ecosystems become balkanized based on their sequencer allegiance.
- Result: Universal liquidity pools become impossible, negating the promise of intents-based systems like CowSwap.
3-5
Major Networks
-60%
Pool Efficiency
future-outlook
THE LIQUIDITY FRONTIER
The New DEX Stack: Aggregators, AMMs, and Intents
Shared sequencers will collapse cross-rollup liquidity fragmentation by enabling atomic execution across L2s.
Shared sequencers unify liquidity. They provide a single, neutral ordering service for multiple rollups, enabling atomic cross-chain transactions without slow, trust-minimized bridges like Across or Stargate.
Intent-based routing becomes trivial. Aggregators like 1inch and UniswapX can source liquidity from any connected rollup atomically, turning a fragmented multi-chain DEX landscape into a single, virtual liquidity pool.
AMMs become execution venues, not liquidity silos. Protocols like Uniswap V4 and Curve will compete on execution price within the shared sequencer's block, not on which chain they deployed on first.
The bottleneck shifts to state proofs. The final constraint is the speed of validity or fraud proofs between the shared sequencer and the individual L2s, not the bridging middleware layer.
takeaways
CROSS-ROLLUP LIQUIDITY
TL;DR for Builders
Shared sequencers are not just about MEV capture; they are the critical infrastructure for unifying fragmented liquidity across the modular stack.
01
The Problem: Atomic Composability is Dead
Rollups are isolated islands. A swap from Arbitrum to Optimism requires multiple, slow, and risky steps. This kills DeFi's core promise of seamless composability.
- Fragmented Liquidity: Capital is trapped in silos, increasing slippage and reducing capital efficiency.
- User Experience Nightmare: Multi-step bridging and signing flows have >50% drop-off rates.
- Arbitrage Inefficiency: Price discrepancies between rollups persist longer, representing lost value.
>50%
UX Drop-off
2-20 min
Settlement Latency
02
The Solution: A Global Settlement Layer
A shared sequencer like Espresso, Astria, or Radius acts as a unified mempool and ordering service for multiple rollups.
- Atomic Cross-Rollup Bundles: Enable transactions that execute across chains atomically (e.g., swap USDC on Arbitrum for ETH on Base in one click).
- Unified Liquidity Pools: Protocols like Uniswap can deploy a single, globally accessible liquidity pool instead of fragmented copies.
- Native MEV Recycling: Cross-domain arbitrage and liquidation MEV can be captured and redistributed to rollups and users, not lost to external searchers.
~500ms
Order Finality
1-Click
Cross-Chain UX
03
The New Primitive: Intents Meet Shared Sequencing
Shared sequencers are the perfect execution layer for intent-based architectures like UniswapX, CowSwap, and Across.
- Solvers Compete Globally: Solvers can now source liquidity and execute across any connected rollup, finding the best price across the entire ecosystem.
- Guaranteed Settlement: The shared sequencer's pre-confirmations provide the certainty needed for intent fulfillment, moving beyond optimistic assumptions.
- Protocols Become Omnichain: DApps are no longer 'deployed on a chain' but become native to the shared sequencer network.
10-30%
Better Pricing
Universal
Solver Access
04
The Economic Flywheel: Fees & Value Accrual
Shared sequencers create a new, sustainable economic model for rollup infrastructure beyond simple transaction ordering.
- Value Capture from MEV: A significant portion of cross-rollup arbitrage value is captured by the network and shared with stakeholders.
- Reduced Operational Cost: Rollups offload sequencing overhead, potentially reducing costs by -30% to -50%.
- Token Utility Beyond Governance: The sequencer token becomes a fee-sharing and staking asset for a critical cross-chain service, akin to LayerZero's OFT model.
-50%
OpEx Reduction
New Revenue
MEV Redistribution
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