Soneium Slashes Finality by 98% With Astar Network, AltLayer, and EigenLayer

Astar, a collective promoting Web3 adoption, has partnered with AltLayer, a decentralized protocol that introduces Restaked rollups, and restaking protocol EigenLayer to build a Fast Finality Layer for Soneium, Sony Block Solutions Labs’ Layer 2 blockchain built on Optimism’s OP Stack.

Per the announcement, Soneium relies on fraud-proof mechanisms for settlement. However, this causes delayed finality.

Therefore, the novel Fast Finality Layer aims to provide “crypto-economic security guarantees through a decentralized network of validators.” This should reduce reliance on centralized sequencers and allow more secure cross-chain interactions, the team says.

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🧩What is Fast Finality Layer for Soneium?

Fast Finality Layer for Soneium is an Autonomous Verifiable Service (AVS), built by @alt_layer and powered by @eigenlayer’s AVS framework. It provides decentralized verification of Soneium’s state transitions to deliver:
✅Near… pic.twitter.com/T1EIApBHKg

— Soneium 💿 (@soneium) April 16, 2025

To accomplish their goals, the team will utilize AltLayer’s MACH Actively Validated Service (AVS), which EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism will power. They claim that this will “drastically reduce” transaction finality times from several minutes to under 10 seconds.

According to Maarten Henskens, Head of Astar Foundation, the collaboration will solve slow finality, which is a key bottleneck to onboarding users to Web3.

“The Astar Fast Finality Layer powered by MACH represents the future of how Layer 2 solutions like Soneium can achieve both security and performance,” says YQ Jia, CEO of AltLayer. The teams are jointly creating an infrastructure that provides Ethereum’s security guarantees with near-instant finality.

“This is exactly the kind of solution needed to bring blockchain technology to mainstream adoption,” the CEO added.

Soneium New Layer Secured by ASTR and Restaked ETH

The announcement highlighted that the new implementation will not require changes to Soneium. Instead, the AVS will operate alongside it, with all on-chain AVS contracts deployed on Ethereum.

MACH operators will access the blockchain’s blocks only, by running a full node or through RPC endpoints.

Moreover, this collaboration will position the ecosystem “as critical infrastructure for latency-sensitive applications across gaming, DeFi, and social platforms,” the partners note.

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🔐Restaking & economic security

Fast Finality Layer for Soneium uses @eigenlayer’s restaking contracts to secure its network via ERC20 tokens:
-Bridged ASTR
-Restaked ETH
-Bridged ASTR LSTs in the future

Incorrect challenges are slashed — aligning incentives with… pic.twitter.com/kcgZV2Syyq

— Soneium 💿 (@soneium) April 16, 2025

Meanwhile, Astar’s ASTR token and restaked ETH will secure the Fast Finality Layer for Soneium. Therefore, its creators argue, ASTR will offer new utility to the holders. They’ll be able to stake their tokens to secure Soneium’s ecosystem to earn rewards and be incentivized through EigenLayer.

Henskens added that “by integrating ASTR with EigenLayer and AltLayer’s MACH, we’re enhancing finality on Soneium’s infrastructure and elevating ASTR’s role as a key economic security asset across multiple blockchain environments.”

Furthermore, Uniswap recently listed ASTR. This is part of the team’s expansion strategy within the Ethereum ecosystem. They aim to boost its liquidity, utility, and adoption.

Meanwhile, at the time of writing, Soneium has surpassed $100 million, now standing at $119.68 million, according to DeFiLlama.