In an exclusive interview with Cointelegraph, Brendan Farmer, co-founder of Polygon, delved into the inner workings of the Polygon AggLayer, a decentralized protocol designed to facilitate low-latency, cross-chain transactions and a unified bridge. Farmer, with a strong background in mathematics and cryptography, provided valuable insights into the AggLayer's functionality, its potential implications, and the challenges that come with establishing such a protocol.

Farmer explained that the AggLayer aims to address the issue of fragmentation in Ethereum layer 2s (L2s), which currently cannot accommodate the worldwide demand for blockspace. He emphasized that the AggLayer enables chains to safely use a shared bridge without transacting on a layer 1 (L1) blockchain, thereby reducing latency and securing cross-chain transactions.

The Chain Development Kit (CDK) plays a crucial role in the AggLayer, allowing anyone to spin up a chain and stitch them together into a horizontally scalable space. Farmer highlighted that the AggLayer's safety guarantee for low-latency interoperability is inherently challenging, but it doesn't require revenue or profit sharing to use the technology.

Looking ahead to 2025, Farmer believes that the AggLayer will enable new use cases, such as lowering costs at a much higher scale, and provide a pathway for onboarding millions of people into decentralized finance (DeFi). He also emphasized the potential for new virtual machines (VMs) and state models, which will change the game for developers and how they build applications.

Farmer's interest in zero-knowledge (ZK) technology stems from his mathematical background and the desire to use math to fix fundamental social problems, such as privacy invasion. He believes that ZK offers a solution to reclaim privacy in financial transactions and internet usage.

In a separate article, discussed the implications of the recent approval of spot Ether exchange-traded funds (ETFs) by the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Experts weighed in on the development, with some interpreting it as an admission that Ether is a commodity. The approval is expected to lead to a scenario similar to the spot Bitcoin ETFs, with issuers launching on the same day. However, the volume of ETH ETFs might be lower, and traders might make interesting moves, such as shorting the ETF and buying ETH. The development is also expected to lead to more jurisdictions considering their own crypto-based exchange-traded funds, with the U.S. not wanting to be left behind in the crypto and Web3 race.