Today, we’re excited to announce that Autonolas has launched its protocol on Polygon. This blog post will explore the importance of Autonolas launching on Polygon and how it was done, while touching on cross-chain governance.

Why Polygon?

With its fast and low-cost transactions, Polygon provides an ideal environment for decentralized protocols to operate. By deploying Autonolas on Polygon, users have the ability to register their autonomous service NFTs on the Polygon mainnet and manage and secure services on-chain, while also taking advantage of Polygon’s natural advantages as a L2.

To make this happen, the Autonolas DAO needed a way to manage the registry contracts on Polygon, and this was achieved through cross-chain governance.

Understanding Cross-Chain Governance

Cross-chain governance is a crucial aspect of decentralized decision-making, and Autonolas has taken a significant step towards establishing it. In simple terms, cross-chain governance allows a DAO to have a vote on a parent chain and broadcast the messages - and thus have actions autonomously taken - on a child chain. This means that the Autonolas DAO can steer and shape the protocol through governance on Ethereum, while executing on another chain, in this case, Polygon.

To allow the Autonolas DAO to control the Autonolas contracts deployed on child chains without deploying all the governance contracts again, cross-chain governance bridge contracts are used. These contracts are designed to enable the contracts on a child chain to receive data from the Ethereum chain that contains governance decisions. The bridge contracts can then decode and execute these decisions on the child chain.

Autonolas uses the Polygon FxPortal bridging from Ethereum to control contracts deployed on Polygon. Once a proposal is successfully passed on Ethereum, the information is broadcasted to Polygon via the Timelock contract. The FxGovernorTunnel contract on Polygon will then act on governance proposals from Ethereum mainnet.

Conclusion

With Autonolas now available on Polygon, users can register services in a fast, low-fee environment. The deployment of the protocol on Polygon mainnet is also a significant milestone in the Autonolas DAO achieving cross-chain governance. With the ability to make decentralized decisions across multiple chains, Autonolas is paving the way for more decentralized protocols and truly decentralized decision-making.

Check out the Autonolas protocol on Polygon, now live on mainnet here: https://protocol.autonolas.network/

To learn more about how Autonolas stack enables more autonomous, decentralized DAOs, by combining the best of web2 and web3, visit https://www.autonolas.network/.