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The Ultimate Guide to Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) Platforms

Rollups-as-a-service (RaaS) platforms make it easy for any team to customize, deploy, and scale a rollup. Learn how here.

Henry Updegrave

Henry Updegrave

— 9 min read
The Ultimate Guide to Rollups-as-a-Service (RaaS) Platforms

In this article, we'll discuss:

What is a rollup?

What is a rollups-as-a-service (RaaS) platform?

Benefits of using a RaaS platform

RaaS use cases

How to evaluate RaaS providers

Conclusion: RaaS is paving the way for millions of rollups

Rollups have emerged as the leading solution to Ethereum’s scalability challenges, allowing onchain applications to process more activity at lower costs while still leveraging Ethereum’s decentralization and security. But historically, rollups have been difficult to build and maintain, as doing so requires significant technical expertise. 

Rollups-as-a-service (RaaS) platforms are the solution.

Instead of spending months building a chain or paying a team of developers millions of dollars, app builders are turning to RaaS providers to deploy rollups in minutes and for as little as $50 per month on testnet. Not only that, but the best RaaS teams are giving builders the ability to customize their chain with the latest modular add-ons, and providing support and partnership post-deployment to ensure rollups are always operating at peak performance.

Keep reading for our comprehensive guide to rollups-as-a-service platforms: What they are, why teams use them, and how to evaluate the best one for your project. 

Background information: What is a rollup?

Rollups are the predominant Ethereum scaling solution. More specifically, a rollup is a Layer 2 blockchain that helps Ethereum – or any other Layer 1 blockchain – process more transactions faster and at a lower cost, while still maintaining security and trustlessness. The rollup periodically bundles — or “rolls up” — many transactions into a single batched transaction, which is then submitted to Ethereum for final settlement. 

Rollups help Ethereum scale by lowering the amount of transactions it must process and data it must store. For users, this means less congestion, higher speed, and lower gas fees. Rollups make it possible for onchain apps and ecosystems to scale to millions of users, without sacrificing security or decentralization. Not only that, but the cost efficiency of rollups enable teams to run new, lower-margin onchain apps that wouldn’t be economically viable on Ethereum mainnet due to high fees, opening up new use cases.

What is a rollups-as-a-service platform?

A rollups-as-a-service (RaaS) platform simplifies the process of building, deploying, and managing a rollup. RaaS platforms allow virtually any team to run their own chain regardless of their technical expertise, at a low upfront cost. 

Historically, launching a rollup required significant blockchain development expertise, and could take months of work to build and test. RaaS platforms reduce the process to as little as a few minutes. Teams can simply choose the best modular components for their use case across the rollup stack and click a button to launch, though the best RaaS providers can also provide guidance and support throughout the process. 

Look at the screenshot below of Conduit’s rollup deployment page to get a better sense of how teams can launch and deploy a rollup on a RaaS platform.

Teams can customize every piece of the core rollup stack here:

Teams can also make more advanced customizations before launch, such as setting a custom gas token and modifying their rollup’s gas limit. 

While these are the components necessary to get a rollup up and running, a good RaaS platform will also make it easy to integrate other components that can improve performance or offer new functionalities. Not only that, but they’ll also have experts on hand who can partner with the rollup team to understand their use case more, and guide them toward the right infrastructure choices. We’ll explore this more later when we dive into what teams should look for to identify the best RaaS providers.

What are the benefits of using a Rollups-as-a-Service platform?

Time and cost savings

First and foremost, RaaS platforms make it faster and cheaper for teams to deploy a rollup. These are obvious short-term benefits — what team wouldn’t want to save time and money? But these savings also enable new use cases that wouldn’t otherwise exist. There are several onchain apps that may not be economically feasible with millions of dollars in upfront costs, or rollup use cases a team may be interested in exploring without committing major resources. A RaaS platform makes both of these things possible.

Customizability and modularity

The rollup tech stack is made up of many components, each with several distinct options that have their own strengths and weaknesses. Which is the best for your rollup’s use case? It’s hard to know for sure if you don’t eat, sleep, and breathe rollups. And if you’re building a rollup yourself from scratch, you don’t have the benefit of testing different configurations — once you’ve spent months building down one path, making a switch may not be feasible. RaaS platforms make it easy to plug and play the different modules that make up a rollup, and a good RaaS team will be able to advise you on the best options for your use case, helping you build the perfect rollup faster.

No need to worry about ongoing maintenance

Rollup frameworks like Optimism and Arbitrum, which form the infrastructural backbone of your chain, make several upgrades and security patches throughout the year. The same goes for providers at other points of the stack. A good RaaS platform implements those upgrades for you, so that you don’t need to spend time and resources on it.

Partnership, support, and problem solving

If a crucial piece of your rollup infrastructure breaks, or your chain goes down amidst a spike in activity, you won’t want to face the problem alone. A good RaaS provider will provide technical support and guidance in these situations, so that your chain can start operating again. Good support isn’t just about catastrophes either — issues like an increase in latency or faulty node responses are easier to handle with a good RaaS support team in your corner.

Always stay on the cutting edge

Rollups are still an emerging technology. Virtual every week, new solutions and technical paradigms are cropping up that may be able to improve your rollup’s performance, open up new use cases, or solve pain points for your users. A good RaaS team will surface these opportunities for you and help you integrate them quickly so that your rollup is always using the latest and greatest tooling — this is a crucial competitive differentiator. 

Onchain use cases: Who can benefit from rollups-as-a-service?

Onchain gaming

Onchain gaming demands fast, low-cost transactions to provide seamless gameplay experiences for millions of players. Dedicated appchain rollups are the only way to provide that. RaaS platforms enable teams to build and scale the rollup they need without spending time worrying about infrastructure, so that they can focus on creating a great gaming experience. Proof of Play, the team behind Pirate Nation, provides a great example of how to scale an onchain gaming rollup.  

DEXs

Decentralized exchanges (DEXs) are the heart of the DeFi ecosystem, but when they run on shared blockchains like Ethereum mainnet, they can become congested easily. When trading demand spikes, latency and gas fees rise. That’s why many DEXs are now opting to build their own rollups. RaaS platforms make it easier for DEX teams to launch a rollup, stay up to date on updates, and customize blockchain elements like block time or MEV rules. Aevo is one of the biggest DEX rollups operating, and their story shows how easy RaaS can make it to launch and scale.

Ecosystem chains

Blockchains like Base, Mode, and Blast have shown that rollups are a powerful solution for general purpose DeFi ecosystems. Teams who want to launch a chain in this space can do so quickly by deploying from a RaaS platform, complete with components like custom gas tokens to support native yield functionality. 

DePIN

DePIN platforms reward participants for contributing real-world resources to support networks of physical or online infrastructure. This often requires processing high volumes of small transactions, which can be done most efficiently on a rollup. RaaS platforms can allow DePIN teams to design a chain with the unique tokenomics and real-time transaction finality necessary to support their network.

RWAs

Platforms focused on tokenized real-world assets (RWAs) can also benefit from running a rollup on a RaaS platform. Similar to DEXs, RWA platforms need high speed and throughput to facilitate large volumes of trading. They also need custom governance models to meet regulatory requirements around the assets they’re tokenizing. The high performance and customizability provided by RaaS platforms meet these needs. 

Enterprise, web2, and tradfi blockchains

Traditional businesses in web2 and traditional finance are more and more interested in cryptocurrency and DeFi. A custom built rollup is an ideal way for these companies to enter the space, and tap into the benefits of their own onchain ecosystem while still maintaining the control necessary to meet regulatory and brand safety requirements. 

How to evaluate rollups-as-a-service providers

Developers should consider several factors when selecting the RaaS provider to launch their rollup on. 

Onchain performance

What kind of onchain performance is the RaaS provider capable of achieving for the rollups it manages? The primary metric to evaluate for rollup performance here is gas usage per second, as this is the most direct measure of computational power. You can see real-time measures of gas usage, as well as transactions per second and data settled, for active rollups at rollup.wtf, as well as listings of each rollup’s tech stack.

RaaS providers primarily influence a rollup’s onchain performance through the sequencer they equip it with. It’s important that the sequencer have not just the power your chain needs, but also the reliability to remain up and running through turbulence. A high-availability sequencer setup works best here. Beyond the sequencer, the modular components they can connect you with at other points in the rollup stack such as DA also impact performance — not just the quality of the components themselves, but also how the RaaS platform enables you to pick components that work well together.

Another key component is RPC nodes. A good RaaS provider will be able to run high-performing, autoscaling RPCs for you, and these are crucial to maintaining app performance on your chain.

Modularity and customization

Developers need to choose a RaaS platform that brings together options from numerous providers for the different components of the rollup tech stack, so that they can pick the best ones and configure their ideal rollup. If possible, try to see how quickly the RaaS adds support for new technologies after they’re released – it’s better to work with RaaS providers who partner with other players to incorporate their latest and greatest offerings immediately upon release. 

Modularity starts with the core rollup stack we covered earlier:

  • Rollup framework
  • DA layer
  • Settlement layer

But it also extends to several ancillary technologies that can be integrated with your rollup to improve performance or equip app builders with tools to build on your chain. These areas include:

Many RaaS providers have native solutions for some of these functionalities, but should also offer integrations with best-in-class third-party providers in these areas. Conduit does this via Conduit Marketplace. It’s also crucial that the RaaS team understand how these components fit together and which providers are compatible with one another. 

Expert guidance, partnership, and problem solving

It’s essential that your RaaS platform come with a strong support plan. A big part of this is incident support and fixing your rollup when something breaks. A good RaaS platform will provide:

  • High up-time defined by SLAs
  • One hour or less response times for issues
  • Dedicated support channels: Slack, email, ticketing systems, etc.
  • Feature support when you need something new
  • Access to engineers

However, incident response is just one component of RaaS support. You also need a team that can provide guidance on how to scale your rollup as it grows and inevitably hits performance barriers. Very few teams are equipped to give this guidance, as rollups are an emerging technology — there’s no set playbook. The pioneering RaaS teams are figuring out rollup scaling in real time alongside their customers, and then applying the lessons they learn to help other chains on their platform. Choose a RaaS provider whose team can act as an advisor and help you build out your rollup in a way that meets your long term business goals, rather than one that simply solves technical problems reactively. 

Price vs. Total cost of operations

Rollup teams should evaluate RaaS providers on cost, but this isn’t as simple as just shopping around for the cheapest one. Instead, teams need to consider the RaaS provider’s full impact on their total cost of operations. Price is just one factor here. A more expensive RaaS platform may increase monthly costs, but if that provider is doing things like handling upgrades seamlessly, connecting you with the right integration partners proactively, and consistently innovating around core functionalities like DA and prover mechanisms, then you may save substantially more on total cost of operations than you would with a cheaper provider that doesn’t do those things.

Rollups-as-a-service is paving the way for millions of rollups

Everyone in crypto wants to onboard the next billion users, and for that we need to scale blockchain performance. Rollups are the key to that. By making it easy, fast, and cheap for any team to launch the ideal rollup for their use case, rollups-as-a-service (RaaS) platforms are becoming an essential part of the Ethereum scaling roadmap. 

RaaS platforms are also enabling new onchain businesses to be successful. Bringing down the costs to launch a rollup allows developers to explore new use cases that wouldn’t otherwise be financially viable. And by taking infrastructure and scaling off of developers’ plate, RaaS platforms let them focus on what matters most: Building the best possible product for their users.

Contact us here if you’d like to learn more about how Conduit can do that for your rollup.