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Polygon’s interoperability stack operates at two distinct levels. Agglayer connects chains at the infrastructure level, enabling shared liquidity and atomic cross-chain transactions. Intents (Trails) operate at the application level, letting developers accept any token from any chain without managing routes, bridges, or gas themselves. The two are complementary, not competing. Agglayer is the foundation that makes cross-chain movement secure and unified. Intents are how app developers consume that capability without dealing with its complexity.

Agglayer

Agglayer is an interoperability protocol that connects EVM chains so assets can move between them without wrapping, and operations can be atomic across chain boundaries. The core design principle is cryptographic containment: a pessimistic proof system ensures that if a connected chain is compromised, it cannot drain more than its own deposits into the shared pool. Damage cannot propagate. Connected chains retain their own architecture and governance, Agglayer adds interoperability without requiring structural changes to how a chain operates. CDK chains connect to Agglayer by default. Other chains integrate independently. Agglayer is relevant when you are a chain operator or builder, or when you are building an application that requires direct interaction with Agglayer’s bridging and proof infrastructure.

What is Agglayer

Architecture, security model, and how chains connect.

Get started

Connect a chain or build cross-chain applications on Agglayer.

Intents

Intents are a developer abstraction for cross-chain execution. Instead of managing routing, bridging, swapping, and gas across chains, developers declare the desired outcome, “deliver 100 USDC on Polygon”, and the system handles everything required to get there. Trails, Polygon’s intent infrastructure, works across all EVM chains, including but not limited to Agglayer-connected ones. A user can start from any token on any chain; the system routes, swaps, and bridges to deliver exactly what was specified. The user signs once; no further interaction is required. Intents are relevant when you are building a product that needs to accept payments or deposits from users regardless of what chain or token they hold. The typical use cases are cross-chain payments, onramps, and multi-chain fund flows in consumer apps.

Cross-chain money movement

How Trails works: intent addresses, execution, and settlement.

Widget and SDK

Drop-in React component and headless SDK for integrating Trails.

Which to use

You are…Reach for…
A chain operator connecting to AgglayerAgglayer
Building cross-chain apps on connected chainsAgglayer integrations
Accepting any token from any chain in your appIntents (Trails)
Building an onramp or cross-chain payment flowIntents (Trails)
Both: a product on a CDK chain accepting cross-chain paymentsBoth