Enterprise Co-Build: How Conduit Embedded with Polygon Labs to Build the Katana L2 Chain

Katana, incubated by Polygon Labs and GSR, had one of the biggest chain launches of 2025 this past June. In just two months, the chain has hit over $540 million in TVL and highs of over 330,000 transactions per day. Conduit served as Katana’s primary implementation partner, supplying a team of forward-deployed engineers and solutions architects to build the chain, plus its underlying development framework – now productized so that anyone can use it to launch their own chain in a few clicks. 

From the outset, the project had two key goals:

1. Katana: Deliver an enterprise-level DeFi chain with next-gen yield generation. Katana needed seamless interoperability, fast finality, Stage 1 security, high throughput, and baked-in yield generation. Such a chain had never been built before.
2. Agglayer CDK OP Stack: Productize the tech behind Katana for other chains. Polygon didn’t just need a new chain. The team also needed a new rollup framework: A modified version of the popular OP Stack, with ZK proving and native connectivity to the Agglayer’s network of chains. 

Katana would be the proof-of-concept for the new Agglayer CDK OP Stack, and act as a concentrated liquidity hub all other Agglayer chains could draw on. Keep reading to learn how Conduit embedded with the Polygon team to deliver on those ambitious goals quickly.

From reference architecture to production

Polygon Labs has built several successful chains, and already had an existing Agglayer CDK stack, the rollup framework for launching chains natively connected to its Agglayer network. But the Katana vision demanded a partner with a track record of launching cutting edge chains on tight timelines – one that could bring together all the components necessary to support Katana’s liquidity generating and incentive alignment mechanisms, built on a new version of the Agglayer CDK.

Conduit’s deep experience running ultra-custom, high-performance chains made us the perfect partner to build both Katana and the new Agglayer CDK, in coordination with crucial external partners. 

The project’s key components included:

• Modified OP Stack + Agglayer CDK: The existing Agglayer CDK was powerful, but Katana demanded a new, complementary CDK that utilized new technologies and could expand the pool of Agglayer builders. Conduit built the new Agglayer CDK around the OP Stack, based on Ethereum’s geth client, with modifications for fast finality and interoperability.
• ZK proving with Succinct. Fast finality required ZK proving, which leads to the next core component: OP-Succinct. As the first infra team to put OP-Succinct into production on mainnet rollups, Conduit had the expertise to adapt it for Katana and the new Agglayer CDK. 
• Best-in-class ecosystem infrastructure. Katana needed several more pieces of onchain infrastructure for native liquidity creation: Yield-generating stablecoins from Agora, revenue generation on TVL from Vault Bridge, day one apps like SushiSwap’s spot DEX and Morpho’s lending protocol, plus basics like indexing and RPCs. Conduit assembled all these different parts, coordinating external partners to iteratively test and integrate their tooling in time for launch.

Throughout the project, Conduit acted not just as an integrator, but as the single accountable project owner across partners. We wore multiple hats – part platform engineer, part solutions architect, part project manager – and our embedded, collaborative approach allowed us to execute as an extension of the Polygon team. 

Enterprise experience was crucial here. We’ve launched several of the most finely customized, high-performing chains on Ethereum, and our team lead for this project – Conduit Head of Product Emiliano Bonassi – previously led Amazon Web Services implementations for corporations like Pirelli and Enel.

Ultimately, we built a working Katana testnet in a few weeks, and shepherded the project to mainnet launch in eight months – less than half the time many comparable chains have taken to go to market. Our experience running dozens of chains with the infra partners Polygon Labs chose for Katana allowed us to anticipate roadblocks and iterate quickly to hit the ambitious deadline.

Embedding with enterprise

Conduit instituted a cadence of tight collaboration and constant testing to build Katana. 

On a day-to-day basis, our forward-deployed engineers and solutions architects worked side by side with Polygon Labs engineers, coding together virtually and running multi-team war rooms to tackle problems. We spun up new Katana testnets to measure how each new feature and partner integration would perform, allowing us to solve problems and stress test the chain iteratively. Examples of this workflow in action include:

• Partner support. We actively supported Katana’s other infrastructure and application partners while building the chain, setting up dedicated RPC endpoints on testnet to see how key components like Morpho and Vault Bridge performed in the wild. Our team made all necessary optimizations alongside those partners to ensure Katana’s key DeFi apps were vetted and optimized by launch day.
• Real time troubleshooting. We proactively solved problems that arose during testing, both on core infrastructure and partner integrations. For example, we found that OP-Succinct’s default upgrade process wasn’t ideal for the Katana use case, as it required a maintenance window that interrupted the chain’s interoperability and withdrawal processes – a potentially significant pain point for users. We brought Polygon Labs and Succinct engineers together to implement a new zero-downtime upgrade process, benefiting not just Katana, but all chains built on Agglayer OP Stack CDK.
• Performance testing. Launching a DeFi chain on mainnet is high stakes, as critical errors lead to real monetary losses. We pushed Katana to its limits in testing, pushing ultra-high gas usage and TPS to see how the chain performed under extreme conditions. Stress testing at loads up to 2,000 TPS allowed us to spot edge case issues in advance and ensure Katana would stand up to high demand on launch day. Additionally, testing showed us how high transaction loads could rapidly increase ZK proving costs, leading us to utilize Optimism’s operator fee module to help Katana recoup those costs.

Our team held a standing weekly meeting with engineers from Polygon Labs and relevant partner teams throughout the building process to track progress, discuss blockers, and tweak the roadmap in real time. Teams could bring up hypothetical failure scenarios to address in the following week’s round of testing: What if the batcher doesn’t post to L1? What if a new app causes the data load of new transactions to rapidly increase? Our testing processes allowed us to address potential problems in advance and de-risk Katana’s mainnet launch.

After extensive validation on testnet, we set up a private mainnet with RPC-level permissioning to allow designated app partners to test with real users, before moving on to public mainnet launch after just eight months.

Post-launch optimization and ongoing support

Katana’s June 30 launch was one of the biggest of 2025, with more than $300 million in TVL and over 175,000 transactions on day one. Katana has maintained its momentum since then and continues to grow. Currently, TVL is over $540 million and total transactions over 18.7 million.  

Source: Dune

Conduit’s work wasn’t over though. We’ve remained embedded with Polygon Labs and its partners to continue monitoring and improving the chain. For example, soon after launch, we noticed that ZK proofs for transaction finality weren’t always happening on a consistent timeframe – high transaction activity could push finality time over the standard one hour, hurting the UX for onboarding and withdrawals in the crucial early growth phase. We found the root cause: by default, the ZK system proved fixed ranges of transactions regardless of transaction load, even though heavy loads could take longer to prove, delaying finality. We worked with Succinct to develop a new system that dynamically adjusts the proving range size based on throughput. When transaction load peaks, the system reduces the range size to be proven, allowing proofs to complete faster and provide a consistent, predictable one-hour finality instead of a variable one.

That’s just one example of the problems we solve for Katana through daily monitoring and testing. The key point is this: We know that launch day isn’t the end of the project – it’s just the start of the next phase. We continue to iterate on everything from UX to gas optimization, ensuring the network remains successful.

Katana’s success is Conduit’s success

In eight months, Katana went from concept to a live, high-performance, yield-rich DeFi chain, while the Agglayer OP Stack CDK has matured into a reusable framework for future rollups – three have launched already, with more in the pipeline.

All of this was possible thanks to Conduit’s forward-deployed engineering approach and wealth of experience building enterprise-level chains. This partnership underscores Conduit’s mission to move teams from vision to mainnet—and our ongoing commitment to support, optimize, and scale what we build together.

A great chain launch takes great partners. Contact Conduit to start scoping your project, and learn how we can support you every step of the way.