FAQ

Frequently asked questions about Rome Protocol — is Rome a bridge or a rollup, Solidity compatibility, oracles, gas tokens, and Solana interop.

General

What is Rome Protocol? Rome is an EVM execution environment running natively inside the Solana runtime. Solidity contracts deploy on Solana with direct CPI access to all Solana programs. See What is Rome?

Is Rome a bridge? No. Rome EVM runs inside Solana's runtime as a first-class program. There's no message relay between separate chains. EVM state IS Solana state.

Is Rome a rollup? No. A block indexer (Hercules) produces Ethereum-compatible blocks for wallets and explorers, but EVM execution happens inside a Solana program — not on a separate rollup chain.

Development

Can I use my existing Solidity contracts? Yes. Standard Solidity contracts deploy unchanged on Rome. If your contracts use Chainlink oracles, the Oracle Gateway provides the same AggregatorV3Interface.

What Solidity version should I use? 0.8.28 is recommended (matches the Rome Solidity SDK). Earlier versions work.

Can I use Hardhat? Foundry? Both work. Configure your network with the Rome RPC URL and chain ID. See Deploy Solidity.

Can I use MetaMask? Yes. Add Rome as a custom network in MetaMask with the appropriate RPC URL and chain ID. See Quickstart.

How do I call Solana programs from Solidity? Use the CPI precompile (0xFF...08) via the Rome Solidity SDK. See Call Solana from EVM.

Performance

What's the transaction finality time? Sub-second — same as Solana block time (~400ms).

What's the compute budget? ~1.4M compute units per atomic transaction. Operations exceeding this use iterative mode (split across multiple Solana transactions). See Compute Budget.

Tokens

What gas token does Rome use? Each chain chooses its own gas token — any SPL token, priced via Meteora pools. The public chains (Martius, Hadrian) use USDC as gas.

How do ERC-20 tokens work on Rome? ERC-20 tokens on Rome are transparent wrappers over SPL tokens. balanceOf() reads directly from the SPL token account on Solana. See Token Interop.

A Solana-side deposit or bridge transfer fails with "insufficient SOL," but my wallet is funded — why? Rome's devnet and testnet chains settle on Solana Devnet, so your Solana wallet must be in the matching network mode. In Phantom, open Settings → Developer Settings → enable Testnet Mode with the network set to Devnet, then disconnect and reconnect both wallets and retry. If a token balance doesn't appear after a deposit, import the token into your wallet manually.

Infrastructure

Do I need to run my own node? No — connect to a public chain's RPC (see Networks). Running your own chain means operating the Proxy and Hercules.

What databases does Rome need? PostgreSQL, used by Hercules for block indexing and by the Proxy for block queries.

Can I run Rome locally? Today, develop against a public chain — the Quickstart deploys to Martius (testnet) or Hadrian (devnet) in minutes. A self-contained local stack is on the roadmap.