FAQ

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? Rome uses OP Stack components (OP-Geth, Hercules indexer) for Ethereum RPC compatibility, but EVM execution happens on Solana L1 — 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. RSOL (wrapped SOL) is the default. Custom tokens are priced via Meteora pools.

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.

Do Transfer Hooks work with Rome? Yes. Rome is the only EVM environment where Solidity contracts can act as Token-2022 Transfer Hooks. See Transfer Hooks.

Infrastructure

Do I need to run my own node? For development, connect to the devnet RPC at https://montispl.devnet.romeprotocol.xyz. For production, you'll need Proxy + Hercules + (optionally) OP-Geth.

What databases does Rome need? PostgreSQL for Hercules (block indexing) and Proxy (block queries in single-state mode). Default connection: postgres://hercules:qwerty123@postgres_rome/test_rollup.

Can I run Rome locally? Yes. cd rome-setup/deploy && ./start-local.sh brings up the full stack. See the rome-setup README.