Perspectives on the Diversified Development of Data Availability (DA) Competition
Researcher NingNing expressed her views on the future competition in the Data Availability (DA) layer on Twitter. After the upgrade in Cancun, modular competition will directly come to the forefront. Celestia, EigenDA, and Covalent each have their own unique advantages and positioning.
This article is compiled and translated by ChainNews. If there are any doubts, please refer to the original article.
Table of Contents:
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DA Competition Catalyst: Cancun Upgrade
Rollups Reduce Data Storage Costs
Modular Competition with Cancun Upgrade
Multi-dimensional Competition in Block Data Availability
Providing the Safest DA Layer: Ethereum
Providing an Efficient DA Layer: Celestia
Providing Finality DA Layer: EigenDA
Providing Permanent Storage Data DA Layer: Covalent
Intense Competition in Data Availability Layer
Currently, the gas fees consumed by Layer2’s verification and settlement account for 10-20% of the total consumption of Ethereum. Among them, about 95% of the fees are paid to the Ethereum mainnet for DA services. It can be seen that data availability storage is very expensive and is a dilemma that Rollups urgently need to overcome.
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Changes in the Usage Proportion of Ethereum Gas Fees
Currently, the state data of Layer2 is stored in the blocks of the Ethereum mainnet in the form of CallData. However, after the Cancun upgrade, the state data of Layer2 will be stored in the newly added Blob space, which will greatly reduce costs.
However, the Cancun upgrade era has already brought a new narrative: DA War. After Ethereum completes the Cancun upgrade in the first half of this year, Ethereum will enter the prototype stage of transitioning from a monolithic blockchain to a modular blockchain.
After the Cancun upgrade, Ethereum can be seen as a modular public chain system composed of L1 Ethereum mainnet and L2 based on Ethereum (Arbitrum, Optimism, ZkSync, Starknet, Scroll, Taiko, Metis, etc.) to a certain extent.
The profound changes can be seen from Optimism’s slogan “Ethereum, scaled” which pursues Ethereum’s full equivalence.
After the Cancun upgrade, the Ethereum stack will be more “significantly” divided into execution layer, consensus layer, settlement layer, and data availability layer. The execution layer will partially outsource its functions to Layer2 based on Ethereum, the settlement layer will ensure the security of Layer2 assets, the consensus layer will be responsible for finality, and the data availability layer will guarantee the rebuildability of Layer2.
Data availability refers to the state data of L2, including complete transaction information, which used to be stored in L1 mainnet, which is Ethereum, after verification and consensus, providing fraud proof for Op-Rollup and ZKP verification support for ZK-Rollup.
Before the modular public chain Celestia, which focuses on providing DA services, went online, the Ethereum mainnet monopolized 100% of the DA market.
Celestia uses Data Availability Sampling (DAS) and Namespaced Merkle trees (NMT) technologies to enhance network consensus security and scalability. The former allows light nodes in the Celestia network to participate in the verification process of data availability, increasing security. The latter reduces the load on the Celestia network and Rollups by naming storage space, so that specific Rollups only need to read their own relevant data.
After the launch of the Celestia mainnet, it began to compete positively with the Ethereum mainnet in the DA market with its characteristics of low cost, security, and high trustlessness. Projects such as Manta, Lyra, and Dymension have successively joined Celestia.
(How will privacy-focused Layer2 project Manta Pacific break through the competition of zk Rollups as a latecomer?)
Therefore, Celestia has made the Ethereum community and Vitalik very unhappy, not only because Celestia’s competition damages Ethereum mainnet’s value capture ability, but also because its behavior damages the integration, equivalence, and interoperability between Ethereum and L2, making the Ethereum ecosystem incomplete.
(Celestia Mainnet Launch | Opportunities and Challenges for the Future of Modular Blockchains)
However, it is not only Celestia that is eyeing the DA market. EigenLayer also urgently needs an AVS project to find real-world application scenarios for its platform with over one billion dollars TVL. Facing the temptation of the DA service blue ocean market, EigenLayer chose to launch EigenDA as its first AVS project without hesitation.
(How will staking project EigenLayer change the Web3 infrastructure ecosystem?)
However, the architecture of EigenDA is different from Celestia. It uses zero-knowledge proof technology (ZKP) such as KZG (Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg) commitments to verify the state data submitted by Layer2, ensuring finality. The final state data of Layer2 still needs to be submitted and saved to the Ethereum mainnet.
Operating architecture of EigenDA
(Source)
EigenDA is equivalent to a subcontractor in the verification and finality process of the DA service on the Ethereum mainnet, rather than just a competitor providing data availability like Celestia.
After the Cancun upgrade, the Ethereum mainnet will only store the state data submitted by Layer2 for one month, and then discard it. Celestia also periodically discards the state data submitted by Layer2 to maintain the decentralization level and the operation of the light node verification mechanism of the network.
Therefore, Covalent, a data API provider in the Ethereum ecosystem, launched the long-term data availability layer service EWM (Ethereum Wormhole) at the end of last year to permanently store the Layer2 state data discarded by Ethereum.
Covalent will structure this data and integrate it into its platform’s on-chain data indexing API service, providing data investigation services and support for professional blockchain data websites, government regulatory departments, AI research teams, or other projects.
After the Cancun upgrade, modular blockchains will become the mainstream paradigm, and the DA layer will become the most fiercely competitive area in the modular stack. The DA War will be staged in full swing.
Whether it is Celestia, EigenDA, or Covalent, each has its own unique advantages and positioning. The future competition in the data availability layer may replicate the diversified development of Layer2, bringing a more robust foundation to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Celestia
Covalent
DA
EigenDA
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