Researcher NingNing, in a tweet, expressed her views on the future competition in the Data Availability (DA) layer after the upgrade in Cancun. Celestia, EigenDA, and Covalent each have their unique advantages and positioning in the modular competition.
This article is compiled and translated by Chain News. If there are any doubts, please refer to the original text.
Table of Contents:
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DA Competition Catalyst: Cancun Upgrade
Reduced Data Storage Costs for Rollups
Modular Competition Brought by the Cancun Upgrade
Multi-dimensional Competition in Block Data Availability
Providing the Safest DA Layer: Ethereum
Providing the Most Efficient DA Layer: Celestia
Providing the Finality DA Layer: EigenDA
Providing Permanent Data Storage DA Layer: Covalent
Intense Competition in the Data Availability Layer
Currently, the fuel fees consumed by Layer2’s verification and settlement account for 10-20% of Ethereum’s total consumption. Among them, about 95% of the service fees are paid to the Ethereum mainnet for DA, indicating that data storage for data availability is very expensive and a dilemma that Rollups urgently need to overcome.
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Changes in the Proportion of Ethereum Fuel Fee Consumption
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 new Blob space, which will significantly reduce costs.
However, during the Cancun upgrade era, a new narrative has emerged: DA War. After Ethereum completes the Cancun upgrade in the first half of this year, Ethereum will complete 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.). The profound changes can be seen from the slogan “Ethereum, scaled” pursued by Optimism, which pursues the full equivalence of Ethereum.
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 outsource some functions to Layer2 based on Ethereum. The settlement layer ensures the asset security of Layer2. The consensus layer is responsible for finality, and the data availability layer guarantees the rebuildability of Layer2.
Data availability refers to the state data of L2, including complete transaction information, which used to be stored in the L1 mainnet, which is Ethereum, after verification and consensus, providing fraud proof for Op-Rollup and supporting ZKP verification for ZK-Rollup.
Before the launch of Celestia, a modular public chain focusing on providing DA services, 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 of 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 spaces, ensuring that specific Rollups only need to read their own relevant data.
After the launch of the Celestia mainnet, with its characteristics of low cost, security, and high trustlessness, it has begun to compete positively with the Ethereum mainnet in the DA market. Projects such as Manta, Lyra, and Dymension have all embraced Celestia.
(How will the privacy-oriented Layer2 project Manta Pacific break through the competition of zk Rollups as a latecomer?)
Therefore, Celestia makes the Ethereum community and Vitalik very unhappy, not only because Celestia’s competition damages the value capture ability of the Ethereum mainnet, but more importantly, because its behavior damages the composability, 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 application scenarios for its platform with a TVL of over $1 billion. Facing the temptation of the blue ocean market of DA services, EigenLayer decisively launched EigenDA as its first AVS project.
(The re-staking project EigenLayer will change the Web3 infrastructure ecosystem)
However, the architecture of EigenDA is different from Celestia. It uses Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg (KZG) commitment and other zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) technologies to verify the state data submitted by Layer2, ensuring finality. In the end, the state data of Layer2 still needs to be submitted and saved to the Ethereum mainnet.
Operating Architecture of EigenDA
(Data source)
EigenDA is equivalent to a subcontractor for the verification and finality stages of the DA service of the Ethereum mainnet, rather than just a competitor providing data availability like Celestia.
After the Cancun upgrade, the Ethereum mainnet will only save the state data submitted by Layer2 for one month, and then discard it. To maintain the decentralization and operation of the lightweight node verification mechanism of the network, Celestia will also periodically discard the state data submitted by Layer2.
Therefore, Covalent, a data API provider in the Ethereum ecosystem, launched the long-term data availability layer service EWM (Ethereum Time Machine) at the end of last year, permanently storing the Layer2 state data discarded by Ethereum.
Covalent will structure these data and integrate them into its platform’s on-chain data indexing API service, providing data investigation services and support for professional blockchain data websites, government regulatory agencies, AI research teams, or other projects.
After the Cancun upgrade, modular public chains will become the mainstream paradigm of public chains, and the DA layer will become the most fiercely competitive area in the modular stack. The DA War will be staged vigorously.
Whether it is Celestia, EigenDA, or Covalent, each has its unique advantages and positioning. The future competition in the data availability layer may reproduce the diverse development of Layer2 and bring a more robust foundation to the Ethereum ecosystem.
Celestia
Covalent
DA
EigenDA
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