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Near launches data availability layer solution to address NEAR DA challenge posed by Celestia

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Near launches data availability layer solution to address NEAR DA challenge posed by Celestia

The well-known sharded public blockchain project Near announced the launch of the popular "Data Availability Layer" solution NEAR DA at NEARCON yesterday, aiming to provide better performance for Ethereum and its Rollups. It will compete with Celestia, which earlier airdropped TIA tokens.

Table of Contents

Near Joins the Data Availability Layer Battle

Introduction to Data Availability Layer

Scalability issues with Ethereum have always been a focal point for the community. Even though there are Layer2 solutions like Arbitrum or zkSync that offer services at lower costs, the cost of Layer2 is still not effectively reduced due to the need to store complete data on the Ethereum mainnet.

Therefore, the community believes that it is more economical to store complete data elsewhere in a modular way. This involves creating a network specifically for storing complete transaction information, known as the Data Availability Layer, to ensure that data is "available" for the mainnet when needed, typically referred to as a Data Availability Layer.

NEAR DA provides Rollups data availability layer services source

The Data Availability Layer records complete transaction information. For example, when a user exchanges tokens using Uniswap, the Data Availability Layer records the original transaction data "from 0xabc... user wallet address to 0xjkl... contract address" and the transaction information after the smart contract computation output, "using 1 ETH to exchange for 1900 USDC," providing the Ethereum mainnet with either the recorded results or just the recorded Merkle Tree for recalculating and verification when needed.

By doing so, the Data Availability Layer reduces the cost of information storage, improving the operational efficiency between the mainnet and Layer2.

However, not everyone agrees with this technology. Vitalik believes that storing transaction information off-chain, rather than on the Ethereum mainnet, is not a secure practice and suggests making choices based on the use case. For example, financial services are not recommended to use this technology, but applications like games that require a large number of transactions may find it more suitable.

Near Introduces NEAR DA

The Near Foundation announced yesterday at its third annual developer conference NEARCON the launch of their own Data Availability Layer solution NEAR DA, utilizing Near's existing resources to provide an alternative data storage solution for Ethereum's Rollup, alleviating the burden of storing and transmitting large amounts of data on the Ethereum blockchain.

Recent data shows that the cost of recording transaction information using NEAR DA can be reduced by 8000 times. The team stated that the cost of publishing 100 KB of calldata on Ethereum with existing Rollups is approximately $26.22, while publishing the same amount of data on the Near Protocol only costs $0.0033.

Officially announced partners that will adopt NEAR DA technology include technical teams Madara and Caldera from the Starknet ecosystem, as well as the Movement Labs team from the Move ecosystem, and more development teams are welcome to join in the future.

NEAR DA partners and clients source

Intense Competition in the Data Availability Layer

NEAR DA represents Near's official entry into the modular blockchain battlefield, competing with other DA providers like Celestia, with similar service scopes and strategies.

Celestia launched a new network last week and attracted market attention through airdrops. Additionally, the Avail project from Polygon announced yesterday in atweet that they will release a new test network Clash of Nodes and offer rewards to attract developers for testing, preparing for the mainnet launch next year.

Near's team is entering into fierce competition, not only in technical aspects but also testing the team's business development capabilities in the commercial market.

Near's Development Strategy

Existing Advantages

Why did Near choose to launch DA services at this time? Near already possesses relevant technologies, whether it's Layer2 or application chain frameworks. The team is familiar with modular architecture, and this service is simply an extension of its core technology stack, allowing them to tap into the vast market and ecosystem of Ethereum, with significant benefits.

NEAR DA shares the same goal as Celestia, aiming to capture existing Ethereum market share and divert it to their ecosystem with competitive modular components.

Now is the golden age of modular data availability layers. Because a "market-competitive" data storage solution needs to be established before Ethereum EIP-4844 is implemented in the future; otherwise, its cost advantage will weaken or disappear. There is still uncertainty about whether DA is compelling enough to change market behavior by then. Therefore, both Celestia and NEAR DA are rushing to launch their services in the near term.

Future Vision

Near's goal is to build an open network, Open Web, that can accommodate more people, making it easier for users and developers to use blockchain technology. NEAR DA will be part of the Open Web Stack, providing developers with more complete functionalities.

Ecosystem Competition Resumes

Whether it's existing exchanges building Layer2 networks based on OP Stack or Arbitrum Orbit, or projects from the Cosmos and Near ecosystems establishing infrastructure for Ethereum Layer2, fundamentally, they are all drawing energy from the Ethereum market to strengthen their own ecosystems.

Expect to see more projects offering services based on Ethereum in the future.