Opinion | Competition in the Data Availability Layer (DA) is expected to show diverse development

Blockchain researcher NingNing shared her views on the future competitive landscape of Data Availability (DA) layer on Twitter after the Cancun upgrade. Following the upgrade, modular competition will be directly brought to the forefront, with Celestia, EigenDA, and Covalent each having unique advantages and positioning.

This article is compiled and translated. For any doubts, please refer to the original tweet.

DA Catalyst for Competition: Cancun Upgrade

Reducing Rollups Data Storage Costs

Currently, 10-20% of Ethereum's total consumption is spent on the verification and settlement of Layer2, with about 95% of this being the service fee paid to Ethereum's main network for DA services, indicating that data availability storage is very expensive and a dilemma that Rollups urgently need to overcome.

Currently, the state data of Layer2 is stored in Ethereum's main network blocks in CallData format. However, after the Cancun upgrade, the state data of Layer2 will be stored in the newly added Blob space, significantly reducing costs.

Modular Competition with Cancun Upgrade

However, the Cancun upgrade era has already introduced a new narrative: DA War. After Ethereum completes the Cancun upgrade in the first half of this year, Ethereum will transition from a monolithic blockchain to a modular blockchain during the ProtoType stage.

Post the Cancun upgrade, Ethereum can be seen to some extent as a modular public chain system composed of L1 Ethereum mainnet + Ethereum-based L2 solutions like Arbitrum, Optimism, ZkSync, Starknet, Scroll, Taiko, Metis, and others.

The profound changes are evident from Optimism's slogan "Ethereum, scaled" in pursuit of Ethereum's full equivalency.

Post-Cancun upgrade, Ethereum's stack will be more prominently divided into execution layer, consensus layer, settlement layer, and data availability layer. The execution layer will partially outsource functions to Ethereum-based Layer2, the settlement layer will ensure the security of Layer2 assets, the consensus layer will be responsible for finality, and the data availability layer will ensure the rebuildability of Layer2.

Multi-Faceted Competition in Block Data Availability

Providing the Safest DA Layer: Ethereum

Data availability refers to the state data including complete transaction information of L2, which after verification and consensus will be stored in the L1 mainnet, i.e., Ethereum, providing fraud proofs for Op-Rollup and ZKP verification support for ZK-Rollup.

Before the modular public chain Celestia mainnet focused on providing DA services, Ethereum mainnet dominated 100% of the DA market.

Providing Efficient DA Layer: Celestia

Celestia enhances network consensus security and scalability using Data Availability Sampling (DAS) and Namespaced Merkle trees (NMT) technologies. The former allows light nodes in the Celestia network to participate in data availability verification, increasing security; the latter by naming storage space, allows specific Rollups to only read relevant data, reducing the load on the Celestia network and Rollups.

With the launch of the Celestia mainnet, it begins positive competition with the Ethereum mainnet in the DA market, offering features such as cost-effectiveness, security, and high trustlessness, attracting projects like Manta, Lyra, Dymension into the Celestia ecosystem.

How will the privacy-focused Layer2 project Manta Pacific break through zk Rollups' competition as a latecomer?

This has made the Ethereum community and Vitalik quite unhappy, not just because Celestia's competition damages Ethereum mainnet's value capture capability but more because its actions harm the composability, equivalency, and interoperability between Ethereum and L2, making the Ethereum ecosystem incomplete.

Celestia Mainnet Launch|Opportunities and Challenges for the Modular Blockchain Future

Providing Finality DA Layer: EigenDA

But Celestia is not the only one eyeing the DA market; EigenLayer also urgently needs an AVS project to find real-world use cases for its platform's over $1 billion TVL. Facing the temptation of the blue ocean market of DA services, EigenLayer decisively launches EigenDA as its first AVS project.

How will the staking project EigenLayer change the Web3 infrastructure ecosystem?

However, EigenDA's architecture differs from Celestia's as it uses Kate-Zaverucha-Goldberg (KZG) zero-knowledge proof technology to verify the state data submitted by Layer2, ensuring finality and requiring Layer2's state data to be submitted and saved to the Ethereum mainnet.

EigenDA acts as a subcontractor for the verification and finality stages of the DA service on the Ethereum mainnet, rather than a competitor like Celestia, which only offers data availability.

Providing Permanent Data Storage DA Layer: Covalent

Post Cancun upgrade, Ethereum mainnet will only store the state data submitted by Layer2 for one month and then discard it; Celestia, to maintain network decentralization and the operation of light node verification mechanisms, will also periodically discard the state data submitted by Layer2.

Hence, 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 Layer2 state data discarded by Ethereum.

Covalent will structure this data and integrate it into its platform's on-chain data indexing API services, providing data investigation services and support for professional blockchain data websites, government regulatory agencies, AI research teams, or other projects.

Intense Competition in Data Availability Layer

Post the Cancun upgrade, modular public chains will become the mainstream paradigm, and the DA layer will be the most fiercely competitive area in the modular stack, with the DA War unfolding vigorously.

Whether Celestia, EigenDA, or Covalent, each has its unique advantages and positioning. The future competition in the data availability layer may see a re-emergence of the diverse development of Layer2, bringing a more robust foundation to the Ethereum ecosystem.