Why is Avail notable in the new phase of the "DA Competition"?

Author: shushu, BlockBeats

Despite the current decline in enthusiasm for technical narratives within the crypto community, it is undeniable that since the Cancun upgrade, the transaction costs in the Ethereum ecosystem have significantly decreased, showcasing the tangible benefits of technological advancements. Another major technical narrative in the blockchain space today is modularity. In the first half of the year, the performances of two major modular blockchains, Celestia and EigenDA, were impressive, and last week, another leading player in modularity, Avail, also opened a new chapter.

On July 23, Avail announced the launch of the Avail DA mainnet and the introduction of the AVAIL token. AVAIL will serve as the native asset of the Avail network, used for paying DA fees and ensuring network security through staking. Additionally, AVAIL holders will be able to start staking their AVAIL tokens.

Avail, EigenDA, and Celestia are the main players in the DA ecosystem—each serving the same space but taking slightly different approaches in terms of infrastructure stack, execution, and listing. This article will introduce the project details and product mechanisms of Avail to help understand how leading projects are designed and ultimately implemented as the current modular technology development enters a steady advancement phase.

Problems Avail Aims to Solve

Avail was initially launched by Polygon co-founder Anurag Arjun in 2020 and became an independent entity in March 2023. Its goal is to build a neutral platform through data sampling, meaning it does not rely on any specific Rollup solution and is not limited to any particular Rollup scheme; Avail will serve all major Rollups.

In 2023, Avail raised $27 million through financing, and by June of this year, its total funding reached $75 million, further promoting its layout in the Web3 space.

Data availability is a crucial component of modular blockchain architecture. In the past, each node needed to download all transaction data to verify its availability, which was inefficient and costly, severely limiting the scalability of blockchains. Data Availability Sampling (DAS) allows light nodes to confirm data availability without downloading the entire block through multiple rounds of random sampling, reducing data verification costs by 99%. However, the DA layer is a highly competitive field that must achieve differentiation by providing different guarantees and establishing its own ecosystem as a moat.

The quality of an ecosystem depends on the interoperability between all the different chains within it. The ultimate vision for Avail is "a unified Rollup ecosystem." To achieve this goal, a trusted, neutral third party is needed to coordinate communication between different Rollups and allow these Rollups to perform various tasks.

Thus, Avail has pioneered the Avail Trinity approach, where Avail DA enhances Rollup scalability and reduces operational costs; Nexus addresses fragmentation issues and promotes Rollup unification; and Avail Fusion provides shared security solutions.

The DA layer is specifically built for data availability and is the lowest layer of the blockchain, possessing the lightest functionalities needed to build cross-ecosystem interoperability. Nexus, operating on top of Avail, is a lightweight yet powerful ZK rollup that supports cross-Rollup and cross-ecosystem settlement. Fusion Security can aggregate the cryptoeconomic security of multiple tokens to serve and protect the Avail network.

This architecture is adopted because the current issue with blockchains is that the user experience for cross-chain transactions is not yet ready for mass adoption. While Rollups enhance scalability by processing transactions off-chain, they add complexity, leading to increased transaction costs and liquidity fragmentation, which negatively impacts user experience and hinders the large-scale adoption of blockchain technology.

Core Functions of Avail DA

From architecture to core data processing, inspired by the cryptographic security of ZK technology, Avail uses validity proofs (KZG commitments), allowing developers and users to verify data availability themselves without needing to trust Avail.

Once a validity proof is generated, the computational efficiency of proving and verifying becomes very high, providing data availability guarantees directly to different nodes in a highly scalable manner. Avail completes blocks in about 60 seconds, one of the fastest verification times offered by today's data availability providers.

Additionally, Avail DA has a P2P network composed of multiple light clients from which sampling can be conducted. These light clients can not only verify data availability guarantees but also ensure the availability of the data itself. They retain available data samples within the P2P network, and as the number of light clients increases, data availability improves.

In this way, Avail becomes a DA layer that can sample data from its light client P2P network without relying on full nodes. As long as there are enough light clients, the P2P network can theoretically possess all data units within a block, allowing users to query the entire block without relying on RPC.

Avail DA is the only data availability layer that combines KZG commitments with Data Availability Sampling (DAS), marking an important milestone for the blockchain community, as it enables Rollups to achieve functionalities and benefits similar to Ethereum's current complete Danksharding roadmap.

Given that this article mainly introduces and discusses DA-related content, the sections on Avail Nexus and Avail Fusion will only be briefly mentioned here.

Avail Nexus is a custom ZK coordinating Rollup based on Avail. In a multi-chain world, user experience has already been negatively impacted during interactions between chains. Without fundamental changes in composability, increasing the number of chains will lead to greater problems, which is why Avail is building Avail Nexus. It uses Avail DA as a trust root, acting as a verification center for unifying Rollups.

The Fusion Security component allows external tokens, in addition to the native Avail token, to be included in the Avail DA consensus, providing strong cryptoeconomic guarantees and enhancing Avail's functionality as a unified layer for Web3.

How to Participate in the Entire System by Staking AVAIL Tokens

With the launch of the Avail DA mainnet, the Avail team also airdropped AVAIL tokens to all eligible users. The total supply is 10 billion tokens, with 6% allocated for airdrops and public distribution, 30% for ecosystem development, 23.88% for community and research, 14.12% for investors, and 20% for core contributors.

AVAIL has a wide range of uses, including ecological governance and liquid staking. The former has not yet been detailed by the official team, but the latter can be done through deq.fi. Deq.fi is a newly launched native liquid staking pool on Avail, where users can stake their AVAIL tokens to receive stAVAIL, which can then be used to explore other aspects of the ecosystem.

Speaking of staking, Avail adopts a Nominated Proof of Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism inherited from the Substrate ecosystem. Staking plays a crucial role in the NPoS consensus mechanism. By staking AVAIL tokens, users can contribute to the security of the network and earn rewards for their participation. The more tokens staked, the higher the security of the network, as malicious actors would need to acquire a significant portion of the staked tokens to successfully attack the network.

Thus, Avail's DA, Nexus, and Fusion security layers will all be protected through AVAIL token staking.

Avail DA Staking: Users can stake AVAIL tokens to validators or nomination pools, helping to secure network operations and support various application scenarios such as Web3 games and DeFi platforms. Stakers can earn staking rewards as a result.

Avail Nexus Staking: To enhance the efficiency and fairness of transaction processing, sorters need to stake AVAIL tokens to participate in the submission and sorting of transaction batches. Those who perform well will receive rewards, while those who perform poorly will face penalties.

Avail Fusion Staking: Staking is not limited to AVAIL tokens but also includes other mainstream crypto assets like BTC and ETH, enhancing the overall security of the network, with stakers receiving corresponding rewards.

It is worth noting that to remove staked tokens from the Avail network, nominators must complete the unbinding process, which takes 28 days, during which AVAIL tokens cannot be used or transferred.

A Strong Ecosystem

Avail's ultimate goal is to acquire orderly transaction data from all chains and aggregate it into Avail, making it the collaborative center for all Web3. This "neutral" stance allows for greater interoperability and capital flow and can also attract non-Ethereum-centric ecosystems.

From the perspective of Ethereum, Avail has already integrated five major Rollup stacks, including OP Stack, Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK, Starknet Stack, and zkSync's ZK Stack. In addition to Rollups, Avail DA has also integrated several Rollup-as-a-Service solutions, including AltLayer, Conduit, Karnot, Ankr, Gateway, Gelato, PineX, and Snapchain.

Avail is also making strides in the Bitcoin ecosystem. Currently, Avail has integrated Bitcoin L2s such as BVM, dWallet, Rooch, LayerEdge, and the Bitcoin scaling layer Side Protocol, with L2 publishing transaction data to Avail DA, which is not only cost-effective but also achieves transaction finality in about 40 seconds. Furthermore, Avail will enable interoperability between Bitcoin L2 and Avail Nexus.

Avail has also made progress in integrating application chains, having already integrated payment chain Fuse, oracle service OpenLayer, IaaS protocol Neova, L1 Arcana focusing on chain abstraction and intent, and on-chain gaming Blade Games.

Every area Avail is developing has competitors, such as the DA layers Celestia, EigenDA, and Polygon's Agg Layer, or shared sequencers within the interoperability layer, as well as projects like EigenLayer and Babylon for shared security.

However, Avail aims to provide a comprehensive and efficient blockchain solution by integrating the data availability layer, interoperability layer, and shared security. It maintains the existing cryptoeconomic trust model while minimizing reliance on new cryptographic methods, thereby enhancing the stability and security of the system. This could prove to be the ultimate logical destination for the DA layer, as there is a natural synergy between the DA layer and interoperability solutions.

So far, the progress of modular technology has demonstrated extraordinary potential, as many ideas were merely concepts a few years ago. By fundamentally enhancing the way blockchains are built and used, the DA layer will undoubtedly become central to this cycle and future technological developments. Avail's forward-looking layout not only reflects its precise grasp of technological trends but also signifies its important position in the future blockchain ecosystem.