A rising new narrative in the post-Cancun upgrade era—DA War

Author: NingNing, Web3Caff researcher Source: X, @0xNing0x

After Ethereum completes the Cancun upgrade in the first half of this year, Ethereum will complete the prototype (ProtoType) stage of transition from a single blockchain to a modular blockchain.

Ethereum after the Cancun upgrade can be seen to a certain extent as consisting of the Ethereum mainnet as L1 + Ethereum-based L2 (Arbitrum, A modular public chain system composed of Optimism, ZkSync, Starknet, Scroll, Taiko, Metis, etc.).

We can see the clues of this profound change from the Slogan "Ethereum, scaled" of Optimism, which pursues complete equivalence with Ethereum.

The Ethereum stack after the Cancun upgrade will be explicitly divided into a consensus layer, a data availability layer, a settlement layer and an execution layer. Among them, part of the execution layer functions (Danksharding may all) are outsourced to L2 based on Ethereum. The data availability layer ensures the rebuildability of L2, the settlement layer ensures the asset security of L2, and the consensus layer is responsible for finality.

DA (Data Availability, data availability) refers to the state data of L2 including Transaction Rollup to L1, and is stored in the L1 main network after verification and consensus, which is Op-Rollup L2 provides fraud proof and ZK-Rollup provides ZKP verification support.

The status data of L2 is now stored in the Ethereum mainnet block in the form of CallData. After the Cancun upgrade, L2 status data will be stored in the newly added Blob space.

The current gas fee consumed by L2 verification and clearing accounts for 10~20% of the gas consumption of the Ethereum main network. Among them, the DA service fee paid to the Ethereum main network accounts for 95% of the L2Gas fee consumption.

Before the Celestia mainnet, a modular public chain focused on providing DA services, was launched, the Ethereum mainnet monopolized 100% of the DA market.

Celestia introduces DAS (data availability sampling) and NMT (namespace Merkle tree) to enhance consensus security and scalability. DAS technology supports Celestia network light nodes to participate in the verification process of data availability. And NMT (namespace Merkle tree) reduces Celestia's consensus load.

At the beginning of the Celestia mainnet launch, it began to compete head-on with the Ethereum mainnet in the DA market with its cheap, safe, and highly trustworthy features. Privacy L2 Manta , the Dapp Chain of the decentralized option protocol Lyra, and many of Celestia’s ecological partners such as Dymension, have joined Celestia’s embrace.

Celestia’s approach made the Ethereum community and Vitalik very unhappy, which eventually led to L2Beat removing L2 based on Celestia DA from the L2 list.

This is not entirely because Celestia’s competition harms the value capture ability of the Ethereum main network, but more because its behavior harms the relationship between Ethereum and L2. Coupling, equivalence and interoperability.

But Celestia is not the only one who is eyeing the DA market. EigenLayer, which invented the new primitive of Restaking, also urgently needs an AVS (Active Verification Service) instance to find real scenarios for the platform’s $1 billion TVL. .

Faced with the temptation of the blue ocean market of DA services, EigenLayer chose to launch EigenDA as the first AVS instance without hesitation.

It’s just that EigenDA’s architecture is different from Celestia. It uses ZK technology such as KZG commitment to verify the status data submitted by L2 + Restaking ETH to ensure consensus security. The EigenDA network is responsible for finality, and the final L2 status data still needs to be submitted and saved to the Ethereum mainnet.

EigenDA is equivalent to a subcontractor for verification and finality in the DA service of the Ethereum main network, rather than a competitor like Celestia.

In addition to Ethereum, Celestia and EigenDA, there is another player in the DA market that has been ignored by everyone: Covalent.

We know that after the Cancun upgrade, the Ethereum mainnet will only save the status data submitted by L2 for 1 month, and then discard it. In order to maintain the decentralization of the network and the establishment of the DAS light node mechanism, Celestia will also regularly discard the status data submitted by L2.

As a professional on-chain data platform endorsed by giants such as Binance, Coinbase, CoinGecko, etc., Covalent launched the long-term DA service EWM (Ethereum Time Shuttle Machine) at the end of last year ), permanently saving the state data submitted by L2 discarded by Ethereum.

And Covalent will index and structure these data and integrate them into the on-chain data API service of its platform to provide professional blockchain data websites and government regulatory authorities with , artificial intelligence research team provides services and support.

The picture above is a modular stack diagram produced by the Cavalent team. L2 projects Arbitrum, Optimism, Scroll, etc. are responsible for writing status data. Ethereum is responsible for asset custody and settlement. The consensus layer includes Ethereum and Celestia. Competition, while the DA layer is the three kingdoms of Ethereum, Celestia and EigenLayer, and Covalent is responsible for reading L2 status data.

I personally believe that after the Cancun upgrade, the modular public chain will become the mainstream paradigm of the public chain, and the DA layer will become a modular stack In the most competitive field in the game, DA War will be in full swing. The protocols in the modular stack will become a major investment mainline in 24 years.