Celestia: Ethereum DA’s biggest competitor

Written by: Ac-Core, YBB Capital Researcher

Foreword

According to the definition of the Ethereum Foundation, Ethereum's Layer2 = Rollup. According to Vitalik's recent new point of view, if other EVM chains use non-Ethereum as DA (Data Availability), then it is Ethereum Validium (moving the data availability layer of the blockchain outside the chain, using valid proofs to ensure the chain integrity of external transactions). Although there is still a certain degree of controversy over the precise definition of Layer 2 due to DA issues, the upgrade route of Ethereum is still centered on Rollup, and DA is responsible for saving or uploading Rollup transaction data during the Ethereum upgrade. important role. Whether Optimistic Rollup and ZK Rollup can access related data through DA will affect their own security to a certain extent, even if their dependence levels are different. Faced with the innovation of Cosmos shared security and Celestia's DA penetration, as well as the market makers' drive, can EigenLayer, which draws lessons from native Ethereum, regain the market by upgrading middleware to Ethereum-level security narratives? sovereignty?

EigenLayer

Source: EigenLayer White Paper

To understand simply, EigenLayer is a re-staking protocol based on Ethereum, which provides Ethereum-level security for the entire Ethereum cryptoeconomic system in the future. It allows users to re-pledge native ETH, LSDETH and LP Token through the EigenLayer smart contract and receive verification rewards, allowing third-party projects to enjoy the security of the ETH main network while also obtaining more reward income, thereby achieving a win-win situation.

The reason why Ethereum is able to attract a large amount of transaction volume and liquidity is that it is currently recognized by most people as the safest cryptocurrency besides Bitcoin. The first layer of blockchain. EigenLayer directly connects the security and liquidity of Ethereum through Actively Validated Services (AVS). Its essence is to directly entrust the security verification of its token model to Ethereum nodes (which can be simply understood as node operations). business), this process is called re-staking. This article only gives examples of the first AVS project developed by the EigenLayer team: EigenDA.

EigenDA: Rollup data availability

Image source: EigenDA official

According to the official explanation and introduction (no actual relevant data to support it yet), EigenDA is a decentralized data availability (DA) built on Ethereum using EigenLayer Restaking. service and will be the first Active Verification Service (AVS) on EigenLayer. Among them, Restakers can entrust the pledge to the executing EigenDA and the node operator that performs the verification task, and receive service fees in return, and Rollups can publish data to EigenDA, thereby reducing transaction fee costs, obtaining higher transaction throughput and improving the entire Security of the EigenLayer ecosystem. Security and transaction throughput in this development process will expand with the overall development of staking volume, related ecological protocols, and operators.

EigenDA aims to provide innovative DA solutions for Rollups, allowing Ethereum stakers and verifiers to improve security and improve throughput by connecting to each other. On the premise of reducing costs, the EigenLayer shared security system will adopt a multi-node approach to ensure the degree of decentralization. According to EigenDA’s tweet, its currently integrated Layer 2 solutions include Celo for the transition from L1 to Ethereum L2; Mantle and its supporting products outside the BitDAO ecosystem; Fluent that provides the zkWASM execution layer; Offshore that provides the Move execution layer, and OP Stack in Optimism (currently used in EigenDA test network).

EigenDA is a secure, high-throughput and decentralized data availability (DA) service built on Ethereum, developed based on EigenLayer Restaking. Here are some of the key features and benefits EigenDA was designed to achieve:

Features:

Shared security: EigenDA uses EigenLayer's shared security model to enable verifiers (Restakers) to participate in the verification process by contributing ETH to improve the overall security of the network;

Data Availability: The main goal of EigenDA is to ensure data availability on Layer 2 networks. It uses validators to verify and ensure the data validity of the Rollup network, prevent bad behavior and ensure the normal operation of the network;

Decentralized sorting: EigenDA uses EigenLayer's decentralized sorting mechanism to ensure the Rollup network Transactions in the system are executed in the correct order, thereby maintaining the correctness and consistency of the entire system;

Flexibility: EigenDA's design allows L2 developers to adjust various parameters, including security, as needed The trade-off between security and activity, the mode of staking tokens, the erasure coding ratio, etc., to adapt to different scenarios and needs.

Advantages:

Economic benefits: EigenDA is implemented through EigenLayer Shared security of ETH, thereby reducing potential staking costs. It reduces the operating cost of each operator by decentralizing data verification work and provides a more cost-effective verification service;

High throughput: EigenDA is designed to be horizontally scalable as more operations are added As members join the network, its throughput will also increase. In private testing, EigenDA has demonstrated throughput of up to 10 MBps, with a roadmap for expansion to 1 GBps, providing the possibility to support applications with high bandwidth requirements, such as multiplayer games and video streaming;

Security mechanism: EigenDA uses multi-layer security mechanisms, including EigenLayer's shared security, Proof of Custody mechanism and Dual Quorum to ensure the security, decentralization and censorship resistance of the network;

Customizability: EigenDA provides a flexible design that allows L2 developers to tailor it to their specific needs Adjust various parameters with use cases to find a balance between security and performance.

Re-pledge mode

Source: Delphi Digital

Applicable to independent ETH pledgers, they can transfer their pledged ETH through The withdrawal certificate points to the EigenLayer smart contract to re-stake and obtain additional income. If an independent pledger commits misconduct, EigenLayer can directly confiscate his withdrawal certificate;

LST re-pledge:

LST (Liquid Staking Token) is the abbreviation of Liquid Staking Token. Ordinary investors, even if they do not have 32 ETH, can "carpool" through liquidity staking protocols such as Lido and Rocket Pool, deposit ETH into the pledge pool, and receive LST representing their ETH and their claim rights to pledge income. Users who have pledged ETH in Lido and Rocket Pool can transfer their LST holdings to the EigenLayer smart contract and re-stake to obtain additional income;

LP Token Re-pledge:

LP Token re-pledge is divided into ETH LP re-pledge and LST LP re-pledge.

ETH LP re-pledge: Users can re-pledge a pair of DeFi protocol LP Tokens including ETH to EigenLayer.

LST LP re-pledge: Users can re-pledge a pair of DeFi protocol LP Token containing lsdETH Go to EigenLayer. For example, Curve protocol’s stETH-ETH LP Token can be pledged to EigenLayer again.

Celestia in Cosmos

Source: Celestia official

Currently, no blockchain can truly solve the impossible triangle problem of decentralization, security and scalability. Cosmos believes that only multi-chain Only the design architecture can overcome the trade-offs between them to a certain extent. Before discussing Celestia, let’s briefly review Cosmos, where blockchains achieve interoperability through the IBC (Inter-Blockchain Communication) protocol. Here is a detailed discussion of security between Cosmos chains:

IBC Protocol Security: IBC is the protocol in the Cosmos network that ensures communication between chains. It ensures the confidentiality and integrity of messages by using mechanisms such as encryption and signatures. The IBC protocol includes a series of verification steps to ensure the trustworthiness of cross-chain communications. Through IBC, the Cosmos chain can securely transmit messages and assets to prevent fraud and tampering;

Consensus mechanism security: Each blockchain in the Cosmos ecosystem may Different consensus mechanisms are used, the most common of which is Tendermint. The Tendermint consensus algorithm ensures consistency between nodes through Byzantine Fault Tolerance (BFT). This means that the system can still function normally in the presence of a certain number of malicious nodes. The security of the consensus mechanism is crucial to the stability and security of the entire network;

Hub security: There is a centralization called Hub in the Cosmos network Blockchain serves as a bridge between different chains. The security of the Hub plays a key role in the stability of the entire ecosystem. If the Hub is not secure, it can cause problems for the entire network. Therefore, ensuring the security of the Hub is an important task in the Cosmos ecosystem, involving strict control of its consensus mechanism and node management;

Asset security : Since assets can be transferred between Cosmos chains, it is crucial to ensure the security of assets. By using cryptography, the Cosmos chain is protected against malicious activities such as double-spend attacks. At the same time, the design of the IBC protocol makes the cross-chain transmission of assets more secure and reliable;

Smart contracts and application layer security: The Cosmos network allows the development of smart contracts and distributed applications. Ensuring this level of security is achieved by ensuring code quality, auditing, and bug fixes for smart contracts and applications running on the blockchain.

Celestia separates consensus and execution through modular design, achieving scalability and flexibility and promoting application for various blockchain solutions. Customizable ecosystem. In contrast, Cosmos promotes blockchain collaboration with an ecosystem-neutral approach, emphasizing the interconnectivity between independent blockchains, and uses Tendermint to integrate consensus and execution, providing a cohesive environment that brings The intuitive negative impact is the loss of its own flexibility. Celestia's modular approach provides enhanced scalability and development flexibility, and provides customized solutions to meet different application needs. There are even calls that Celestia+Cosmos is the ultimate form of future application chains.

Celestia's ICS and EigenLayer's EigenDA

Picture source author X: @_Gods_1

But what is worth paying attention to is the ICS (Interchain Security) mentioned in the recent Celestia proposal. The difference is that EigenLayer is built on Ethereum. A data availability layer. By comparing ICS with EigenLayer, we can understand the relationship between them from the following aspects:

Shared security: Celestia's proposal discusses the possibility of using ICS to use validators in the Cosmos ecosystem (such as the Cosmos Hub's validators) as Celestia's rollup orderers. This approach allows multiple Rollup networks to share the same set of validators to achieve shared security. This idea is somewhat similar to the concept of shared security in EigenLayer, which provides security by leveraging the validators of the underlying blockchain network. The difference is that ICS uses Cosmos Hub's validator to provide verification services for connected blockchains, improving the security of the entire ecosystem through a shared security model, while EigenDA provides verification services through EigenLayer on Ethereum, using ETH's verification Restakers to verify the data availability of the Rollup network;

Decentralized sorter: The concept of decentralized sorter mentioned by Celestia, using ICS method. This is somewhat similar to using EigenLayer's Restaking Primitive (re-pledge mechanism) to build a decentralized sorter. Both attempt to achieve a more decentralized sorting mechanism through the characteristics of the underlying protocol;

Rollups composability: Celestia mentioned that by using the same Rollups in multiple Rollup networks A sequencer (possibly via ICS) that enables composability across Rollups. This is somewhat similar to the goal mentioned in EigenLayer of having multiple AVS (Active Verification Services) collaborate with each other in the EigenLayer ecosystem to achieve a higher level of composability and interoperability;

Economics: Put aside the technical topics of Celestia and EigenLayer, and consider it from a market perspective , for users, they are more concerned about their own income. EigenLayer's layer-by-layer income stacking such as LST and the expected value of airdrops for the entire EigenLayer ecosystem in the future are slightly stronger than Celestia.

Comparison between DA layers

Source: Researcher@likebeckett< /p>

Data Availability is referred to as DA. Currently, the upgrade route of Ethereum is mainly based on Rollup. The role of DA in the process It is used to save or upload all transaction data of the entire Rollup. The emergence of Rollup is to solve the scalability problem of Layer1, but actually accessing Layer2 data through DA will affect the overall security and TPS level. In order for Layer2 to inherit the security of Ethereum, Ethereum needs to be able to optimize the security of the entire protocol. Mechanism to upload large amounts of Layer2 data.

In the consensus mechanism, there is a fundamental dilemma, namely effectiveness and security. The former ensures the rapid processing of transactions, and the latter ensures that transactions For accuracy and security, different blockchain systems will make different choices to achieve a balance that meets their actual needs. Among them, Ethereum, Celestia, EigenLayer and Avail solutions are all designed to provide scalable data availability for Rollup. Based on relevant data provided by Researcher@likebeckett and Avail officials, I made the following summary.

Image source: Avail Team official

Celestia:

Atomic cross-Rollup composability: Celestia can achieve multiple Rollup networks through the help of ICS atomic transactions, thereby improving composability. The same sorter enables multiple Rollup networks to work together to solve the problems of liquidity fragmentation and reduced composability;

Multiple Rollup interoperability: Celestia can facilitate multiple Rollup networks using the same sequencer interoperability between them, enabling better liquidity and data availability.

EigenLayer and EigenDA:

Shared security data Availability service: EigenLayer provides data availability service through EigenDA, which is different from the traditional blockchain, but a set of smart contracts built on Ethereum, making full use of the concept of shared security. EigenDA can provide efficient, secure, and scalable data availability as part of the Celestia ecosystem;

Decentralized sorting: EigenLayer emphasizes its decentralized sorting mechanism, which is essentially in Rollup The addition of ETH tokens and slashing conditions to the PoS process of the sequencer provides higher security for the Layer 2 network. Through this mechanism, EigenLayer implements an efficient sorting process;

Data availability service: EigenDA focuses on providing data availability services for Layer 2 networks, shared through EigenLayer Security and decentralized sorting provide high-performance data transmission for on-chain applications.

Avail:

Data availability design: Avail focuses on The design of data availability introduces data availability sampling technology. This technology allows light nodes to verify data availability by downloading only a small portion of a block, rather than relying entirely on full nodes to obtain data, thereby improving the scalability of the network;

Interoperability between blockchains: Avail is designed to improve interaction between blockchains sex. Light nodes that support data availability sampling make increasing block size more flexible and improve overall throughput;

EIP 4844 Adaptability: Avail actively participates in the implementation of Ethereum's EIP 4844 and is a Polygon module An important part of the blockchain vision, the proposal aims to increase block sizes and lay the foundation for implementing Danksharding, which will allow Avail to adapt to upgrades in the Ethereum ecosystem.

Conclusion

For Rollup, in 24 years, in addition to the changes brought by the Cancun upgrade Deterministic narrative, the debate on DA issues also brings about issues about the precise positioning of Layer 2. Putting aside the legitimacy, security, and cost issues that Ethereum DA actually faces, this debate between Celestia and EigenDA, It is not difficult to think about whether the confrontation between the Ethereum Killer and the Ethereum Wall will trigger more market competition in the direction of combinable modules in the future, allowing a new round of Ethereum expansion methods to bloom.

Although the blockchain itself has many limitations, from the perspective of financial markets, most of the rising power of all markets comes from " "imaginary space", there must always be fresh stories to feed. As for innovation itself, in addition to maintaining its own correctness, "side doctrine" is also a narrative direction that breaks out of the original framework.