Avail offers to bridge the data availability gap for Ethereum rollups

Validiums and volitions are two ways rollups can store data off of Ethereum mainnet to reduce costs and increase throughput

article-image

increation87/Shutterstock, modified by Blockworks

share

Polygon spin-off Avail unveiled its data attestation bridge to Ethereum, Friday, as it seeks to carve out a niche in Ethereum’s rollup-centric scaling roadmap.

Layer-2 rollups currently use Ethereum mainnet for posting their transaction data, which represents the majority of the transaction cost to users. These costs are expected to come down significantly following the next Ethereum upgrade “Dencun” later this year, which will implement EIP-4844.

Further scaling gains should be found higher up the stack, on layer-3 networks envisioned such as Arbitrum Orbit, or zkSync’s hyperchains. That’s where Avail’s solution will likely come in, Anurag Arjun, Avail’s co-founder, told Blockworks in an interview.

“With computation with something like [zero-knowledge proofs], you are able to compress proofs, you’re able to do recursive proofs and make it small, but with data, you cannot do it,” Arjun said.

Right now, some early attempts make use of what are known as data availability committees (DACs), but in the future Avail or Celestia could provide a better alternative because they use a technique known as data availability sampling (DAS). Ethereum’s own implementation of DAS is still likely years away.

“By enabling rollup constructions to run in validium, optimistic chains, and volition modes, we are not only reducing costs but also paving the way for a more inclusive and efficient layer-2 and layer-3 ecosystem,” Arjun said in a statement.

There are some trade-offs in terms of security, but for the kinds of use cases that are most likely to require layer-3s, the cost, performance, and privacy concerns will make off-chain data availability options worth it, according to zkSync co-founder Alex Gluchowski.

“It’s very cheap, but you only have a partial inheritance of Ethereum security,” Gluchowski said.  

Avail opted to become an independent company outside of the Polygon product suite so that it could service all kinds of rollups, not only those from Polygon.

“We wanted it to be more credibly neutral in that aspect because Avail is a general purpose base layer,” Arjun told Blockworks.

The transition, completed about three months ago, saw Arjun leave his operational role at Polygon, which will now be one customer of many for the new firm.

Polygon’s PoS chain, which Polygon recently announced would morph into a zkEVM validium,  will initially make use of its own validator set to provide data availability, but it could also use Avail in the future, Arjun said.

Avail is built using Polkadot’s Substrate technology due to its use of nominated proof-of-stake (nPOS) and tendency to facilitate wide distribution of stake.

Arjun observed from his experience with Tendermint consensus used by the Polygon PoS chain that there is a concentration of stake with a majority controlled by eight to 10 validators.

A new staking token, AVAIL, will facilitate a permissionless validator set of up to 1,000 validators.

Other than that, there is no connection to the Polkadot ecosystem. They may be able to help Polkadot build zk rollups on a Polkadot parachain using Avail, Arjun said, but this idea is very new and will require a lot of further development.


Get the news in your inbox. Explore Blockworks newsletters:

Tags

Decoding crypto and the markets. Daily, with Byron Gilliam.

Upcoming Events

Old Billingsgate

Mon - Wed, October 13 - 15, 2025

Blockworks’ Digital Asset Summit (DAS) will feature conversations between the builders, allocators, and legislators who will shape the trajectory of the digital asset ecosystem in the US and abroad.

Industry City | Brooklyn, NY

TUES - THURS, JUNE 24 - 26, 2025

Permissionless IV serves as the definitive gathering for crypto’s technical founders, developers, and builders to come together and create the future.If you’re ready to shape the future of crypto, Permissionless IV is where it happens.

Brooklyn, NY

SUN - MON, JUN. 22 - 23, 2025

Blockworks and Cracked Labs are teaming up for the third installment of the Permissionless Hackathon, happening June 22–23, 2025 in Brooklyn, NY. This is a 36-hour IRL builder sprint where developers, designers, and creatives ship real projects solving real problems across […]

recent research

Research Report Templates (19).png

Research

Suilend has grown into the top money market and liquid staking provider on Sui. STEAMM, Suilend’s Superfluid AMM, presents a compelling avenue for growing market share within Sui’s DEX landscape and revenue generation for the protocol. Suilend’s multi-product suite position it well for owning market share across key verticals. While current metrics across the Sui ecosystem are likely inflated due to Sui Foundation incentive programs, SEND trades at amongst the lowest multiples in the lend/borrow sector, suggesting that a bull case for continued growth in the ecosystem may be mispriced.

article-image

Strive board member Ben Werkman expects thousands of firms to hold BTC, if only “to protect themselves”

article-image

To date, 12.6 million humans have scanned at a World Orb

article-image

One small step for man, one giant leap for Bitcoin

article-image

Jay Woods, Chief Global Strategist at Freedom Capital Markets, said it would be “very rare” for an acquisition to happen since the IPO may occur as soon as next week

article-image

Sponsored

Money is one of the most consequential pieces of infrastructure, and M0 believes its architecture should serve builders, not extract from them

article-image

The financial backwaters they laughed at might be the only thing keeping the dollar afloat