Eclipse is using Solana’s virtual machine to launch an Ethereum L2

Eclipse will use Solana’s virtual machine for execution, Ethereum for settlement, Celestia for data availability and Risc Zero for proving

article-image

Vladimir Kazakov/Shutterstock modified by Blockworks

share

Eclipse will use Solana’s tech stack for its upcoming mainnet launch, the Ethereum layer-2 network project announced. Eclipse’s mainnet is expected to go live before the end of the year.

By design, a blockchain stack contains four different layers: execution, settlement, consensus and data availability.

Blockchains, such as Bitcoin, Ethereum and Solana, carry out all these tasks in a single layer. This means that when a transaction is made, the blockchain executes, settles, reaches consensus, and ensures data availability all within the same layer. 

Modular blockchains, on the other hand, are designed to focus on specific tasks. 

Neel Somani, founder of Eclipse, notes that he believes all layer-2s — validiums, optimiums and zk-rollups — should be considered “modular blockchains.” 

“At a minimum, they’ve all separated execution from settlement,” he said. 

Notably, Eclipse will use Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) for execution on its upcoming mainnet. The execution layer is the blockchain layer that holds the code and rules of a transaction; it enables transaction signing and smart contract execution. 

On Ethereum, for example, transactions are executed sequentially. On Solana, however, there is a parallel execution environment. This means that more transactions can be processed at a lower cost. 

“That’s probably the biggest difference,” Somani said. “Another benefit is the ‘local fee markets,’ meaning if one application gets a ton of activity, it doesn’t impact fees for other apps. It is a smaller set of ‘opcodes,’ and it’s register-based which makes [zero-knowledge] proving easier.”

Elsewhere, Eclipse will use Risc Zero for proving. Settlement, like most rollups today, will take place on Ethereum — meaning that it will utilize Ethereum’s security properties to validate transactions. Data availability (DA) will be derived from Celestia. 

Read More: Why data availability sampling matters for blockchain scaling?

Unlike many rollup solutions today, Celestia’s DA layer utilizes Data Availability Sampling (DAS) over having a Data Availability Committee (DAC), meaning there are fewer trust assumptions. 

That said, the team at Eclipse will continue to keep a close eye on Ethereum’s EIP-4844 upgrade and consider migrating to Ethereum’s DA in the future. 

“It’s become clear that the single-threaded EVM is not sufficient to scale Ethereum, which is why apps are turning to their own app-specific rollups,” Somani told Blockworks. “Yet even the most sophisticated designs like Arbitrum are now seeing fee spikes — and it’s all because of the lack of parallelism and local fee markets.”


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 (8).png

Research

Meta-aggregators like Titan and Kamino Swap improve price execution for users, making the Solana swapping landscape more competitive. Jupiter has incorporated meta-aggregation features into its latest routing engine to keep users on its front end (own the user, own the flow). At large, teams are treating swaps as a commoditized complement, offering incredibly cheap or free swaps to own the end-user and increase demand for high-margin product offerings (multi-product DeFi). On another note, the divergence in the concentration of aggregator volume between DEXs suggests increased specialization at the DEX layer by asset type.

article-image

Investors moved to safe assets like the US dollar and gold, but bonds faltered

article-image

The Amex offers up to 4% bitcoin back, but the deal is a bit ironic considering crypto’s goals

article-image

Short answer: Subnets are now cheaper to bootstrap than a Celestia rollup

article-image

Few things are more cypherpunk than keeping keys in your brain wallet

article-image

Many community banks and credit unions feel like they missed the fintech craze — and they don’t want to miss stablecoins

article-image

BlackRock COO Rob Goldstein noted that the firm had been looking into crypto since 2017