Among the few new “data availability” blockchain initiatives, Avail was created to manage transaction data generated by the networks’ increasing expansion. On Monday, the venture capital firms Founders Fund and Dragonfly spearheaded the $27 million funding campaign for Avail.Funds from the seed round will be used by Avail, which was spun off of Polygon in March 2023 and is headed by Anurag Arjun, a Polygon co-founder, to develop its three main products: its data availability solution (DA), Nexus, and Fusion, which are together referred to as the “Trinity.”
The first essential component, Avail DA, provides data space information for auxiliary “layer-2 networks” or “rollups” that are intended to process transactions more quickly and affordably than on Ethereum-based foundation blockchains.It is anticipated that the new DA project will launch early in 2024’s second quarter.The rise of these data availability solutions has been one of the most talked-about developments in the cryptocurrency space because it may contribute to the development of a more “modular” architecture for blockchain systems, where essential tasks like data processing and transaction execution might be handled independently.
With initiatives like EigenDA, which is presently under development, and Celestia, which went live in October of last year, they gained attention.The latter project is being worked on by EigenLabs, the company that created the restaking protocol EigenLayer. In order to continue developing its products, EigenLabs raised $100 million from the venture capital firm a16z last week.
Avail Nexus is a “zero-knowledge, proof-based coordination rollup on Avail DA,” which means, according to a press release reviewed by CoinDesk, that it would function as an infrastructure layer that links other rollups through the Avail ecosystem to communicate with one another.“Serving as the verification hub that unifies a broad range of rollups both inside and outside the Avail ecosystem, using Avail DA as the root of trust,” is how it will be described.By utilizing cryptocurrency assets like ether (ETH) and bitcoin (BTC), the project’s “Fusion Security” will enhance the security of the Avail ecosystem.The company states that Fusion Security will be available in 2025 and that Nexus’ initial version is anticipated to launch in 2024.
The rollups space on Ethereum is fragmented, with major teams competing for many of the same users.
Arjun, the Avail co-founder, argues that there is a need to work together with these rollups in order to make the user experience more unified.
“You really need a credible third party like Avail to come and work with all these teams,” Arjun told CoinDesk in an interview. “We essentially want to be that unifying factor in that sense, and we have built out a technology so that it can enable these kinds of changes.”