In this thread, I will present the story of our journey to build EigenDA from a personal vantage point. This story will lay out our longstanding interest in scaling network bandwidth as well as offer some inside anecdotes.
My interest in “cooperative” p2p networks dates before blockchains. Here is a 2008 paper, where we designed new network “erasure” coding schemes for wireless networks:
Definition: coprocessor is a stateless offchain system and rollup is a stateful offchain system.
When does a coprocessor suffice? When the computation inputs are fully specified onchain and the state change has to be actuated onchain.
Jul 25, 2023 • 18 tweets • 3 min read
Confirmation rules and blockchain security.
Refined view: There are 5 properties that together make a *confirmation rule* secure. We colloquially talk about a chain being secure but really it is the confirmation rule to which the security property attaches.
This difference occurs because a single chain can admit multiple confirmation rules. For example, in Bitcoin, different nodes can use different depths in their confirmation rules and they will accordingly have different probabilities of safety violations.
May 21, 2023 • 6 tweets • 3 min read
We welcome this excellent analysis of the different kinds of risks using restaking for different use cases a la @eigenlayer by @VitalikButerin. It is consistent with what we have been advocating with Eigenlayer. A brief summary here:
a) don’t build complex financial primitives on restaking - they can spiral out
b) don’t rely on Ethereum to fork for application layer errors - this is a super important principle
c) do not use subjective slashing - as it is subject to tyranny of the dishonest majority
Mar 29, 2023 • 24 tweets • 16 min read
We recently announced the Series A for @eigenlayer led by @blockchaincap. In this thread I will highlight several key investors in the seed round, which was co-led by @polychaincap and @etherealvc.
The first investment offer for @eigenlayer came from @etherealvc, back in Sep 2021. It has been an absolutee privilege to work with @_MinTeo and @bees_neeth at Ethereal ventures. They have been a close working partner and a strong pillar of support from the very beginning!
Mar 25, 2023 • 19 tweets • 6 min read
Title: "MEV and restaking: Mycelial networks at the root of the dark forest!"
Talk, on applications of @eigenlayer for MEV management, with the right starting time here: youtube.com/live/t3sL0sCJF…
P.S. Mycelia are fungi that help connect roots of trees in order to help them exchange nutrients. We think this is an apt metaphor for restaking!
Mar 19, 2023 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Most rollups have value capture via mev. Does shared sequencing spell the death knell of rollup value?
Contrary to popular opinion, shared sequencing will lead to **more** mev returned to rollups compared to isolated sequencing! Really???
In the metagame, shared sequencing layers will compete with each other to attract rollups. The base rate of return required to attract a rollup is the pure intra domain mev, because at a value lesser than this, no rational rollup will opt in, other than for convenience.
Mar 6, 2023 • 20 tweets • 7 min read
Alert: Censorship resistance of leader protocols massively increased!!!
This is regarding the recent @RollkitDev release of "Sovereign rollups" on bitcoin. I am not going to get into the terminology, but want to address the security properties, and whether it borrows security from bitcoin or not.
(i) optimistic rollups need watchers whose nodes need to check for
Nov 24, 2022 • 34 tweets • 10 min read
EigenLayer - What is it good for? This is a thread that explains the underlying elements of trust in the @eigenlayer network and how they can be put together to create powerful services with customized decentralized trust models.
@eigenlayer is a general-purpose marketplace for decentralized trust, which is built on Ethereum, the largest programmable decentralized trust network and unbundles the trust layer of Ethereum so components of the trust network can be reused for other purposes.
Oct 28, 2022 • 18 tweets • 9 min read
TrustBoost: Foundations of mesh security. Suppose there are N chains with X$ staked in each. Can we create a super-trust-chain with NX$ economic safety? Yes!!!
Joint with Xuechao Wang, Peiyao Sheng, Kartik Nayak (@kartik1507) and Pramod Viswanath.
arxiv.org/abs/2210.11571
Most of cross-chain today is transporting data. We have been fascinated with transporting trust. @eigenlayer creates composable Ethereum trust for Ethreum modules. @babylon_chain allows Bitcoin trust to be transported to Cosmos zones to the maximal possible extent.
Oct 2, 2022 • 23 tweets • 6 min read
Why is slashing needed? Two existing formal models of blockchain trust are (a) byzantine models, and (b) game-theoretic models analyzing Nash-equilibrium. Is there a model in which slashing is required? For PoS or for @eigenlayer restaking?
(a) Byzantine models assume that a fraction of nodes are adversarial and can perform arbitrary bad actions and the remainder are fully compliant.
Oct 1, 2022 • 18 tweets • 6 min read
The present method of doing DAS (Data Availability Sampling) is DAS-R (DAS + Resupply). We propose a simple slap-on variant of DAS: DAS-S (Data Availability Sampling + Store). This is a thread on our initial thoughts about DAS-R vs DAS-S.
DAS-R basically requires light-nodes to sample data and resupply the samples to other connected nodes in a peer-to-peer network which acts like a *reservoir* of data. Existing DAS architectures are built on this method.
Sep 29, 2022 • 10 tweets • 3 min read
DApp rollups using EigenDA on @eigenlayer gets the best of all worlds: 1) Predictable DA fees: Current models incur uncertain and high DA fee. On EigenDA one can reserve DA bandwidth for fixed/low fee. This is due to the plentiful DA rate and low operational cost.
2) Payment in native token: The DA fee can be paid using an inflation of the native UNI token as long as ETH stakers accept it. This makes rollup economics similar to L1 economics - it can use inflation to fund security till network effects accrue.
Aug 24, 2022 • 7 tweets • 2 min read
Totally! Also people totally underrate how censorship resistance means much more than global regulatory arbitrage. Particularly, in smart contract platforms, censorship resistance implies a truly open-API system.
In smart contract platforms, censorship resistance implies not only the ability to send new transactions, but also the ability to deploy new functionality (smart contracts) natively on top of existing functionality.
Aug 15, 2022 • 8 tweets • 2 min read
Loved this thread. Particularly this question: can you be fully sovereign and still be verifiably-secure?
Shared DA (Data Availability) security unleashes the ability to create innovations at the VM layer. One particularly salient use case is Sovereign rollups which can run almost any VM on top of common DA security layer.
Jul 26, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Wow. Did not realize @apolynya had thought deeply about historical storage consequences of DataLayr and other hyperscale DA systems.
One question to @apolynya and others. What if we abandon history storage as a requirement for rollups. Instead rollups store the latest *state* every few weeks into DataLayr, along with state diffs every blob.
Jul 25, 2022 • 23 tweets • 5 min read
Ethereum hyperscaling primer. Why the best blockchains will have *no tradeoff* between scalability and security? Why is hyperscale Data Availability critical? How does Ethereum get there?
There are four resources in a blockchain setting, for each participating node. (1) Computation, (2) State (memory), (3) Networking, (4) History Storage. Lets assume each node has a small amount of each of the four resources.
Jul 22, 2022 • 15 tweets • 4 min read
The three rates of innovation: Autocratic,Democratic and Permissionless.
Writing this after listening to @balajis podcast with @sriramk and @aarthir where he comments on "Exit to World" vs "Exit to Community": After listening to @balajis podcast with @sriramk and @aarthir where he comments on "Exit to World" vs "Exit to Community"
