Ethereum has taken a significant stride in enhancing the scalability of layer-2 rollups. However, according to Avail co-founder Anurag Arjun, the ecosystem requires unified infrastructure from neutral third-party players to streamline the user experience. Arjun shared his insights on the current state of the rollup ecosystem during an interview with Cointelegraph at the ETHGlobal conference in London.
Arjun, who co-founded Ethereum layer-2 Polygon alongside Sandeep Nailwal, Jaynti Kanani, and Mihailo Bjelic, has shifted his focus to building agnostic rollup infrastructure to unify the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem. Following the release of Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain, the team at Polygon pivoted towards building technology aligned with Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap, which necessitated the development of new infrastructure.
In March 2023, Arjun obtained the intellectual property rights from Polygon to continue building Avail, allowing him to establish a standalone company with Prabal Banerjee. Their aim is to create a rollup-agnostic platform that caters to major rollup protocols such as Starkware, zkSync, Arbitrum, and Optimism.
Arjun explains that the technology they have implemented, called data sampling, is similar to Ethereum’s sharding roadmap. However, the complete implementation of sharding functionality is expected to take a few more years. Arjun believes that rollups cannot wait that long for data sampling capabilities that enable efficient verification.
“We realized during the journey that we would solve rollups scalability via scalable data availability. That would end up enabling a world with tens and thousands of rollups, but a very bad user experience,” Arjun said.
The current Ethereum user experience reflects this challenge, where users have to switch between different rollups to bridge funds or carry out transfers and swaps. Arjun aims to solve this fragmented experience by creating a unified rollup ecosystem. To achieve this, a credible and neutral third party is needed to coordinate the process between different rollups.
Arjun draws a comparison to the Solana blockchain, which he describes as one “big chain with a lot of apps.” In contrast, Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap has resulted in an ecosystem with numerous L2 chains. Arjun envisions a future where rollups operate like apps on the internet, hosted on different cloud services and seamlessly interacting with each other.
Avail Nexus, similar to Polygon’s Aggregation layer, aims to facilitate this integration standard between rollups. Avail’s technology can take aggregated proofs from various rollups and create a coordinated rollup. Arjun emphasizes that this is an ecosystem-wide effort, not limited to a single ecosystem.
Arjun acknowledges that the infrastructure to unite rollups is a future problem that the Ethereum ecosystem is already considering. He suggests that the Ethereum Foundation or a third party not involved in the rollup business should take on this responsibility.
At the ETHGlobal conference, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also emphasized the need for a mindset shift towards building L2 decentralized applications and solutions aligned with Ethereum’s focus on rollup-enabled functionality.
In conclusion, the article highlights the importance of unifying infrastructure from neutral third-party players to streamline the user experience in the Ethereum layer-2 rollup ecosystem. Avail is working towards creating a rollup-agnostic platform, and their technology aims to facilitate the integration of different rollups. The article also mentions the need for a credible entity to build the infrastructure to unite rollups, as highlighted by Vitalik Buterin.