Ethereum has taken a significant stride towards scaling layer-2 rollups, but the ecosystem requires a unified infrastructure from neutral third-party players in order to streamline the user experience. This insight comes from Anurag Arjun, co-founder of Avail, who discussed the current state of the rollup ecosystem during an interview at the ETHGlobal conference in London. Arjun, who co-founded Ethereum layer-2 Polygon, has shifted his focus towards building agnostic rollup infrastructure to unite the Ethereum layer-2 ecosystem.
After the release of Polygon’s proof-of-stake chain, the team at Polygon pivoted towards developing technology aligned with Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap. This shift necessitated new infrastructure, as Arjun explains. In March 2023, Arjun obtained the intellectual property rights from Polygon to continue building Avail, enabling him to establish a standalone company with Prabal Banerjee.
Arjun stated that their goal is to become a rollup agnostic platform that supports major rollup protocols such as Starkware, zkSync, Arbitrum, and Optimism. He explains that they have implemented a technology called data sampling, which is similar to Ethereum’s plans for sharding. However, the roadmap for complete sharding functionality is lengthy, and rollups cannot wait indefinitely for data sampling capabilities that enable efficient rollup verification.
Arjun realized that solving rollup scalability through scalable data availability would result in a world with numerous rollups but a poor user experience. The current Ethereum user experience reflects this, as 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. Achieving this requires a credible, neutral third party to coordinate the process among different rollups.
Arjun compares this envisioned ecosystem to the Solana blockchain, which consists of one “big chain with a lot of apps.” In contrast, Ethereum’s rollup-centric roadmap has led to an ecosystem with multiple L2 chains. Arjun believes that just as apps on the internet are hosted on different cloud services, rollups will also exist on various platforms and communicate with each other when necessary. Avail Nexus aims to facilitate this integration standard between rollups, similar to Polygon’s Aggregation layer.
Arjun highlights the importance of building the infrastructure to unite rollups. He suggests that the Ethereum Foundation or a third party not involved in the rollup business should take on this responsibility. Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin also emphasized the need for a mindset shift towards building L2 decentralized applications and solutions in line with Ethereum’s focus on rollup-enabled functionality during the ETHGlobal conference.
In conclusion, the Ethereum ecosystem has made progress in scaling layer-2 rollups, but there is a need for unified infrastructure from neutral third-party players. Avail aims to address this by building agnostic rollup infrastructure and creating a cohesive rollup ecosystem. This will enhance the user experience and streamline operations within the Ethereum network.