On July 23, 2023, Avail announced the launch of its Avail DA mainnet and the AVAIL token, sparking significant discussion in the crypto market. A closer look at Avail’s institutional investors reveals a number of top-tier firms and VCs. So, what makes Avail, a modular blockchain project led by Polygon’s former co-founder Anurag Arjun, stand out? Earlier this year, an airdrop by Avail sparked controversy—what were the reasons behind this?

Avail’s Ambitious Goal: Unifying Web3 Data Availability

Currently, the blockchain industry faces challenges like fragmented user experiences and liquidity issues, with hundreds of rollups and a growing number of appchains (application-specific blockchains). Avail, led by Polygon’s former co-founder Anurag Arjun, aims to tackle these issues. Avail is a modular blockchain project designed to provide a secure and trust-minimized base layer, focusing specifically on data availability to enable ecosystems to build on top of it. This highly optimized base layer is set to offer raw block space for the next generation of trust-minimized applications and blockchains.

From a technical perspective, Avail is built on three foundational pillars: the Data Availability (DA) layer, the Nexus interoperability layer, and the Fusion Security layer.

1. Data Availability (DA) Layer:
   Avail DA is a chain-agnostic layer, meaning it’s compatible with any blockchain, combining KZG commitments and Data Availability Sampling (DAS). Avail’s light clients efficiently verify data availability using validity proofs, which can be integrated into consumer-grade hardware like smartphones. The combination of DAS and validity proofs enables faster DA verification, allowing data sampling to occur immediately after a block is finalized by Avail’s validation nodes. To mitigate centralization risks among validation nodes, Avail uses a “Nominated Proof of Stake” (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which evenly distributes staked tokens across active validators.

2. Nexus Interoperability Layer:
   Nexus is Avail’s coordination component, offering a permissionless framework for message passing between rollups. It serves as the unifying validation hub for rollups, utilizing Avail DA as the trust root. The Nexus layer periodically submits aggregated proofs to both Ethereum and the Avail DA layer for validation. Thanks to the succinct nature of the ZK proofs provided by Nexus, a single aggregated proof can validate the correctness of multiple proofs (n proofs). Additionally, Nexus supports asynchronous composability, ensuring seamless communication and operations across multiple rollups.

3. Fusion Security Layer:
   Fusion Security adds an extra layer of security to Avail’s ecosystem and the unified Web3 layer. The Avail Fusion prototype currently explores two approaches: staking modules on the Avail blockchain and staking modules for asset transfers. There are two asset categories for staking within the Avail ecosystem: established cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH, and emerging rollup tokens. Fusion Security allows a basket of tokens to pool their cryptoeconomic security, marking the first instance of leveraging external tokens to achieve consensus across different blockchains. It’s important to note that Fusion is still in the development stage.

Avail’s modular approach and its focus on data availability, interoperability, and security position it as a potential unifier for the fragmented Web3 landscape.

Avail Token Airdrop Faces Community Scrutiny, Market Controversy Ensues

The ecosystem token for Avail is AVAIL, with a total supply of 10 billion. AVAIL plays a crucial role within the Avail ecosystem, with its specific functions including: 1) being used to pay for data availability and interoperability services; 2) participating in network consensus and governance to ensure the platform’s decentralization and security; and 3) incentivizing validators and light clients to participate in data availability sampling and network maintenance. However, the AVAIL token airdrop has sparked considerable controversy.

On April 19th, Avail announced the Unification Drop token airdrop, where 354,605 eligible addresses were entitled to claim a total of 600 million tokens, with the claiming period ending on May 4th. While airdrops are typically a cause for excitement in the market, the Avail airdrop has instead triggered controversy.

According to Avail’s official airdrop rules, the distribution is as follows: 90 million AVAIL tokens for blockchain ecosystem developers, 49.5 million AVAIL tokens for testnet contributors, 380 million AVAIL tokens for Rollup users, 70 million AVAIL tokens for Polygon PoS stakers (i.e., MATIC stakers on the Ethereum mainnet), and 10.5 million AVAIL tokens for significant community contributors.

One source of market dissatisfaction is the expectation that Avail would airdrop tokens to stakers of Dymension, another modular project, similar to how TIA stakers received a DYM airdrop, but Avail did not follow suit. Additionally, operators of light nodes, who have been running nodes for months, were not eligible to claim tokens; the official response was that light node operators were randomly selected for AVAIL rewards distribution. Lastly, the allocation of 380 million AVAIL tokens to Rollup users has led to accusations of unequal distribution, and the large amounts claimed by certain contributors have also sparked market controversy.

How Does Avail Differ from Other Modular Blockchains?

Since the emergence of Celestia, the modular blockchain sector has seen a continuous influx of new projects. So, how does Avail differ from and relate to these other projects? According to official documents, one significant difference between Avail and Celestia is that Avail’s ability to create a unified Web3 ecosystem relies on a modular data availability (DA) structure based on validity proofs. When Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is combined with validity proofs, faster DA verification can be achieved, allowing data sampling to occur immediately after block confirmation by Avail’s validation nodes.

Compared to EigenDA, the re-staking model of EigenDA has inspired the Avail team to develop their Fusion Security model, although the inspiration doesn’t stop there. According to Avail developers, Fusion draws its inspiration from the following:

1. Eigenlayer: Pioneered the concept of re-staking ETH in services that are independent of Ethereum’s consensus mechanism or the complete validator set.
2. Babylon Chain: Created a platform that allows the use of BTC (Bitcoin) to provide security across different blockchain networks.
3. Osmosis: Innovated a mesh security model that allows chains to borrow economic security from other chains.

Fusion is a construction that is similar to, yet distinct from, these approaches. It leverages the economic security of other assets but enforces penalties for security and liveness failures within the Avail consensus.

Summary:

Avail’s Data Availability (DA) layer supports a variety of blockchain architectures, including Validium, Optimism, Sovereign Rollup, and Bitcoin Layer 2 (BTC L2). It has established partnerships with over 70 collaborators and integrated with major Ethereum Layer 2 solutions and Rollup frameworks such as Arbitrum Orbit, Optimism OP Stack, Starkware, Polygon CDK, and ZKsync. Overall, the Avail ecosystem is beginning to take shape. However, Avail’s Nexus interoperability layer and Fusion Security layer are still under development.

According to Avail developers, the core feature of Nexus is the combination of execution proofs from rollups or ecosystems and DA proofs, which are validated using Data Availability Sampling (DAS)—an area where Avail’s DA excels. If Avail can truly break down the barriers between users, rollups, developers, and projects, the development of Web3 could accelerate significantly.

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