Data Availability Layers: A Comparison

Sunrise
4 min readDec 12, 2024

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Data availability (DA) refers to the assurance that all participants in a network have access to the complete data needed to verify transactions — a foundational principle of “don’t trust, verify.”

As rollups and other Layer 2 solutions became the primary scaling strategy for blockchains, it created a massive demand for secure and efficient data availability. Today, DA solutions serve as the backbone for rollup-centric scaling, supporting everything from high-frequency DeFi trading to large-scale gaming applications that need to process thousands of transactions per second.

The blockchain scaling landscape has seen a transformative shift with the advent of specialized DA solutions. In this overview, we will explore and compare the features of Sunrise, Avail DA, Celestia, EigenDA, and Ethereum’s EIP-4844.

Understanding the Ecosystem

Today’s DA solutions fall into two main categories:

  1. Layer 1 DA Solutions
  • These purpose-built blockchains (Sunrise, Avail DA, Celestia, Ethereum EIP-4844) provide decentralized security through dedicated validator networks.

2. Data Availability Committees (DACs)

  • Groups responsible for attesting to data availability, which can be:
  • Centralized DACs: Fixed groups of trusted parties
  • Decentralized DACs: Open participation secured by economic incentives, with EigenDA implementing this through EigenLayer’s Actively Validated Service (AVS) mechanism

Performance Metrics

Processing Power

To make quantitative comparisons, let’s look at throughput in MB per second:

  • Sunrise: 5+ MB/s (utilizing off-chain blob storage, scalable throughput)
  • Avail DA: 0.1 MB/s, scalable to 6.4MB/s as shown in benchmarks
  • Celestia: 1.33 MB/s, governable up to 6.67 MB/s
  • EigenDA: 15 MB/s through its decentralized committee structure
  • Ethereum EIP-4844: 0.067 MB/s, planned to increase with PeerDAS to 1.067 MB/s

Time to Data Availability Confirmation

Different approaches lead to varying confirmation times:

Sunrise

  • 7-second base block time
  • Additional time for DA fraud proofs

Avail DA

  • 20-second block time
  • Additional time for generating KZG commitment for Data Availability validity proof

Celestia

  • 6-second block time
  • 10-minute window for DA fraud proofs

EigenDA

  • Approximately 15 minutes, tied to Ethereum settlement

Ethereum EIP-4844

  • Around 15 minutes for full finality

Beyond Speed: Data Guarantees

Data Availability vs. Data Retrievability

A commonly overlooked distinction lies between data availability and data retrievability:

  • Data Availability: The immediate guarantee that data can be reconstructed by network participants
  • Data Retrievability: The long-term ability to download and access data after its availability is confirmed

Sunrise uniquely addresses both aspects through its off-chain blob storage architecture:

  • Immediate availability through its DA layer
  • Long-term retrievability through integration with permanent storage solutions like IPFS and Arweave
  • Controllable retrievability periods based on storage choices

Other solutions lack native retrievability and instead focus primarily on immediate availability:

  • Avail DA and Celestia provide data availability attestation through on-chain mechanisms
  • EigenDA uses its committee structure for availability attestation
  • Ethereum EIP-4844 will implement Data Availability Sampling (DAS) through PeerDAS

Verification Approaches

Each solution takes a distinct approach to ensuring data is genuinely available:

Sunrise

  • Implements an optimistic verification system
  • Uses off-chain blob storage and data sharding to reduce validator load
  • Combines immediate availability checks with long-term retrievability guarantees

Celestia

  • Uses fraud proofs in an optimistic system
  • Requires a challenge period (up to 10 minutes) for finality
  • Maintains all data on-chain

Avail DA

  • Employs KZG commitments with validity proofs
  • Achieves faster finality without challenge periods
  • Stores data on-chain

EigenDA

  • Operates as an AVS within EigenLayer
  • Uses KZG commitments within its committee structure
  • Leverages restaking for security

Ethereum EIP-4844

  • Will implement PeerDAS (Danksharding) for improved data availability
  • Plans to introduce erasure coding through PeerDAS
  • Currently requires full nodes for verification

Network Structure and Security

Decentralization Approaches

  • Sunrise : Proof-of-Liquidity (PoL) aligns economic incentives with network security
  • Avail DA: Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) for validator distribution
  • Celestia: Delegated Proof-of-Stake (DPoS)
  • EigenDA: Decentralized committee structure
  • Ethereum: Proof-of-Stake with over 1 million validators

Full Node Dependencies

Sunrise stands apart by minimizing full node reliance through off-chain blob storage, while other solutions maintain varying degrees of full node or light node dependency for data verification.

Choosing Your DA Solution

Sunrise emphasizes off-chain blob storage and combines immediate availability verification with flexible retrievability options. Ethereum EIP-4844 brings massive validator participation and will introduce sophisticated data availability sampling through PeerDAS. Avail DA focuses on throughput scalability through data sharding, while EigenDA leverages EigenLayer’s restaking mechanism to create new security dynamics.

These varying approaches to the data availability challenge reflect the broader evolution of blockchain architecture — from monolithic designs to increasingly specialized and modular solutions. As the space matures, these different implementations continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible in blockchain scaling while maintaining the critical property of trustless verification.

Please reach out to kavin.mohan@sunriselayer.io if you would like to edit or add any information.

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Sunrise
Sunrise

Written by Sunrise

Sunrise - specialized DA Layer for Proof of Liquidity. 🌅 Visit us at sunriselayer.io

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