2024 Public Chain New Progress Inventory

Author: Lao Bai, Partner of ABCDE Research

Recently, in the primary market, the hottest track is undoubtedly AI, followed by BTC. 80% of the projects discussed daily are concentrated in these two tracks. At my peak, I can discuss 5 or 6 AI projects in a day.

It is foreseeable that the AI bubble will reach its peak in the next two years. With hundreds of new AI projects coming online, the market value of the AI track is climbing towards its peak. When the bubble finally bursts, amidst the chaos, true unicorns that find the intersection of AI and Crypto will emerge, pushing this track and the entire industry forward.

So, in the current overheated environment of AI, it's important to take a moment to look at the recent changes in the infrastructure layer, especially in the public chain infrastructure track. Some of the new developments are worth mentioning.

 01 
ETH, or the further deconstruction of single-chain

When Celestia first proposed the concept of modularity and the DA layer, the market actually took quite some time to digest and understand it. Now, this concept has already become well-established. Various RaaS infrastructures have proliferated to the point where the number of infrastructure > applications > users. (RaaS: Rollup-as-a-Service, refers to providing ready-made Rollup products and services to help application developers quickly launch Rollup)

In the past few months, the execution layer, DA layer, and settlement layer have each made some different technological advancements. New technical solutions have emerged for each layer, and even the concept of the settlement layer is no longer exclusive to ETH. Let's briefly discuss representative technologies for each layer.

 02 
Execution Layer

The hottest concept in the execution layer is undoubtedly parallel EVM, represented by Monad, Sei, and MegaETH. Existing projects like FTM and Canto are also beginning to plan upgrades in this direction. However, just as not all ZK projects protect privacy, projects labeled as parallel EVM actually have different technological roadmaps and ultimate goals.

To provide a visual demonstration, let's take a look at a diagram from Sei. It's clear that in an optimistic scenario, the performance improvement from switching from sequential processing to parallel processing is quite significant.

Parallel EVM can be further divided into several different technological roadmaps:

1) From the perspective of how transactions are parallelized - there's nothing new under the sun, it's just a difference between a priori and a posteriori.

A priori, represented by Solana and Sui, requires transactions to explicitly declare which parts of the chain state they modify. This way, before packaging the block, it checks in advance for any state conflicts (such as accessing the same AMM pool). If there are conflicts, those transactions causing conflicts are discarded.

A posteriori, also known as optimistic parallelism, represented by Aptos BlockSTM, assumes that there are no conflicts and includes transactions in the block first before checking. If conflicting transactions are found, it declares those transactions invalid, refreshes the results, re-executes, and repeats this process until all transactions in the block have been executed. Sei, Monad, MegaETH, and Canto use similar solutions.

We have also seen solutions for parallel processing in scenarios of state conflicts (like accessing the same AMM pool mentioned earlier) in the primary market. However, it seems that the engineering may be relatively complex, and its commercial feasibility is still being evaluated.

2) In terms of the emphasis on parallel EVM - it can also be divided into two schools of thought.

One, represented by Monad and Sei, focuses on how transactions are parallelized as the main scaling narrative. For example, Monad not only uses optimistic parallel processing but also has developed MonadDB and asynchronous I/O specifically to complement parallel processing.

The other, represented by Fantom, Solana, and MegaETH, sees parallelism as one of the scaling solutions, but not the only one. Parallelism is an auxiliary narrative, and performance improvement relies more on other technological solutions.

For example, Fantom's Sonic upgrade primarily features the FVM virtual machine and an optimized Lachesis consensus mechanism. Solana's next phase focuses on the modular architecture of the new Firedancer client, optimized network communication mechanisms, and signature verification, among others.

MegaETH aims to achieve Realtime Blockchain. It is based on the high-performance client Reth developed by Paradigm, further optimizing and improving the full node's state synchronization mechanism (only synchronizing state differences rather than all data), the hardware design of the Sequencer (using a large amount of high-performance RAM with storage capabilities for state access to avoid slow disk I/O), improvements in the data structure of the Merkle Trie, and more. This comprehensive improvement in software, hardware, data structure, disk I/O, network communication, and transaction ordering and parallel processing pushes the performance ceiling of EVM to the limit, approaching "Realtime Blockchain."

 03 
 DA Layer

The DA layer has not seen particularly significant technological iterations, so the level of excitement in this track is far less than that of the execution layer. There are only a few major players in this space.

ETH's CallData upgrade to Blob has significantly reduced the fees for various Layer2 solutions, making ETH a "not so expensive" DA.

Celestia's greater role is as the first project to propose the concept of the DA layer, expanding the ceiling of the DA track from a 20 billion FDV to 200 billion, opening up new possibilities and imagination. Many new Layer2 Appchains naturally choose Celestia as their DA. (FDV stands for "Fully Diluted Valuation," which is a valuation metric derived from token price * total supply)

Avail has separated from Polygon and is more like an "enhanced version of Celestia" from a technical perspective. For example, it uses the Grandpa+BABE consensus mechanism from Polkadot, which theoretically can support more decentralized nodes than Celestia's Tendermint, and supports Validity Proof, which Celestia does not support. However, the technical differences are far less important than the ecosystem, and Avail still needs to catch up in terms of the ecosystem.

EigenDA also went live with the EigenLayer mainnet a few days ago. As one of the strongest narratives and most adept at business cooperation in this round, I personally feel that the adoption rate of EigenDA will not be low. In theory, as long as it feels secure and the price is cheap, not many projects really care whether you use Validity Proof or Fraud Proof, or whether DAS is supported.

What's worth mentioning are the following three DAs:

1) Near DA

Near is a magical public chain that was originally designed for sharding, and it continues to do so. However, in addition to sharding, it has also implemented a DA. It is cheaper than Celestia and supports fast settlement for Layer2.

Chain abstraction - Near recently introduced chain signatures, allowing users to request transaction signatures for any chain through a single NEAR account.

AI - The founder, illia, is one of the eight Transformers and was tapped on the shoulder by Huang Renxun at an NVIDIA conference. Now, they are planning to hire AI engineers, and the official announcement will be released on the website next month… The hexagonal warrior, I also threw it into the DA track.

2) BTC&CKB

Because BTC's Layer1 does not support smart contracts and direct settlement, now dozens of BTC EVM Layer2s are basically using BTC as a DA. The difference lies in whether to directly put ZK Proof on BTC or to put the hash of ZK Proof. It seems that not doing so means you cannot call yourself a "BTC Layer2."

Recently, I actually encountered a new project saying, "I won't pretend, I am an ETH Layer2, and DA settlements are all on ETH, but I am serving the BTC ecosystem!" Quite amusing… The only alternative scaling solution is RGB++ launched by CKB. In this framework, CKB has become a DA-like existence, and BTC, due to the UTXO homomorphic binding technology, has become the settlement layer of RGB++.

3) New DA

I'll mention two new ideas for DAs without mentioning project names. One is to combine DA with AI. In addition to being a high-performance DA itself, it can also serve as a storage layer for AI large models, training data, and training trajectories. The other is an improvement in the error correction code mechanism at the underlying level of DAs like Celestia, which can provide a more robust network state in a dynamic network (where several nodes drop out randomly each round) in an unstable state.

04) Settlement Layer

Originally, this layer was almost monopolized by ETH. Celestia competes in the DA, and there are many Layer2 solutions for execution. But for settlement, other chains like Solana, Aptos, etc., do not have Layer2 yet, and BTC's Layer2 cannot or is not used for settlement. Currently, the only settlement layer you can think of is basically only ETH.

However, this situation is about to change. Several new projects have been seen moving towards the direction mentioned at the beginning of the article, and some old projects have also started to pivot in this direction, that is, further deconstructing ETH with ZK verification/settlement layer (competing with ETH's business).

Why would such a concept come about? The reason is that running contracts to verify ZK Proof on ETH Layer1 is not an optimal choice:

From a technical perspective, to verify the correctness of ZK Proof, developers need to write verification contracts based on the ZK project and its chosen ZK Proof System using Solidity. This requires reliance on a number of cryptographic algorithms, such as support for different elliptic curves. These cryptographic algorithms are usually relatively complex, and the EVM-Solidity architecture is not the optimal platform for implementing these complex cryptographic algorithms. For some ZK projects, the cost of writing and verifying these verification contracts is also high. This to some extent hinders the native integration of some ZK ecosystems into the EVM ecosystem. Therefore, ZK-friendly languages like Cario, Noir, Leo, Lurk can currently only be verified on their own Layer1. Additionally, updating or upgrading these things on ETH always involves a "big ship turning around."

In terms of cost, although the "protection fee" DA on Layer2 accounts for the majority of the fees, ZK contract verification also requires gas fees, and verifying on Ethereum is definitely not a cheap option. Plus, with Ethereum's gas fees occasionally skyrocketing and turning into a "chain for the wealthy," verification costs will also be greatly affected.

So, new concepts for ZK verification/settlement layer projects have emerged. The new projects are still relatively early, with Nebra as a representative. Old projects are also pivoting in this direction, such as Mina, and Zen, which just passed a new proposal.

The overall approach of most projects in this track is basically:

• Support for multiple ZK languages
• Support for ZK aggregate proofs, more efficient, cheaper
• Faster final confirmation time

It is very likely that the ZK settlement layer and decentralized Proof Market will be tied together, after all, technology needs computing power. Perhaps we will see some settlement layer projects collaborating with Proof Market projects, or settlement layer projects with computing power directly establishing their own Proof Market, or Proof Market projects with technology taking charge of establishing their own settlement layer. Ultimately, the market will have the final say on which direction to take.

05) Conclusion

In other areas of infrastructure, such as the Oracle and MEV field of OEV, and the interoperability field of ZK light clients, there should be many articles written about them online, so I won't go into detail here. I'll share with everyone when I come across some new interesting things next time.

Source: https://mp.weixin.qq.com/s/yeKeVEmInHR7SxpvASNsCw

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