Layer N x EigenDA: A Case Study in Hyperscale DA for Finance
Now that EigenDA is live on testnet, we're proud to announce the first participants in the EigenDA Launch Partner Program. The first eight rollup infrastructure providers who are actively working to deploy EigenDA as a data availability option for their end users include: AltLayer, Caldera, Celo, Layer N, Mantle, Movement, Polymer Labs, and Versatus.
Today we're kicking off a series of case studies on these EigenDA Launch Partners, starting with an examination of Layer N, which is building a rollup network called Nord.
Nord - Rollups for High-Performance Finance
Nord, Layer N’s flagship product, introduces a specialized exchange rollup featuring a custom-built, hyper-efficient Rust orderbook execution environment. Nord impressively processes up to 100,000 requests per second with sub-millisecond latency, providing highly scalable computing power. This computing power makes it capable of supporting complex financial instruments—all while maintaining complete composability with EVM smart contract layers.
Specifically focused on addressing the limitations of existing DEX infrastructure, Nord, along with EigenDA, can provide performance equal to or better than centralized exchanges, but with additional benefits such as permissionlessness and customizability.
Nord plus EigenDA showcases the potential for decentralized financial infrastructure on Ethereum to compete and win against existing financial platforms.
Addressing Existing Infrastructure Limitations
Decentralized trading platforms tend to be plagued by intrinsic limitations that obstruct efficiency and accessibility, such as slow transaction processing times, excessively high operational costs, and lack of composability with other blockchain applications. These shortcomings have been a pain point for both traders and developers and have slowed the advancement of DeFi ecosystems.
In the words of the Layer N team, "Existing infrastructure for exchanges is either too slow, too expensive, or not composable."
Nord aims to solve these outlined problems by providing the first on-chain solution capable of rivaling centralized exchange performance, offering traditional finance features that users expect, such as cross-margin and cross-collateralization. Additionally, it provides customizable infrastructure randing from the settlement layer to the liquidation engine.
EigenDA - Hyperscale DA for Rollups
EigenDA is a secure, high throughput, and decentralized data availability (DA) service built on top of Ethereum, utilizing the EigenLayer restaking primitive. Developed by EigenLabs, EigenDA is the first actively validated service (AVS) to launch on EigenLayer.
Why does DA matter?
DA solutions are pivotal in the Ethereum scaling roadmap. EigenDA builds upon core ideas and libraries underlying Danksharding, and sets a new standard for high throughput and low cost, enabling the growth of new on-chain applications with use cases across multiplayer gaming, social networks, and video streaming.
EigenDA Testnet Launch
With the launch of the EigenLayer testnet Stage 2, EigenDA is now live for rollup developers to experience its high throughput and low-cost features firsthand, marking a significant milestone in its development and integration into the EigenLayer ecosystem.
Nord & EigenDA - Technical Value Props
The Layer N team is excited to explore several key features offered by EigenDA, such as:
- EigenDA’s integration of multi-quorum and dual staking models to provide robust security and reliability for the network, alongside novel options for value capture.
- Performance metrics such as latency and throughput are critical considerations, especially for DEXs. EigenDA excels in these areas, offering low-latency data availability and high throughput, which are essential for delivering a seamless user experience.
- EigenDA also supports horizontal scaling, allowing the ecosystem to accommodate significant transaction and user growth without compromising its high-performance standards. This contributes to lowering transaction fees, reducing user cost burdens, and making decentralized applications more cost-effective and accessible to a wider audience.
Building upon EigenDA, Nord has the capacity to empower on-chain financial performance. With hyperscale throughput Nord can offer fixed, non-congestion pricing models for DeFi, so users benefit from predictable, stable, and low transaction costs. This ultimately improves the overall accessibility of decentralized financial services for all users worldwide.
As Nord experiences a growing surge of transactions, Layer N can dynamically scale DA requirements using EigenDA. This scalability ensures minimal to zero surge price pressure on Nord, creating an optimally user-friendly environment for traders.
Conclusion
The collaboration between Layer N x EigenDA showcases the sheer power of EigenDA's hyperscale data availability layer and the types of innovative infrastructure that can be built to scale applications on Ethereum.
If you found this case study interesting and you want to get involved with EigenDA, please visit one of the links below:
- Read the EigenDA developer documentation and guides
- To learn more about EigenDA's design, read this intro blog post
- Get in touch with the EigenDA team via this contact form