Customisable rollups as a service: Eclipse Deep Dive
Decentralized finance, or DeFi, has the potential to democratize finance in the same way the internet democratized access to information. The widespread adoption of DeFi could revolutionize the way we interact with financial systems.
However, despite more than a decade of progress, widespread adoption of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and Ethereum remains elusive, due in part to their relatively low transaction speeds compared to traditional payment systems like Mastercard and Visa.
When it comes to blockchain technology, we are still early. Many web2-scale applications like gaming, machine learning, notifications, etc are yet to be ported over to blockchain. The fastest chains today cannot accommodate the high throughput requirement of these use cases. That’s why layer 2 systems such as rollups have emerged.
Introduction to roll-ups
Rollups are a technology solution to make slow blockchains faster and cheaper.
A rollup executes hundreds of transactions outside of layer 1 (or the base chain), rolls them up into a single piece of compressed data and then posts the data back to the base chain for anyone to review and dispute if deemed suspicious. By doing so, rollups not only utilize the security of base chain but can also reduce gas fees by up to 10–100x.
Modularism, not maximalism
Eclipse co-founder and former Terra developer Neel Salami describes eclipse as a “modular” rollups project that will enable inter-chain scaling of DApps enabling any developer to build web2-scale apps with the power of web3.
While rollup itself is a novel scaling technology, it has some limitations like using the same base layer for settlement, consensus, and data availability. A modular rollup further incentivizes the end user to have more choice in choosing the data and execution stack of their architecture.
A blockchain can be thought of as a combination of layers working together to form a distributed ledger. A modular rollup separates the functions of a blockchain: (i) execution, (ii) settlement, and (iii) consensus & data availability. In Eclipse’s vision for the future of rollups, you could pick any execution layer (ex: EVM, SVM, or Move), choose the right data availability layer for your needs (ex: Ethereum, Celestia, or Amazon Web Services), and settlement could occur somewhere else entirely.
The technical architecture of Eclipse
Eclipse’s modular design allows it to benefit from the high throughput of a fast execution layer while borrowing the security of a highly decentralized data availability layer.
The Eclipse execution layer is forked from Solana’s execution layer, which can support up to 700,000 TPS*. This includes features such as Solana’s virtual machine (extended Berkeley Packet Filter or eBPF), parallel processing of transactions (Sealevel), and pipelining (transaction processing unit).
Eclipse takes care of (i) execution and (ii) settlement, while leaving (iii) consensus and (iv) data availability to the Layer 1 blockchain.
The choice of L1 is somewhat flexible as long as it can handle the volume of data availability which can range from 10–17 gigabytes per day.
Eclipse plans to allow users to choose the data availability layer from a range of options such as Etheruem, Celestia, even AWS.
The Scaling Wars
The blockchain scaling landscape is growing very fast and new solutions are coming out every week. In a heated competitive space it is essential to have a clear differntiation that the rest.
For any app building on Solana, eclipse offers the following
- Enable Solana dApps to go multichain and access inter-blockchain communication (IBC)
- App chains and app zones for Solana dApps to gain sovereignty and avoid congestion
- Custom sequencer logic such as block times, returning MEV to dApps, subsidizing fees
- Be a canary network (like Kusama on Polkadot) for the latest execution layer upgrades
- Easily spin up private chains that use the Solana execution layer
- Develop new execution layer upgrades that can be merged back into the Solana L1
- 1-to-1 cross-chain invocation semantics between Solana and Cosmos
Eclipse enables a variety of dApps on Cosmos that are not possible right now:
- Decentralized central limit order books (CLOBs)
- Streaming payments such as Zebec
- Games that utilize high TPS
- dApps that rely on CLOB infrastructure
- Trading real-world assets (RWAs) with sizeable oracle data
- Notifications and messaging
- Blockchain for Nasdaq, now on Cosmos
To summarize, Eclipse offers a customisable, high throughput (up to 100k TPS) rollup solution powered by the Solana Virtual machine with support for more VMs and blockchains coming soon.
The Eclipse testnet will be available Q1 2023, and the Eclipse mainnet is targeted for Q2 2023.
Learn more about Eclipse, and sign up for the testnet at eclipse.builders
