Author: Zhixiong Pan Source: ChainFeeds
The Restaking ecosystem has finally reached two important milestones: EigenLayer (and EigenDA) launched on the mainnet, and the first batch of AVS launched on the mainnet: AltLayer, Brevis, eoracle, Lagrange, Witness Chain, Xterio.
AVS is the ultimate embodiment of whether the EigenLayer protocol can really be practical and secure. The previous Restaking protocols (Renzo/Puffer, etc.) or liquidity re-staking tokens are just one of the means to start this ecosystem and attract liquidity. Previously, more ETH was allowed to enter the Restaking ecosystem and mobilize more nodes through incentive supply, and AVS has the potential to release demand and provide more value for Crypto and decentralized networks.
The first batch of AVS launched are distributed in various tracks, including Rollup as a service, oracle, ZK protocol processing, DePIN, and games. The most noteworthy is the ZK coprocessor, which is a relatively new concept and there is no mature product, while EigenLayer actually supports Brevis and Lagrange at the same time in the first batch.
In addition, the launch of EigenLayer's mainnet does not mean that the protocol has entered a mature stage. There are still many modules and solutions that are not yet fully clear, such as the slashing mechanism of future nodes, how to ensure the security of AVS from an economic level, and even the design of token economics, which all need to wait for the team's subsequent disclosure.
AVS stands for Actively Validated Services, a concept set in the EigenLayer protocol. In simple terms, AVS can be compared to "middleware", which means it can provide services for terminal products, such as data and verification capabilities. For example, the often mentioned "oracle" is not a terminal product, but it can provide data services for DeFi, games, and wallets, which is one of AVS.
The downstream of AVS is likely to be a terminal product that can be directly oriented to ordinary users. The upstream of AVS is the nodes participating in Restaking. They collect ETH in protocols such as Puffer/Renzo, and then let the nodes support certain specific AVS.
Compared to most protocols, EigenLayer's business model is relatively straightforward. End users will pay directly or indirectly for the products they use, and then because these products require the services provided by AVS, these fees will be allocated to AVS, node operators, EigenLayer protocols, and users who provide Restaking ETH. The specific allocation varies, and it is likely that the advantages of Crypto "token economics" can be used in the early stage to reward users with the protocol's own tokens.
Therefore, more AVS types should be developed in the future, and the reliability of AVS services can be trusted by end products, so that the entire ecosystem can be closed.
AltLayer is a "Rollups-as-a-Service" (RaaS) provider that can customize the deployment of Rollup and other Layer2 networks according to demand. For a Rollup network, the choice of DA is crucial, so in addition to Ethereum, AltLayer also supports EigenDA developed by EigenLayer.
In addition, AltLayer has also cooperated with EigenLayer to launch the Restaked Rollup framework, and provides three modular AVSs, namely:
VITAL (AVS for decentralized verification of rollup's state): AVS for decentralized verification of Rollup state
MACH (AVS for fast finality): AVS for fast finality
SQUAD (AVS for decentralized sequencing): AVS for decentralized sequencers
In fact, it is trying to solve the three problems of slow finality on the blockchain, and the centralization of the settlement layer and sequencer. These are also several necessary modules of Rollup. The MACH module launched this time provides services for Xterio and Optimism.
The concept of "ZK coprocessor" has been around for more than a year, but many people still don't have a clear idea of it because there are relatively few specific applications and it is obscure. In simple terms, it allows Ethereum's smart contracts to obtain more verifiable data and enrich the application scenarios through zero-knowledge proof technology.
A solution provided by Brevis can realize the capabilities of the ZK coprocessor through AVS. Part of its team comes from the cross-chain bridge protocol Celer Network, and Mo Dong is the co-founder of these two projects. This time he also gave a speech on "A Smart ZK Coprocessor" at the Hong Kong Web3 Scholars Conference.
Brevis proposed the coChain solution to further reduce the cost of the "ZK coprocessor" which is completely based on smart contracts and zero-knowledge proof technology. That is, it provides a more cost-effective solution and can provide capabilities that were not originally possible. After all, EVM still has many limitations and constraints.
Brevis coChain is a PoS blockchain that can protect its security through ETH staking and relies on the EigenLayer protocol. Its design is more like a combination of the "optimistic" mechanism and the "ZK" mechanism, or it can be called a fraud proof and a validity proof. If any evil is found, a challenge can be initiated by generating a zero-knowledge proof and punishing the evil party. This will also involve some game theory and token economics design and considerations.
Oracle protocol The name eoracle comes from (e)thereum + oracle. They call themselves the first "native" oracle on Ethereum, probably because the security of the oracle is guaranteed by the staked ETH, while oracles like Chainlink, whose security is guaranteed by Chainlink's node network and its token LINK, have different security assumptions.
The demand and business model of the oracle are much clearer than that of other AVS. Many DeFi and RWA require off-chain data, and the oracle network verifies the data through participating nodes.
eoracle clearly stated that it will be a dual-token model, and several other AVS may also be this model, that is, the security of the network depends on Restaked ETH to ensure, and AVS native tokens will also be issued to incentivize nodes. As for more uses and designs of native tokens, they have not been disclosed for the time being, but they believe that native tokens can promote network participation (that is, incentivize users?), ensure fair value distribution (that is, income is distributed according to Token?) and promote the decentralization of the eoracle protocol (that is, as weight or governance?).
Lagrange is also a ZK coprocessor, but they also emphasize the concept of "parallel". In addition, it is somewhat similar to the services provided by Brevis.
The Lagrange team said that the ZK coprocessor they designed natively supports parallelization and horizontal expansion, and can easily prove the results of large-scale distributed computing on-chain storage or transaction data, and prove that the workload can be distributed on thousands of working nodes at the same time, and security is also guaranteed by ETH on EigenLayer.
Last month, Renzo, Swell and Puffer also announced their cooperation with Lagrange. The three parties will entrust $500 million of Restaked ETH to Lagrange respectively. Lagrange has also designed some functions for these platforms that take advantage of the characteristics of their protocols, such as the ability to call Lagrange to obtain historical data on the chain, and then calculate points for users based on this data.
The name Lagrange comes from the mathematician, mechanic and astronomer "Lagrange".
Witness Chain is a network designed for decentralized IoT devices. It contains many components, such as DCL (DePIN Coordination Layer), which actually provides some basic services required by the DePIN ecosystem, such as the security of the chain itself, the bandwidth of the nodes, the physical location, etc. They call these basic services Watchtowers, which are used to measure the above data, and then generate valid proofs and be used in the DCL layer. This is very similar to the literal meaning of Witness in Witness Chain: "witness".
Xterio is slightly different from the AVS above. It is actually a second-layer blockchain based on EigenDA and OP Stack issued using AltLayer's RaaS. Xterio Chain will focus on scenarios related to AI and Web3 games. AltLayer said that Xterio L2 uses the MACH (AVS for fast finality) mentioned above. AltLayer also provides MACH services to Optimism's mainnet.
EigenLayer ecosystem will definitely have more types of AVS online. However, many people are also worried about the systemic risks that EigenLayer brings to the Ethereum ecosystem, because EigenLayer skips the "smart contract" and directly takes over the Ethereum node ecosystem, which is different from all other previous Ethereum-based protocols. However, this is also the charm of a permissionless system. Even without EigenLayer, there will be others trying this direction.
In addition, as the largest liquidity pledge protocol in the Ethereum ecosystem, Lido not only pledges the most ETH, but also has many node operators. Perhaps these direct conflicts of interest between EigenLayer and Lido will also make Lido rethink their business model and sustainability, and EigenLayer itself will also need a lot of time to gradually fill in the missing modules.
The next direction may be to integrate and develop with the Rollup paradigm, acting as a wingman to provide Rollup with DA, shared sequencers, high-security oracles, unified cross-domain liquidity, ZK coprocessors and other services.
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