In A Nutshell:
AVAIL token surged by 1000% within the first 24 hours post-launch. Avail's modular blockchain solution aims to optimize data availability and scalability. The project has raised $75 million and secured over 70 partnerships for integration.Avail, a blockchain project aiming to solve rollup fragmentation and improve scalability, has launched its data availability mainnet and native AVAIL token.
Avail DA is a modular blockchain solution designed to optimize data availability and help developers build more scalable, cost-efficient, and composable chains, according to a statement shared with The Block.
The launch of Avail DA sees its native AVAIL token go live. AVAIL is used to pay data availability fees, and holders can start staking tokens from Tuesday to help contribute to network security. The AVAIL token will also play a key role in Avail’s governance, with the project adopting a phased approach toward community decision-making, according to its official documents.
Notably, within the first 24 hours after launch, the price of the AVAIL token surged by an astonishing 1000%, reflecting strong market interest and confidence in the project's potential. This remarkable price increase highlights the growing demand for innovative solutions in the blockchain space and positions Avail as a key player in addressing scalability and data availability challenges.
Limited details are currently available on AVAIL's tokenomics. However, there is a total supply of 10 billion AVAIL tokens, the team told The Block, and, in April, the project unveiled an airdrop of 600 million tokens for eligible participants, claimable once the Avail DA layer went live.
Avail is led by Polygon’s former co-founder Anurag Arjun. Avail DA is the first of three parts of Avail’s full-stack architecture, with the project now working toward its next two major releases: interoperability layer Nexus and security network layer Fusion.
"Avail DA and the introduction of the AVAIL token represent the culmination of years of research and development aimed at addressing the most critical challenges facing web3 today, such as blockchain fragmentation, insufficient data availability, and limited scaling,” Arjun said.
Avail light clients use validity proofs and data availability sampling to quickly verify data on consumer-grade hardware like mobile phones. This ensures data can be sampled immediately after block finalization. To prevent centralization, Avail uses a Nominated Proof-of-Stake (NPoS) consensus mechanism, which distributes staked tokens evenly among validators. The network aims to start with 1,000 validators and potentially expand to 10,000, according to the team.
“By combining KZG commitments with data availability sampling we’re able to provide the blockchain ecosystem with access to advanced data availability infrastructure today,” Avail co-founder Prabal Banerjee said. "With a few lines of code, developers can connect any execution environment with Avail DA and they will have a very powerful blockchain.”
DA layers help Layer 2 scaling solutions to operate efficiently and securely, ensuring all necessary transaction data is openly accessible. This transparency helps maintain the security and correctness of transactions, preventing fraud and enabling reliable operations outside the main blockchain.
Following a $45 million Series A round announced in June, Avail has now raised a total of $75 million in funding from investors including Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, Dragonfly Capital, and Cyber Capital.
Modular blockchain projects are rising in popularity, especially after Celestia's launch late last year. Lava and Inco are also among the modular projects that recently raised funds.
"As crypto increasingly becomes more modular and interoperable, Avail is building critical infrastructure to accelerate this innovation. Their architecture, which leverages KZG proofs and data availability sampling (DAS), achieves impressive speed and security and is completely chain-agnostic," Founders Fund Partner Joey Krug said.
Avail DA supports a variety of blockchain architectures, including Validiums, Optimiums, Sovereign Rollups, and Bitcoin Layer 2s, the project said. The team claims to have secured more than 70 partnerships including application-specific blockchains, DeFi, and web3 gaming chains to integrate with Avail DA.
In April, Avail announced that five Layer 2 projects: Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, StarkWare, and zkSync were set to integrate with Avail’s data availability architecture following the mainnet launch.
