EIP-4844 explained: proto-danksharding and cheaper data for rollups
Thread715 words
Explains why rollups need cheaper data and how EIP-4844 adds blob-carrying transactions with their own EIP-1559-style fee market as a step toward full danksharding, without yet sharding the chain.
Key claims
Blobs are about 125 kB and cheaper than calldata at 16 gas per byte
Proto-danksharding targets 1 MB per slot versus 16 MB for full danksharding
The EVM sees only blob commitments, not blob data
0/ Today’s thread is about EIP-4844 (a.k.a. Proto-danksharding)🚀
This is an important step in transforming the $ETH base layer into a major settlement & data availability layer for #L2 rollup systems✨
What is it and what will change? (0/26) 🧵👇
#L222
1/ As mentioned in my previous thread, #rollups are the most promising scaling solution for #Ethereum:
x.com/expctchaos/status/1527419709616013313
2/ With transaction fees on $ETH L1 spiking to unsustainable levels when there’s increased on-chain activity, it’s imperative to facilitate an ecosystem-wide move to #rollup L2s
3/ But, as already explained in my last rollup thread, rollups need data. Badly.
More info on the data availability problem:
medium.com/blockchain-capital-blog/wtf-is-data-availability-80c2c95ded0f
4/ Right now the cheapest data option for rollups is call data (16 gas per byte), but it's expensive bc there's no multidimensional EIP-1559 & gas prices are driven up by L1 executions
5/ How can this problem be addressed? Just lowering call data cost might be a bad idea bc every single node needs to store every byte of call data forever, so more call data increases storage requirements, which is bad for decentralization
6/ Nevertheless, rollups are already significantly reducing fees for many $ETH users. #Optimism & #Arbitrum for example frequently provide fees that are ~3-10x lower than the $ETH base layer itself
7/ Application-specific rollups, which have better data compression have even achieved ~50-100x lower fees than the $ETH L1 (see post 6)
8/ Similarly, $METIS, an innovative optimistic rollup solution, has achieved 0.01$ tx fees by implementing a native storage layer solution (at least until EIP-4844)
9/ For more info on $METIS see this thread:
x.com/expctchaos/status/1524810388281368578
10/ However, even these fees are too expensive for many users (or in the case of $METIS come with certain security trade-offs)
11/ The long-term solution to this issue has always been data #sharding, which will add ~16 MB per block of dedicated data space to the chain that rollups could use
12/ However, data sharding will still take some time until it’s fully implemented and deployed (part of $ETH 2.0 roadmap)
13/ That’s where EIP-4844 comes into play. Proto-danksharding provides an interim solution by implementing the tx format that will be used in sharding, but not actually shards txs
14/ Instead, data from this tx format (data blobs) is simply part of the beacon chain & is fully downloaded by all consensus nodes (but can be deleted after a short delay)
15/ The new tx type which is referred to as a blob-carrying tx, is like a regular transaction, except it also carries these extra pieces of data called blob
16/ Blobs are rather large (~125 kB) & are much cheaper than similar amounts of call data. However, blob data is not accessible to EVM execution. The EVM can only view commitments to blobs
17/ Hence, EIP-4844 primarily addresses L2 transaction fee issues & is expected to have a large impact on those
18/ So, while #EIP4844 is a proposal to implement most of the logic (eg. Tx formats, verification rules) of #danksharding, it will not yet implement any sharding
19/ In a proto-danksharding implementation, all validators & users still have to directly validate the availability of the full data
20/ Because validators & clients still have to download full blob contents, data bandwidth in proto-danksharding is targeted to 1 MB per slot instead of the full 16 MB when #danksharding is implemented
21/ However, there are still large scalability gains because this data is not competing with the gas usage of other $ETH L1 txs
22/ This new data type is coming with its own independent #EIP1559-style pricing mechanism
23/ Hence, L1 execution can be congested & expensive, while blobs remain very cheap (at least in the medium term)
24/ Finally, EIP-4844 also has the advantage that it lays the groundwork for full #danksharding
25/ While rollups have to adapt to switch to EIP-4844, they won't have to worry about adapting anymore when full #danksharding is implemented. It’s the same format but will safely allow for additional data
26/ For an overview if the rollup L2 landscape and list of projects impacted by #EIP4844, see:
x.com/expctchaos/status/1527434609637478400
27/ If you liked this thread please support with a retweet. Also, threads on more advanced $ETH scaling topics like danksharding & DAS (and project deep-dives) to follow, so stay tuned!✨👀
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