Why Avail's Proof-of-Stake Data Layer is a Risky Bet

Avail replaces Ethereum's battle-tested consensus with its own Proof-of-Stake network, creating a new, monolithic point of failure. This is a regression from the modular security thesis.

• Introduces new slashing & liveness risks for all connected rollups.
• No economic security spillover from Ethereum's $50B+ staked value.
• Validation is now a permissioned set of Avail validators, not the global Ethereum validator set.

EigenDA leverages Ethereum's consensus via EigenLayer restaking, making data availability a native extension of Ethereum's security.

• Inherits the full economic security of Ethereum's validator set.
• No new consensus layer means no new slashing or liveness risks.
• Cryptoeconomic security scales with Ethereum staking, already securing $15B+ in restaked TVL.

Rollups posting to Avail create data silos, fracturing liquidity and breaking native cross-rollup composability that relies on Ethereum as a shared settlement and DA layer.

• Forces bridges like LayerZero and Across to become more complex, trusted relays.
• Breaks atomic composability for intents-based systems like UniswapX and CowSwap.
• Incentivizes re-staking to Avail, draining liquidity and security from Ethereum.

Celestia accepts its role as an external DA layer and optimizes for sovereign rollups that prioritize independence over Ethereum alignment.

• Clear value prop: Maximum throughput and minimal cost for chains that don't need Ethereum's security.
• No pretense of shared security, avoiding the misleading narrative of 'secured by Ethereum'.
• Pioneered the modular stack with a proven, live network and a large ecosystem (e.g., Arbitrum Orbit, Polygon CDK).

Avail's economic model is fundamentally adversarial to Ethereum, designed to extract validator stake and revenue to bootstrap its own chain.

• Dilutes Ethereum staking rewards by siphoning stake to secure Avail.
• Creates a zero-sum game where Avail's success requires Ethereum's weakening.
• Long-term, risks creating a more fragmented and less secure multi-chain ecosystem.

Choosing Avail is a high-risk architectural bet that undervalues Ethereum's accumulated security and composability in favor of a novel, unproven system.

• For app-chains: EigenDA offers security-aligned modularity.
• For sovereign chains: Celestia offers purpose-built, high-throughput DA.
• Avail occupies a risky middle ground, asking ecosystems to gamble their security on a new foundation for marginal cost savings.

Avail's PoS consensus must simultaneously guarantee data availability for rollups, transaction ordering for its own chain, and economic security for its bridge. A single slashing event or governance attack can compromise all three, unlike monolithic chains where these functions are decoupled.

• Censorship Attack: A malicious validator set could selectively withhold data, halting all dependent rollups.
• Resource Starvation: High demand for DA could congest the chain, delaying proofs for zk-rollups like zkSync and Starknet.
• Bridge Vulnerability: A compromised validator set could forge fraudulent state roots for the Avail-Ethereum bridge.

As the canonical data layer, Avail must store all rollup data forever. Exponential growth from hundreds of rollups creates unsustainable state bloat, forcing expensive regenesis events or pushing costs onto nodes.

• Node Centralization: Storage requirements could exceed 10TB+, pricing out home validators.
• Regenesis Risk: Forced chain resets (like Celestia plans) break historical data proofs, crippling fraud proof windows for Optimistic Rollups like Arbitrum and Base.
• Cost Spiral: DA fees must rise to subsidize node ops, negating the cost-saving promise for rollups.

Avail's security relies on punishing malicious validators by slashing staked tokens. A major slashing event could trigger a death spiral where delegators flee, reducing stake, making the chain cheaper to attack, and causing further withdrawals.

• TVL Correlation: A $1B+ slash could crash the AVAIL token, devaluing the entire staked security budget.
• Rollup Contagion: A compromised Avail chain invalidates all data roots, forcing every connected rollup (Polygon CDK, Arbitrum Orbit) to halt or revert.
• No Fallback DA: Unlike EigenDA's restaking or Celestia's light nodes, Avail's architecture lacks a rapid failover mechanism.

Avail markets 'sovereignty' for rollups, but they become hostage to its governance. Upgrades, fee changes, and slashing parameters are set by Avail validators, not rollup users.

• Governance Capture: A cartel could vote to increase DA fees exponentially, taxing all rollups.
• Upgrade Bottleneck: Critical security patches for rollups (e.g., fraud proof upgrades) require Avail's coordination, creating a single point of failure.
• Fork Infeasibility: A rollup cannot feasibly fork Avail's massive historical dataset, making them permanently dependent.