Why Full Danksharding Favors Simpler Validators

Validators verify data, not execution. Full Danksharding decouples data availability from execution. Validators only attest to the availability of large data blobs, offloading the heavy computational work of verifying state transitions to rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism.

Complexity shifts to builders. The system's complexity is concentrated in a new class of specialized block builders. These entities, similar to those in PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation), compete to construct optimal blocks using advanced MEV strategies, insulating validators from this operational overhead.

Proof-of-custody is eliminated. A core innovation is replacing the validator's resource-intensive proof-of-custody with data availability sampling (DAS). Validators perform lightweight random sampling of blob data, a task feasible for consumer hardware, removing a major verification bottleneck.

Evidence: The Blob Count Metric. The target is 64 blobs per slot (≈2 MB each). Validators sample a few kilobytes per blob. This creates a scalable data layer (≈1.3 TB/day) while keeping individual validator workloads nearly constant, a fundamental scaling paradox.

Data Availability Sampling (DAS) is the core innovation. Validators no longer download the full 128 MB data blob; they randomly sample tiny chunks. This reduces the minimum hardware requirement from enterprise-grade servers to a standard consumer laptop with an SSD and home internet.

The Blob vs. Execution Payload separation creates a new cost model. Validators pay for blob space via a separate fee market, while execution remains on L1. This decouples staking costs from L1 gas volatility, providing predictable operational expenses.

Contrast this with pre-Danksharding rollups like Arbitrum or Optimism, where full nodes must process all transaction data. The post-Danksharding validator only attests to data availability, a task parallelized and trivialized by DAS protocols like the one EIP-4844 pioneered.

Evidence: Post-Danksharding, a validator's bandwidth requirement drops from ~1 Gbps to ~100 Mbps. This aligns with the PBS (Proposer-Builder Separation) and MEV-Boost ecosystem, where builders handle complex block construction, further simplifying the solo staker's role to pure attestation.

Builder centralization is a feature. The Proposer-Builder Separation (PBS) model isolates complex, resource-intensive block construction. This allows validators to perform a single, simple task: attesting to the validity of a pre-built block. The validator role is commoditized, reducing hardware requirements and lowering the barrier to entry for global participation.

Complexity is outsourced to a competitive market. Specialized builders like Flashbots, bloXroute, and Eden Network compete on execution quality. This competition drives efficiency and fee minimization for users, similar to how MEV auctions on platforms like CowSwap or UniswapX create a liquid market for transaction ordering.

The validator's job is verification, not construction. A validator's duty post-Danksharding is to verify data availability via Data Availability Sampling (DAS). This is a lightweight, parallelizable task that a consumer laptop can perform, making the consensus layer more resilient and decentralized than a model where every node must rebuild the entire block.

Evidence: The L2 precedent. Rollups like Arbitrum and Optimism already separate execution (complex) from settlement/consensus (simple). Their validators do not re-execute every L2 transaction; they verify cryptographic proofs. Full Danksharding applies this principle at the base layer, finalizing the shift of complexity to a specialized, non-consensus-critical layer.