Near Foundation joins the increasing race to build a new breed of ‘data availability’ solutions, aiming to relieve the Ethereum blockchain of the burden of storing and broadcasting large amounts of data.
The foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the blockchain Near Protocol, announced the rollout of a new ‘NEAR DA’ and said posting data on the network could be 8,000 times cheaper than posting it on Ethereum.
Like Celestia, a new network that launched last week along with a buzzy airdrop of new TIA tokens, NEAR DA aims to provide an alternative venue that can process data produced by a fast-growing network or auxiliary blockchains or “layer 2” networks “. work on top of Ethereum. Another competitor, Avail, plans to launch in early 2024 and currently operates several test networks.
“NEAR DA provides immediate benefits for Web3 founders exploring the modular blockchain development landscape,” according to a press release.
Initial users of NEAR DA include Madara from Starknet, Caldera and Movement Labs.
The Foundation announced the news on Wednesday at the company’s annual conference in Lisbon, Nearcon.
According to the press release, for an optimistic rollup – a type of layer 2 network – it would cost about $26.22 to post 100 kilobytes of call data on Ethereum, compared to $0.0033 for the same amount of data on Near Protocol.