Avail, a blockchain project known for data availability (DA), shared Thursday that five major layer-2 networks in the Ethereum ecosystem will integrate with its Avail DA solution.

Those chains include Arbitrum, Optimism, Polygon, StarkWare and zkSync. Users will be able to opt in or out to use Avail for data availability – a service needed by these "rollup networks" to stash the reams of data produced on all the transactions taking place. A key driver for DA solutions is that they can provide a cheaper and faster way of storing data than on the main Ethereum blockchain.

Avail came into the limelight alongside other DA projects, which have gained buzz over the past few months with protocols like Celestia that went live in October, and Eigenlayer’s EigenDA that went live earlier this month. Avail’s DA is still in testnet, but is expected to go live very soon, according to Anurag Arjun, the co-founder of Avail.

Avail last week released its plan for a token airdrop, and one of the groups that will be eligible for the AVAIL token are users of these rollups.

In February, Avail announced that it would be coming out with two more core products: Nexus, a layer that connects different rollups to each other through the Avail ecosystem (similar to Polygon’s AggLayer), and Avail Fusion, which will borrow the security of crypto assets like ether (ETH) or bitcoin (BTC) and contribute them to Avail’s security (similar to EigenLayer).

“DA is more production ready, because DA is going out soon," Arjun said in an interview with CoinDesk. "Nexus is something we have is still in development. We are working with some of these teams to integrate the Nexus piece more closely."

data availability Avail Starkware starknet Optimism Arbitrum Zksync era Polygon

Margaux Nijkerk

Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a small amount of ETH and other altcoins.