NEAR Foundation Launches NEAR DA to Offer Secure, Cost-Effective Data Availability for ETH Rollups and Ethereum Developers

NEAR Foundation just announced the rollout of the NEAR Data Availability (NEAR DA) layer. Part of the NEAR Open Web Stack, NEAR DA is a groundbreaking innovation that offers robust, cost-efficient data availability for ETH rollups and Ethereum developers.

NEAR DA is set to launch with a number of first users, including Madara by StarkNet, Caldera, Fluent, Vistara, Dymension RollApps, and Movement Labs. 

Let’s take a brief look at NEAR DA to explore why it’s such an exciting and significant development for NEAR, Ethereum, and the larger effort to build a truly open web. 

NEAR DA — paving the way for modular blockchain development

With NEAR DA, ETH rollups and Ethereum developers get cost-effective, reliable data availability. 100kB of calldata on NEAR will cost $0.0033 as of September 2023, while the same calldata on Ethereum L1 will run users  $26.22. That’s 8,000 times cheaper! 

NEAR DA will help developers reduce costs and enhance the reliability of their rollups, while keeping the security of Ethereum. High quality projects launching an app-chain or L2 will also be able to get NEAR DA support. 

Illia Polosukhin, co-founder of NEAR Protocol, and newly announced CEO of NEAR Foundation said: “Offering a data availability layer to Ethereum rollups highlights the versatility of NEAR’s tech while also helping founders from across Web3 deliver great products that bring us closer to mainstream adoption of the Open Web.”

“NEAR’s L1 has been live with 100% uptime for more than three years, so it can offer true reliability to projects looking for secure DA while also being cost-effective,” Polosukhin added. “NEAR provides great solutions to developers no matter which stack they’re building on and now that includes the Ethereum modular blockchain landscape.”

Expanding NEAR’s Open Web Stack 

By opening up its blockchain for data availability, NEAR Protocol is expanding its offerings to deliver a modular blockchain development framework. This will let Web3 developers and founders continue building on Ethereum while leveraging NEAR’s state-of-the-art tech for one part of the stack, depending on their requirements. 

NEAR DA expands the capabilities of NEAR’s Open Web Stack, a common entry point where developers and users alike can easily build, browse, and discover Web3 products and platforms. This includes FastAuth onboarding to an account in seconds with zero crypto or seed phrases required, as well as the ability to create decentralized frontends from a library of thousands of components. 

Developers and founders building on Ethereum rollups interested in using NEAR DA can visit near.org/data-availability to get started.