On December 16th, 2024, Manta Pacific transitioned its Data Availability (DA) layer to CelestiaOrg. This marked a significant milestone as Manta Pacific became the first Ethereum Layer 2 to adopt a modular architecture by migrating its DA layer to Celestia, drawing considerable attention within the Ethereum community. This move sparked discussions among researchers from L2beat, including Donnoh and Bartek, as well as Arbitrum developers, who explored the implications of Manta Pacific's use of Celestia.
Key figures from Celestia, including co-founders Nick White and Mustafa Al-Bassam, and core developer Diego, also joined the conversation. The primary focus of the debate revolved around whether Manta Pacific's decision not to use Celestia Blobstream required an increased trust in Manta Pacific’s sequencer, particularly regarding the potential for fraudulent transactions.
Initial Concerns and the Role of Blobstream
1. Optimistic Rollup Security Model Explanation: Donnoh initiated the discussion with a series of tweets explaining the Optimistic Rollup security model. In this model, Layer 2 sequencers publish data to the Ethereum mainnet, where proposer nodes compute and submit the state root based on this data. The sequencers are assumed to be honest, and any fraudulent activity can be detected by comparing the state root with the existing states stored on Ethereum.
2. Challenges with Celestia Integration: Donnoh raised concerns about how Layer 2 could ensure data availability when integrating with Celestia. He suggested that without Blobstream, a mechanism bridging Celestia and Ethereum, it would be challenging to verify that Layer 2 data was indeed published on Celestia. Blobstream allows Layer 2 to submit data to Celestia, where Celestia's validators sign off on the data root, which is then verified on Ethereum.
Broader Community Engagement
3. Engagement from Arbitrum's Patrick McCorry: The discussion gained further traction with participation from Arbitrum's Patrick McCorry, who echoed the concerns about the potential risks associated with the lack of Blobstream.
4. Broader Security Concerns for Rollups: Bartek extended the debate to the general security issues of Ethereum Rollups, suggesting that Layer 2 sequencers could potentially change their data publishing methods without informing the Ethereum network, which could pose security risks.
Celestia’s Response and Clarification
5. Rebuttal from Celestia Co-founders: Mustafa Al-Bassam and Nick White from Celestia responded, asserting that Blobstream was not essential for ensuring data availability. They explained that Rollups using Celestia could verify data availability through Celestia light nodes, which check whether the data root has been properly published on the Celestia chain.
6. Clarification of Data Verification: Mustafa elaborated that what Blobstream does—verifying that the data root is correctly posted on Celestia—can also be achieved by Celestia light nodes. If Rollup nodes validate data commitments using Celestia's data root, and if the data commitment is incorrect or points to non-existent data, it will be detected as an "invalid data commitment."
Final Resolution and Conclusion
7. Donnoh’s Acknowledgment: Ultimately, Donnoh acknowledged the correctness of the explanation provided by Celestia's team, recognizing that Blobstream was not a necessity. He noted that since Manta Pacific’s sequencer specifies the block height where the blob is published, any fraudulent transaction would be invalid if the blob could not be found at the specified height.
8. Practical Demonstration: Donnoh demonstrated the process of verifying Manta Pacific’s sequencer transactions using Celestia block heights and blob commitments, confirming that even without Blobstream, the data availability and security of Manta Pacific’s transactions could be ensured.
Conclusion
Manta Pacific’s migration to Celestia for data availability, while initially met with skepticism, ultimately proved to be a robust and secure solution. By publishing complete data to Celestia and state commitments to the Ethereum mainnet, Manta Pacific ensures that its transactions are verifiable and secure, even without using Blobstream. This discussion highlights the evolving understanding and practices within the Ethereum community regarding modular architectures and data availability solutions.
According to Socialscan data, this migration has already resulted in substantial cost savings for Manta Pacific, reducing data availability fees by 99.81% compared to using the Ethereum mainnet, while maintaining low average gas fees of $0.02-$0.05 per interaction.
This detailed debate underscores the importance of community engagement in refining and validating innovative solutions within the blockchain ecosystem.
