Blockchain
Decentralizing Ethereum layer-2 options has been an ongoing problem for ecosystem individuals, however Figment Capital thinks that distributed sequencer know-how (DST) may put an finish to this headache.
Sequencers are blockchain nodes run by layer-2 options to succeed in consensus. They’re a vital software to assist construct and suggest blocks, and considerably scale back the fee to transact on Ethereum.
In at present’s ecosystem, layer-2 options largely keep just one sequencer — which means that it’s topic to centralization dangers.
If rollups find yourself being centralized techniques constructed on prime of a decentralized community, then it defeats the aim of getting a decentralized system within the first place, Dougie DeLuca, an investor at Figment Capital, informed Blockworks.
“We got here up with a brand new thought for a possible sequencer design,” DeLuca defined. “What we’ve been ideating is a brand new answer that may primarily function a cease hole answer till a extra complicated and maximally decentralized design is offered for use.”
This design is essentially just like distributed validator know-how (DVT), the place the duties of a validator are distributed throughout totally different operators or machines.
“Proper now with validators you may have one operator, one machine, and if a validator turns into compromised or goes offline, they’d be topic to slashing situations — which mainly means they may get penalized for not doing the work that they’re purported to do,” DeLuca stated.
With DVT, you’ll be able to have one validator being serviced by six totally different machines, DeLuca famous.
“What that accomplishes is fault tolerance, which implies if one sub-validator cluster goes offline, the opposite 5 are nonetheless working as meant, so consequently we get a extra resilient community,” he stated.
DVT additionally allows options reminiscent of community geographic distribution — making networks much less vulnerable to regulatory dangers and community outage (reminiscent of the latest Etheruem outage).
Utilizing DVT as a framework, DeLuca famous that he and different Figment crew members had an thought of repurposing it for sequencers.
“There are individuals utilizing it at present who can testify that it really works, so as an alternative of considering of a model new design that may take eternally to implement, let’s consider one thing that can be utilized within the mid-term…so similar to DVT, DST will be utilized to a single sequencer and it may well distribute duties of operating the sequencer throughout a cluster of machines and operators,” he stated.
Though Figment Capital is not going to be constructing out the know-how themselves, DeLuca shared that Obol Community is presently having conversations with totally different rollup groups to discover the probabilities of this know-how.
