On June 4, 2024, modular blockchain project Avail announced that it has raised $43 million in Series A funding led by Founders Fund, Dragonfly, and Cyber Fund. The new funding will be used to build Avail’s Unification Layer, which combines data availability, cross-chain coordination, and shared security to enable modular blockchain to scale and interoperate in a permissionless and secure manner.
Previously, on March 25, 2024, Avail announced that it had raised $27 million in seed funding, also led by Founders Fund and Dragonfly. Combined with the initial $5 million seed funding, Avail has now raised a total of $75 million. Other investors include SevenX, Figment, Nomad Capital, LocalGlobe, Altos Ventures, Chapter One, Superscrypt, Foresight Ventures, Mirana Ventures, KR1, RW3 Ventures, Alliance DAO, Hashkey, Elixir Capital, Spark Digital Capital, and some angel investors.
Avail was originally launched as a project within Polygon Labs and was spun off from Polygon in March 2023. It has now become a mature independent entity led by former Polygon founders Anurag Arjun and research director Prabal Banerjee. Leveraging years of experience in building blockchain infrastructure and adopting cutting-edge ZK technology, Avail has taken a unique approach to address the scalability, interoperability, and security challenges faced by Rollups.
“We need a way to allow Rollups to scale and aggregate without permission, so that cross-Rollup transactions can be seamlessly connected.” – Avail founder Anurag Arjun
“We need to accept the fact that many ecosystems will coexist and they need to communicate with each other. We can solve this problem from first principles and build a more cohesive solution for developers and users.” – Avail founder Prabal Banerjee
Avail’s Unification Layer overview includes three core modules: Avail DA, Avail Nexus, and Avail Fusion. Avail DA addresses the data availability problem, Avail Nexus tackles cross-chain coordination, and Avail Fusion solves the shared security issue.
The Avail DA module is unique in its approach to expand data availability, laying the foundation for wider blockchain interoperability through Validity Proof and Data Availability Sampling (DAS). This allows anyone to verify DA guarantees in less than a minute without relying on full nodes.
Based on the unique features of Avail DA, the Avail Nexus module forms a cross-chain coordination center that connects users and liquidity in unprecedented ways. Avail Nexus acts as the validation hub for the Unification Rollup, using Avail DA as the trust root. Nexus is a custom ZK coordination Rollup based on Avail, including proof aggregation and verification layers, sorter selection/slot auction mechanism. Nexus regularly submits Rollup proofs to Ethereum and Avail DA for verification. Custom modules in Avail DA validate Rollup proofs.
To provide strong cryptographic economic security to the Unification Center, Avail is building a solution to further unify the blockchain ecosystem with Avail Fusion. By expanding the collateral assets to include assets such as ETH and BTC, Avail is laying the foundation for an innovative shared security layer. Rollups built with Avail will benefit from additional cryptographic economic security provided by Avail Fusion, which is a shared security layer protected by a basket of cryptographic assets.
Each part of Avail’s Unification Layer is designed to enhance the experience of blockchain developers and users worldwide. Developers can freely choose any technology they prefer and build custom blockchains for their specific use cases. With just a few lines of code, they can inherit all the core functionalities of Avail DA. On the other hand, blockchain users can experience seamless bridgeless transactions as the complexity of cross-chain asset transfers is managed by Nexus.
Avail stated that with the completion of Series A funding and the announcement of the Avail Unification Drop airdrop, the next important milestone is the launch of Avail DA on the mainnet.
