Near Foundation Joins Celestia in Race to Provide 'Data Availability' for Ethereum Rollups

Near Foundation is joining the intensifying race to build a new breed of "data availability" solutions aiming to relieve the Ethereum blockchain of the burden of storing and broadcasting reams of data.

The foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the blockchain Near Protocol, announced the rollout of a new "$NEAR DA," and said posting data on the network could be 8,000 times cheaper than posting on Ethereum.

Similar to Celestia, a new network that launched last week along with a buzzy airdrop of new TIA tokens, $NEAR DA aims to provide an alternate venue that could handle data produced by a fast-growing network or auxiliary blockchains or "layer-2 networks" working atop Ethereum. Another competitor, Avail, plans to launch in early 2024 and is currently running various test networks.

"$NEAR DA offers immediate benefits to Web3 founders exploring the modular blockchain development landscape," according to a press release.

Initial users of $NEAR DA include Madara by Starknet, Caldera and Movement Labs.

The Foundation announced the news at the company’s annual conference in Lisbon, Nearcon, on Wednesday.

According to the press release, it would cost about $26.22 for an optimistic rollup – a type of layer-2 network – to post 100 kilobytes of calldata on Ethereum, versus $0.0033 for the same amount of data on Near Protocol.