Affordability

To make onchain worlds come alive, we don’t want to be held back by the cost of executing transactions. Quarry is designed to be compatible with OP Stack blockchains that use ERC-4844 Blobs Data Availability (DA) or Alternative DA (Alt-DA), to support low cost transactions suitable for MUD worlds.

Blobs DA

In the past, Layer-2 roll-ups posted and stored their transaction data on Ethereum Layer-1 via transaction calldata, which is permanently stored on the Ethereum blockchain. This approach, while secure, leads to high costs because calldata is stored indefinitely, placing a long-term storage burden on the network. Since roll-ups bundle many transactions and submit them to Ethereum, paying these high fees for calldata can make scaling solutions less economical, limiting the cost savings that Layer-2 solutions aim to provide.

With the introduction of ERC-4844 in 2024, Layer-2 roll-ups can now post transaction data onto Ethereum’s “blobs,” a new, cost-effective DA layer that stores data temporarily—around 2 weeks—before it’s pruned. Blobs offer roll-ups a dedicated space to post transaction data at a lower cost than traditional calldata, reducing reliance on permanent storage. This enables roll-ups to process and validate transactions more affordably while maintaining Ethereum’s security, leading to siginificantly cheaper transaction costs for end users.

Quarry is comptaible with OP Stack blockchains that use ERC-4844 Blobs DA.

Alternative DA

While EIP-4844 blobs have massively reduced Ethereum L1 data costs for OP Stack rollups, blobspace is on a path to congestion, which may lead to higher blob fees and increased transaction fees.

This is why we worked closely with Optimism to develop Alt-DA and Plasma mode for the OP Stack (opens in a new tab), so alternative DA layers can be used to avoid high transaction fees due to congested blobspace.

In Alt-DA Mode, transaction data is posted on an alternative DA layer outside of Ethereum, but a permissionless challenge contract on the L1 chain enables any user to force the DA provider to submit the transaction data onto L1, by posting a bond within a challenge window. This ensures that the DA provider cannot withold transaction data within the challenge window. For more details on Alt-DA mode, you can read the spec found on the OP Stack website (opens in a new tab).