Figment Wants to Bring Distributed Validator Technology to Sequencers

Blockchain

Decentralizing Ethereum layer-2 options has been an ongoing problem for ecosystem contributors, 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 essential device to assist construct and suggest blocks, and considerably scale back the associated fee to transact on Ethereum.

In in the present day’s ecosystem, layer-2 options largely keep just one sequencer — that means that it’s topic to centralization dangers.

If rollups find yourself being centralized techniques constructed on high 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, advised Blockworks.

“We got here up with a brand new concept 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 advanced and maximally decentralized design is accessible for use.”

This design is essentially much like distributed validator know-how (DVT), the place the tasks of a validator are distributed throughout completely different operators or machines.

“Proper now with validators you will have one operator, one machine, and if a validator turns into compromised or goes offline, they might be topic to slashing circumstances — which mainly means they are going to get penalized for not doing the work that they’re purported to do,” DeLuca mentioned.

With DVT, you’ll be able to have one validator being serviced by six completely 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 mentioned.

DVT additionally permits options resembling community geographic distribution — making networks much less susceptible to regulatory dangers and community outage (resembling the newest Etheruem outage).

Utilizing DVT as a framework, DeLuca famous that he and different Figment group members had an concept of repurposing it for sequencers.

“There are individuals utilizing it in the present day who can testify that it really works, so as an alternative of considering of a model new design that may take without end to implement, let’s consider one thing that can be utilized within the mid-term…so similar to DVT, DST could be utilized to a single sequencer and it will possibly distribute tasks of working the sequencer throughout a cluster of machines and operators,” he mentioned.

Though Figment Capital is not going to be constructing out the know-how themselves, DeLuca shared that Obol Community is at the moment having conversations with completely different rollup groups to discover the chances of this know-how.