At the end of the nineteenth century, companies had systems in place that allowed a single person to work end-to-end on a product, such as an automobile, but this was wasteful since one worker had to master a range of skills, resulting in lower quality. Setting up "assembly lines," or breaking down the manufacture of things into pre-defined sequences, however, caused a paradigm change. Because these operations work in tandem, the time necessary to construct an automobile has been greatly decreased.

Similarly, blockchains like Ethereum and Solana are monolithic in design, handling everything from block generation to consensus and storage, as well as smart contract execution. What if we used the same 'assembly line' method to divide blockchains into separate modules? The answer is modular blockchain. One of the most anticipated modular blockchains up to now is Eclipse.

Current rollups

As we approach widespread adoption, transaction volumes will continue to rise, placing even more strain on validators. It may also cause data-overload and throughput concerns, especially during high-load times like NFT mints, which are brief but very demanding on blockchain throughput. For example, the introduction of the Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT on Ethereum generated significant network congestion, prompting Yuga Labs to announce plans to transfer to its own high-throughput chain.

The Ethereum community has focused on Rollups as a solution to these issues since it provides speed by operating a separate chain and storing just compressed archives of its transactions to an L1. Rollups are classified into two types:

Optimistic rollups: They believe that all transactions are legitimate and that they may submit batches of transactions without doing any calculations. They do, however, provide a testing period during which anybody may question the legitimacy of the transaction batch.
Zk-rollups: They generate cryptographic proofs that aid in the validation of transactions. Every transaction batch would have its own 'validity proof,' which would have to be presented to the main chain.

Optimistic rollups have been around for a while, with projects like Arbitrum and Optimism servicing a large number of users for about a year now. zk-rollups have yet to be tested in combat. These rollups, however, have a flaw in that they aren't upgradeable and can only be improved by hard forking the Layer 1, since they aren't sovereign.

Eclipse comes in: Solana VM Customizable Rollups

Eclipse is working on a one-of-a-kind initiative to create the first Sealevel VM rollup, which will provide a Rollup-as-a-Service with a customizable foundation layer. Celestia, the data availability layer, will support an IBC-enabled rollup. Eclipse is essentially a revised fork of Solana's current codebase in the modular concept. Instead of fitting all programs on the same chain, Eclipse allows you to build up your own modular rollup using the powerful Sealevel virtual engine. This enables anybody to execute Solana-written applications, although Eclipse does not use Solana for security. Instead, the basic layer may be changed to meet the demands, and it can be CelestiaOrg, Polygon Avail, or Eigen Layer.

The team's representation of Eclipse layers. Source: Eclipse

Eclipse offers a settlement layer that serves as a bridging hub as well as a dispute resolution board for fraud evidence. This settlement layer is IBC-capable, allowing anybody to send IBC messages.

However, you may be questioning why they aren't just utilizing EVM (Ethereum Virtual Machine) for this.

Why use Solana VM?

The simple solution is speed! In contrast to EVM chains like Ethereum, where just a single application is executing, the Solana (Sealevel) virtual machine offers a highly parallelized runtime (single-threaded). The Solana VM contains several cores, allowing it to execute numerous applications at the same time, significantly boosting throughput. The Execution layer is constantly developing as follows:

Solana VM applications may be written in Python using Seahorse Lang.
Solana VM will soon support Move, a new programming language for which Solana VM has successfully created a local fee market.

The nicest thing is that they receive a ready-made Solana development community as well as accepted token standards. Eclipse may also use Solana's current TPS, which counts both voting and non-voting transactions, to convert the whole TPS into a real TPS with no voting transactions.

Source: Eclipse

Solana VM Advantages

Although the Eclipse project is now leaning heavily on Solana VM, the team intends to support alternative VM as well. One of the most fascinating is Move VM, which is employed by high-performance projects like Aptos and Sui.

Okay, we now have Solana VM, but why are they IBC-enabled?

IBC, or Inter-Blockchain Communication, was launched in April 2021 as the official standard for blockchain interoperability, allowing independent blockchains to connect, trade, swap tokens and other data, grow, and flourish in an interconnected network. This is comparable to a cross-chain bridge in that it allows arbitrary data to be sent across arbitrary data structures, but it is far more decentralized than bridges.

By activating IBC, Eclipse may utilize the IBC application layer to develop a variety of cross-chain applications, such as asset token transfers, interchain addresses, NFT transfers, and price oracle data feeds. IBC is already linked to over 50 cosmic appchains. Simply said, being IBC-enabled will allow Eclipse appchains to benefit from the interoperability of the Cosmos ecosystem.

Okay, enough about Eclipse's technology and design; let's now go further into "What's conceivable."

The selling points of Eclipse

The notion of starting an "appchain" will be clarified in subsequent sections, but Eclipse offers the following advantages:

Maximum adaptability: Any dApp may change its block timings, subsidize gas, or limit who can utilize your blockchain.
Shared security: Because it borrows security from the underlying Layer 1, dApps don't have to worry about maintaining infrastructure or establishing validators.
Scale horizontally: This implies that dApps may always spin up another execution layer, giving them full access to Solana's capability.
Lower operating costs: Because the data availability layer does not need to facilitate execution, the cost of running a node is lower, fostering decentralization.
User Interface: Appchain Cross-chain onboarding and adoption

Let's say a Decentralized Exchange, such as dYdX, wants to create its own appchain and wants to know what the user experience may be like. Whether it is a trading use case or another, a user should not feel compelled to migrate to an appchain; the user experience should be better.

Here are a few infrastructural components that the Eclipse Foundation should consider in order to provide the greatest user experience for appchains:

On-Ramps and Off-Ramps: The most important necessity for every first-time web3 user is to know how they will convert their fiat into crypto in order to utilize dApp. While listing on exchanges like Binance or Coinbase may fix this issue, it is difficult for a fresh chain to do so. Integrating solutions such as Stripe, Moonpay, Wyre, and Kado is another option for resolving this issue. All of this, however, necessitates collaboration with partners in order to get their support for your chain and assets.
Gas fees: While some networks may establish their own token and accept it as a transaction fee, others may simply take more universal assets like USDC as transaction fees. Appchains may also make the whole chain gasless to improve user experience by either subsidizing gas expenses for the user or just accepting in-app transaction payments that include gas fees.
Wallets: One of the reasons why many dApps opt to launch on EVM-compatible chains is that the network can be easily linked to a popular wallet such as Metamask and utilized by the user. To provide the best possible user experience, Eclipse appchain may either construct its own wallet if it is aimed at first-time web3 users, or interface with existing popular wallets like Phantom. The user interface should be comparable to switching between networks in metamask, with the user just selecting the eclipse network.
Cross-chain Bridges: This is the most important component for any dApp that is mainly aimed at crypto-native consumers. If your user is utilizing Solana, they should be able to simply bridge an asset from Solana to your chain. Bridges may be used to deliver arbitrary messages to and from the appchain in addition to assets. For example, someone may stake their collateral properties on Ethereum and borrow assets from the appchain, and the appchain just has to ensure that messages from the source chain are safely delivered. Integrating with current bridge solutions such as Nomad, Axelar, and LayerZero will be the most efficient approach to accomplish bridging and assure maximum target chain coverage.
Primary asset: Solana has SOL, just as Ethereum has ETH, and all chains have a native asset that is independent of any other entity and is native to the chain. This will be a key difficulty for an appchain since having a wrapped item poses various external concerns. To illustrate, Polygon, one of the fastest-growing chains, still lacks a native USDC! The USDC utilized on Polygon is just a wrapped version of USDC via the Polygon PoS bridge. This indicates that this is not the official USDC, and Circle has no responsibility to assure their redemption.

While these are the key distinctions, there may be additional such as block explorer, asset exchange, and much more. To facilitate easy integration with any appchain, the Eclipse Foundation must supply ready-to-integrate solutions for these or collaborate with applicable bridges, wallets, and on/off-ramps

Eclipse use cases

Application-specific rollups, like any dApp, may be of any form, such as gaming, DeFi, or payments. Zebec, one of Solana's largest multi-sig and token streaming platforms, just announced that they would build their own app chain utilizing Eclipse's modular rollups.

Zebec will function as follows:

It will function as a payment chain, authenticating the user's payment details, allowing transactions, moving monies across accounts, updating account balances, and so on.

The eclipse will also support the payment chain's expansion to the Cosmos network, where it will be utilized for payment streaming, exchanging of real-world assets (RWAs), and real-time communications, among other things. But why would Zebec use Eclipse to create its own chain?

Payment is a use-case that demands high throughput in order to handle more transactions than Visa. Using their own roll-up offers them a significantly greater transaction per second and also enables other dApps to build on them by using their own roll-up. Another motivation is interoperability, since the modular chain configuration will enable it to tap into a variety of ecosystems.

Yama Finance, an omnichannel stablecoin, has also declared a debut on Eclipse.

Payment is one such use-case; there are many additional apps that may be created using Eclipse, including but not limited to:

DeFi: On Solana, each DeFi has the ability to be its own appchain. Let me illustrate this using an example: Many DeFi protocols leveraged Serum's central limit orderbook (CLOB) to access into aggregate liquidity and match their transactions, making it the backbone of Solana DeFi. Following the demise of FTX, the community forked it, and now everyone has pointed out problems, including reliance on Solana's execution layer. An easy answer is to migrate to Eclipse, where the orderbook may be further tailored to meet the demands of the DeFi community while also using Solana's speed.

Sei, a cosmos-based appchain, has done something similar in that they have a native orderbook for their blockchains that other DeFi applications may build on.

Building a Binance-similar DEX: Decentralized Exchanges have been popular since the FTX crisis, but they offer relatively limited functionalities when compared to a centralized exchange like Binance. A good option is to spin out a DEX-chain on Solana, similar to dYdX, that provides all advanced capabilities. The greatest aspect is that since everything is on-chain and fully non-custodial, users may have comprehensive evidence of reserves/assets as well as proof of liabilities. They may also implement permissioned rollups, which allow only verified users to utilize the DEX, to enable KYC for on-ramps and off-ramps. Drift and other dApps may be able to create their own appchain.

Oracles: Pyth is a leading oracle provider that is now implemented on Solana and delivers 80+ price feeds by combining data from over 65+ data suppliers, resulting in over 700 price update operations per second. They have been consuming more than 10% of Solana's transactions, and in order to expand further, they will shortly build their own chain utilizing Solana's software, thereby giving them all of Solana's TPS. However, they would be difficult to execute entirely on their own. Pyth may utilize eclipse to spin off its own roll-up and obtain all of the changes they need.

Gaming: At the start of 2022, every major game was considering moving to its own appchain due to high throughput and finality demands. StepN, a Web3 running program, is one of the most popular dApps on Solana, having single-handedly increased Solana's activity to 500K monthly active users. They may possibly be an Eclipse appchain, with access to all of the Solana TPS.

Web2 Enterprises: Whether you like it or not, huge Web2 companies want to have their own adaptations to improve user experience and maintain control. We all know how important it is to attract Web2 titans since they can accelerate widespread adoption. One of their value propositions may be to build their own autonomous chain using Eclipse. For example, if JP Morgan wants to establish its own stablecoins, it can simply spin out its own chain and develop its own ecosystem of apps. They don't have to worry about infrastructure and can instead focus on power use cases such as remittances, synthetic real-world assets, and others. Another motive for corporations to develop their own tokens is to circumvent legal barriers by just paying the base layer for the data.

The Case for Permissioned Appchains: Permissionless is a basic ethos of Web3, but not everyone appreciates it, especially central banks and financial institutions, who want only verified users to join.

Assume a central bank wishes to create its own Central Bank Digital Currency (CBDC) on a public blockchain in order to increase transparency, but also to maintain complete control since it cannot afford for anybody to manipulate its national currency. They would want to use current virtual machines such as Solana VM while having the flexibility to customize things such as:

On-chain KYC ensures that only nationals of the country own CBDC. CBDCs may be frozen in the event of terrorist funding, as well as monitored and limited activity of questionable persons, or CBDCs may be withdrawn from a wallet in the event of a hack or wallet breach. Allows banks and financial organizations to join the list of authorized validators, ensuring decentralization. All of these restrictions would be very difficult to implement on a monolithic blockchain; thus, spinning off their rollups using Eclipse would be the best answer.

Competitors Landscape

When there is a large potential in the market, there is also a large amount of competition. While a great number of ecosystems have been working on creating their own appchain modules, the most well-known of them is the Cosmos SDKs, which has been a proponent of appchains since 2016. But Eclipse is in a category of its own; to understand why, let's start by considering the company's rivals:

Appchain Enablers are ecosystems that are not necessarily modular in their nature but are provided by well-established ecosystems such as Cosmos, Avalanche, and Polkadot. These ecosystems are referred to as "Appchain Enablers." They have done an excellent job of lobbying for the appchain concept, as shown by the fact that a large number of prominent dApps have either already deployed on their appchains or are planning to deploy.

SVM Compatible: There is another fascinating project out there called Nitro, and it is developing something called "Solana VM for the Cosmos environment." Any Solana project will have an easier time launching on Cosmos if you think of it as an L2 for the cosmos, which is how you should think of it. It will offer SVM compatibility to Cosmos, making it possible for Cosmos to instantaneously access the wider IBC ecosystem, much as Avalanche and BNB are both compatible with EVM. The SVM may be used by applications developed on Nitro to achieve great performance while at the same time getting compatibility inherent to IBC. In addition to that, the roadmap includes rollups that are comparable to eclipse.

Source: Medium

However, the greater game is in tapping into Web2 Enterprises and importing dApps from other Ecosystems, along with being the first option for a new project. Having the first-mover advantage will be critical for attracting Solana-based initiatives.

There are a good number of projects that are building on the modular blockchains theme, but the majority of them are still not in the mainnet and are either building or have deployed their devnet or testnet. Modular Rollups: There are a good number of projects that are built on the modular blockchains theme. Here are a couple of the more intriguing ones:

Dymension: This allows anybody to construct their own consensus-free blockchain, sometimes known as "RollApps," and these blockchains are linked to the mainchain through Dymension Hub, exactly as Cosmos does. It makes use of Cosmwasm VM, which allows RollApp developers to choose DA (Data Availability) providers that are supported by the Dymension protocol according to their requirements regarding cost and security.
Altlayer: This not only makes it possible for anybody to start their own rollups, but it also supports multi-VMs like EVM and WASM, has minimal gas prices, and provides quick transaction finality.

Despite the fact that the appchain field has been heating up recently, we are of the opinion that business development and partnerships will play a very important role in the process of attracting decentralized applications. The objective for the Eclipse Foundation will be to capitalize on the benefits of being the first mover in order to position themselves as the option of choice for anybody starting their own chain.

Conclusion

At the end of the day, it all comes down to adoption and how successfully current Web3 dApps embrace Eclipse, as well as how well large Web2 giants like FinTechs and Social Media debut on Eclipse. Adoption is the key to success. The cultivation of businesses, the strengthening of communities, and the formation of partnerships will all play important parts.

At first, Eclipse may choose to begin in the manner of Optimism, which means that the company will control all of the nodes on its network and will disable settlement. In this manner, an Eclipse chain is readily available for use by anybody right away. The goal is to decentralize and progressively build up our new honest minority settlement layer, which is the vision. In addition to this, one must have a large pool of validators, all of whom are able to participate in the decentralization of any chain.

The appchain is an intriguing topic, and we have an optimistic outlook on it; hence, it is one of the themes that I will be keeping an eye out for in 2023. Everything depends on Eclipse and how well they create an environment around itself. The dangers are many and include liquidity risk, technical risk, and cross-chain bridging risk; nonetheless, addressing these risks and developing a system with a little reliance on trust will be critical moving forward.

The ultimate goal of Eclipse should be to accelerate the widespread adoption of Web3 by including scalability, security, and decentralization capabilities, while also placing a strong emphasis on simplicity of integration, rapid deployments, and the quality of the user experience.

Disclaimer:
This article is intended for and only to be used for reference purposes only. No such information provided constitutes advice or a recommendation that any investment or trading strategy is suitable for any specific name.

Eclipse: The first customisable rolllup using Solana VM