The Optimism blockchain ecosystem is getting its own "alternative data availability" or "alt-DA" chain, called Redstone – courtesy of the development team Lattice.

Currently still operating as a test network, Redstone aims to be cost-effective for on-chain games and decentralized applications.

Optimism is an ecosystem of so-called layer-2 chains, designed for cheaper and faster transactions, including the original OP Mainnet, currently the world's second-biggest layer-2 network in terms of value deposited. The affiliated networks rely on "optimistic rollup" technology – a reference to how transactions are settled to the main "layer-1" or "L1" Ethereum blockchain. In October 2022, developers at OP Labs, who helped create OP Mainnet, released OP Stack, allowing developers to create their own blockchains.

According to a blog post shared with CoinDesk, Redstone would operate “like a traditional optimistic rollup, except instead of posting the input state to L1, we post a data commitment hash. The input state corresponding to the input commitment is stored off-chain by a data availability provider.”

Redstone is technically considered a "plasma rollup blockchain," according to the team.

"We call it alternative data availability, because the transaction data is available off-chain, not on Ethereum. To maintain security with this architecture, that’s why we have the permissionless on-chain DA challenge so that when the data is not available or doesn’t correspond to the data commitment, one can challenge it to be excluded," Justin Glibert, founder and chief executive officer of Lattice, shared in an email to CoinDesk.

The Lattice team plans to join the Optimism ecosystem and contribute to the OP Stack as core developers, according to the press release.

Data availability has been a major topic of discussion in the Ethereum ecosystem, as developers look for ways to store and provide consensus on the blockchain data availability for transactions – without adding to on-chain congestion.

Other solutions for data availability, such as data availability layers like Celestia and Avail, have formed to address tackle the challenge. Near Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting the Near blockchain, last week announced the rollout of a new "NEAR DA," where posting data could be 8,000 times cheaper than posting on Ethereum.

Optimism layer 2 rollup Rollups data availability

Margaux Nijkerk

Margaux Nijkerk reports on the Ethereum protocol and L2s. A graduate of Johns Hopkins and Emory universities, she has a masters in International Affairs & Economics. She holds a small amount of ETH and other altcoins.