How Mantle Network Advances the Ethereum Roadmap

Ethereum is a work in progress, and the roadmap includes plenty of future developments around scalability, data availability, censorship resistance, and various user experience upgrades. The rise of rollups has created an opportunity to address roadmap milestones ahead of Ethereum’s schedule, improving the on-chain experience at an accelerated rate. With its modular architecture, Mantle Network is making significant progress toward the future vision for using and building within the Ethereum ecosystem. From integrating EigenLayer’s specialized DA service to designing a decentralized rollup sequencer, Mantle Network is bringing new innovations to further what’s possible on Ethereum. Let’s explore some significant roadmap points and how Mantle Network is aligned.

Scalability

On conventional layer-2 (L2) networks, execution is managed externally to the Ethereum mainnet. The modular architecture delivers increased scalability through further separation and specialization, with each critical function being carried out as a distinct, upgradeable, and modifiable layer. By integrating EigenDA, Mantle Network can transfer its data availability needs to EigenLayer and not rely on Ethereum mainnet. Consequently, Ethereum’s primary function becomes streamlined to consensus and settlement, which paves the way for unparalleled scalability.

Regarding transactions per second (TPS), which measures a blockchain’s throughput capacity, L2 solutions such as Mantle Network can process a substantially larger transaction volume than Ethereum L1. This increased performance is attributed to the following factors:

1. Off-chain computation: Mantle Network executes and validates transactions off the Ethereum mainnet, thereby reducing the amount of computation that takes place on L1, which is quite limited in terms of its computational capability.
2. Batch processing: Mantle Network will aggregate multiple transactions into a single batch, which will then be committed to the Ethereum mainnet as a single on-chain transaction.
3. Optimistic rollups: This L2 protocol executes and bundles transactions off-chain. Subsequently, the aggregated transaction data is submitted to the Ethereum mainnet without any validity proofs. Any network actor can challenge the result with a fraud proof that would trigger a verification mechanism and roll back the transaction if proven invalid. This results in a dramatically reduced amount of on-chain data and increased TPS.

Upon conducting preliminary tests with our existing system, we observed an approximate throughput of 600 transactions per second (TPS). As we continue to optimize the network, we anticipate more improvements in its performance. The network’s efficiency is expected to increase as we advance through various stages of the testnet and ultimately transition to mainnet.

Additionally, Mantle Network boasts the capability to provide near-instantaneous transaction finality. This guarantees minimal latency, ensuring that the duration required for a transaction to be confirmed on-chain is essentially reduced to seconds. The expedited confirmation process enhances user experience and contributes to Mantle Network’s overall efficiency and reliability, fostering increased adoption and confidence in the platform.

Finally, Mantle Network will be able to offer significant gas savings compared to layer 1(L1). These above-mentioned techniques reduce the computational load on L1 and enable more efficient use of the limited blockspace, leading to lower gas fees for users.

Upgradability

When Ethereum makes changes to its network rules the process is typically lengthy, as was well demonstrated by 2022’s Paris hard fork, a.k.a. The Merge. These new rules and technical specifications are documented through Ethereum Improvement Proposals (EIPs), which can be broken down into two categories.

1. Core EIPs, which result in hard forks, consist of major network alterations, such as fee structure changes and the switch to PoS. These upgrades require wide adoption across the network, as nodes will have to update their Ethereum client software in order to stay in consensus.
2. Non-core EIPs, known as soft forks, deal with application standards such as ERC-20 and ERC-721. These can be implemented by developers, but are not required as they don’t affect changes at the protocol level.

Due to the massive amount of coordination needed, core EIPs are becoming increasingly difficult to pass as Ethereum grows. This has resulted in many features, some even proposed by Ethereum’s core team, remaining unimplemented for long periods of time. Recently, a long-awaited upgrade around Account Abstraction was installed after multiple EIP iterations over several years. The introduction of modular L2s offers a unique opportunity to provide a solution to EIP stagnation.

Mantle Network’s modular architecture brings it many advantages as an L2, and while addressing scalability is the primary purpose behind the design, customizability is not to be overlooked. Mantle Network’s architecture uses EigenDA as its data availability layer, meaning transaction data is posted there instead of directly to Ethereum. This translates to Mantle Network being not reliant on the L1 validator set to define the chain and can upgrade without hard forking, offering a level of sovereignty not available to rollups using Ethereum for data availability.

Data Availability

Cutting data storage costs is key to advancing scalability, since posting transaction data to L1 is one of the most cost-intensive operations in the rollup transaction cycle. The problem boils down to that using an optimistic rollup design necessitates all network actors to have access to transaction data posted by the rollup to ensure validity through fraud proofs.

EigenDA presents a new model for data availability, allowing Ethereum validators to opt-in to providing DA services for infrastructure such as rollups. Since these validator sets inherit the security and decentralized trust of Ethereum due to their stake in the network, they can function as a bespoke DA layer and provide a more scalable, cost-effective alternative for posting and proving the validity of rollup transaction data.

In addition to unlocking scalability, this implementation of a DA module opens the door for improved rollup economics via dual quorum staking. This model will allow validators serving Mantle Network to stake the new Mantle token and $ETH to economically secure their participation in the network. This model makes the network even more robust, as both quora are required to sign off for data availability. It also allows gas payments to be made in the new Mantle token and $ETH. Overall, adding EigenDA will ensure that the most updated block data is available to all network participants, and do so at a lower cost.

Censorship Resistance

Progressing Ethereum through conventional rollups creates a point of centralization with the sequencer, a node that includes and orders transactions within a batch. Most current rollups operate with a single sequencer, which leaves an opportunity for censorship and MEV by reordering or omitting transactions from a batch.

The integration of EigenDA is another positive for decentralization. As mentioned in the previous section, the dedicated DA layer can provide every network participant with the most updated block data. This allows the fraud proof system to run more efficiently, so invalid transactions and censorship can be challenged by any network participant.

Conclusion

Introducing rollups to advance the Ethereum roadmap has been highly successful thus far, with the first generation already acquiring massive user bases due to faster performance and cost reductions. Modular rollups like Mantle Network are the next evolution in making Ethereum work for a broader range of users and use cases, addressing core roadmap elements in scalability, upgradability, data availability, and censorship resistance.

If you’re a builder looking to leverage Mantle Network’s infrastructure for your project, or an Ethereum user excited about the new possibilities Mantle Network is bringing to the ecosystem, feel free to join the community on Discord to learn more about getting involved.