Aims – Earlybirds Invest

Blockchains scaled—and then splintered. Liquidity scattered across L2s, bridges kept breaking, and “data availability” turned into the new bottleneck. Avail wants to solve all three at once. Founded to deliver verifiable, scalable data availability, the project now positions itself as a full-stack unification layer: a DA base, Nexus for proof-based interoperability, and Fusion for shared security that can restake ETH, BTC, and rollup tokens. The thesis is simple but ambitious: developers should build once and scale everywhere; users shouldn’t have to think about chains at all.

In this CryptoSlate Q&A, Avail co-founder Anurag Arjun walks us through how that thesis is moving from roadmap to reality. We start with a real-world stress test: Sophon’s $60 million node sale, which extended Avail’s light client to production scale and hinted at new, verifiable fundraising primitives for app-specific chains. From there, we dig into EnigmaDA—encrypted data availability designed to meet institutional privacy mandates without re-introducing trusted intermediaries—along with how banks and TradFi pilots can reconcile encryption, key management, and auditability on-chain.

Interoperability is the other pillar. Rather than another bridge, Nexus promises “one SDK, nine chains, no network switching,” aiming to route flows across multichain stablecoin and DeFi liquidity while minimizing replay and quorum risks with TEE and ZK verification. On the user side, Avail’s light client targets <1 MB/s bandwidth and runs on phones and browsers via data-availability sampling and validity proofs—pushing “a full node in your pocket” toward emerging markets.

We also explore the speed-vs-decentralization trade-offs behind TurboDA’s 250 ms pre-confirmations and the team’s “infinity blocks” research goal of 10 GB blocks in ~600 ms; the validator-set growth path from 105 validators and a Nakamoto coefficient of 34; and what Avail is learning from flagship deployments like Lens Chain (650k profiles) and Sophon. With 50+ integrations in the queue, Arjun outlines how Avail triages partners for technical fit, ecosystem value, and compliance—plus how community growth (600k+ members in year one) is anchored in builder activity rather than vanity metrics.

If Avail is right, the next phase of crypto won’t be “L2 vs. L2” but app-centric rollups speaking a common, proof-based language—privacy-aware when needed, credibly neutral by design, and finally usable at internet scale. Read on for the full conversation.

Sophon adapted Avail’s light client to power its $60 million node sale. What did this deal teach you about Avail’s scalability and developer UX, and what other “real-world money” milestones can we expect next?

The Sophon partnership was a pivotal moment; they needed custom light client infrastructure that could handle massive scale for their node sale and support their validium architecture, which Avail delivered. This proved our technology is not just capable of supporting live networks, it extended the scope of Avail, offering a tangible way to help projects with fundraising.

What it taught us: Our validity proof based architecture can scale to deliver mathematical certainty to all participants in the network. Networks can both fundraise and scale on this technology, even with minimal technical skills (normally running verifying nodes requires server based infra and experience with the command line).The developer UX enabled Sophon to extend the existing light client and add features without friction.

This has sparked a trend with more projects looking to Avail’s light client infrastructure to not only support verifiable data requirements but also expand on the fundraising use case pioneered by Sophon.

EnigmaDA lets rollups post fully encrypted blobs while still proving data integrity. How does this satisfy TradFi privacy mandates (KYC, trade confidentiality) without re-introducing central points of trust?

Rollups can post fully encrypted data blobs while cryptographically proving data integrity and availability. The encryption happens at the application layer, so sensitive information is never exposed to the public, which satisfies regulatory mandates.

However it still uses Avail’s public infrastructure as the network to move and verify the data, even without knowledge of what the data is or publicly exposing it. This way, L2s can decide on their privacy model while leveraging Avail’s public DA infrastructure. This gives institutions blockchain benefits without introducing new trust assumptions or central failure points.

Avail now markets itself as a full-stack unification layer (DA + Nexus + Fusion). What pain points convinced you to go wider instead of doubling down on DA alone?

The goal of Avail has always been to enable a connected and thriving blockchain ecosystem. This started with a scalable and cryptographically verifiable DA layer because that was the most prominent choke point at the time. However, once you solve that problem, you end up in the situation with a lot of L2s and a further exacerbated fragmentation problem. How will all the liquidity connect? Nexus is our solution to this problem, enabling both ecosystems that are native to Avail, and outside it, to interoperate freely.

The first version of Nexus for example enables interoperability between 9 networks on mainnet, and the only one of those that’s native to Avail is Sophon. So through this integration, Sophon (and other Avail Native chains) automatically tap into the multi-chain liquidity enabled by Nexus ($145 Billion in multichain stablecoin TVL and $95 Billion in multichain DeFi TVL). That’s what true scaling looks like.

Bridges break; Nexus promises “one SDK, 9 chains, no network switching.” Under the hood, how does Nexus avoid the replay, quorums, and liquidity-fragmentation risks that still plague most bridge tech?

Nexus will offer a comprehensive crosschain solution leveraging TEE and ZK verification that ensures solving fragmentation doesn’t compromise the trust and security that make blockchains valuable. We have more to share on this in the coming months.

The result is a system where one SDK integration provides access to multiple chains without requiring users to switch networks, manage multiple wallets, or navigate complex bridging interfaces. Developers integrate once and immediately gain access to users and liquidity across all connected chains, while users experience seamless cross-chain interactions without ever leaving their preferred interface.

Is the future a mesh of “app-centric L2s” all speaking via Nexus-style proofs? What stops competing DA layers from forking the idea?

The future we’re building centers on app-centric rollups communicating through proof-based interoperability protocols. Think of this evolution as similar to how TCP/IP became the universal communication protocol for the internet, a standardized approach that enables seamless interaction between diverse systems without requiring them to understand each other’s internal architecture. This meta-interoperability layer abstracts away blockchain complexity while maintaining the security and decentralization benefits that make blockchain technology valuable.

This approach becomes the new standard because it aligns with fundamental market demands. Developers consistently express the desire to build once and scale everywhere, rather than rebuilding applications for each blockchain ecosystem. Users expect seamless experiences without needing to understand which chain powers their applications, similar to how internet users don’t think about which servers host websites. Economic efficiency emerges through shared liquidity pools and composability across chains, creating network effects that benefit all participants in the ecosystem.

Forking a concept is easy, but the foundation matters. Avail delivers the most elegant, production-ready scaling foundation today, eliminating infrastructure centralization and bottlenecks while paving the way for mass adoption. Avail’s technology has been in development for over 4 years and that institutional knowledge is not easy to fork.

Your community hit 600k+ members in Year 1, no small feat in a brutal market. What specific programs or narratives drove that growth, and how do you prevent community bloat from turning into empty hype?

The foundation of our 600K+ member community was built through comprehensive developer education including extensive resources, hackathons, and grants that empowered builders to create applications they couldn’t build elsewhere. People joined because our infrastructure enabled genuine utility, from Lens Protocol’s social applications to Sophon’s gaming ecosystem rather than speculative promises.

Transparent communication has been crucial to our authentic growth. Instead of pure marketing messaging, we provide regular updates on technical progress, sharing both breakthroughs and challenges. This honesty builds trust and attracts community members who understand the technology’s real potential. Additionally, our ecosystem benefits create tangible value for community members who see direct advantages from our partnerships and integrations, making their involvement meaningful beyond token appreciation.

To prevent hype bloat, we focus relentlessly on engagement metrics over vanity numbers. Active developers building on our infrastructure, meaningful partnerships that drive real usage, and genuine transaction volume matter far more than follower counts. Our community programs are designed to reward actual contribution, whether through development, education, or ecosystem building, rather than just participation.

With 11 chains live and 50 + queued, what criteria decide who gets in next? How do you vet TradFi-facing dApps for compliance before they tap EnigmaDA?

With 50+ chains queued for integration, we maintain selective criteria focused on quality and strategic fit rather than simply maximizing numbers. Our chain integration process evaluates four key areas: technical compatibility to ensure new chains can properly support our proof systems and security model; ecosystem value that brings unique use cases or significant user bases to strengthen the overall network; development maturity demonstrated through active development teams with clear roadmaps; and community alignment with values that match our unification vision rather than fragmentation.

Our technical review covers proper implementation of EnigmaDA’s encryption features, ensuring sensitive data remains protected while maintaining cryptographic guarantees. We require security audits for applications handling sensitive or institutional use cases, and establish ongoing monitoring capabilities for compliance tracking and reporting to meet regulatory standards.

The fundamental goal isn’t maximizing the quantity of integrations, it’s building an ecosystem where every addition strengthens the entire network. Each new chain or application should enhance interoperability, bring new users or use cases, and align with our vision of seamless blockchain connectivity.

Avail’s light client claims to run on phones, smart-watches, even browsers, using <1 MB/s bandwidth. What cryptographic shortcuts make that possible, and how big a deal is this for emerging-market adoption?

For decentralized technologies, this is a necessity. What we’ve done with the Avail Light Client is entirely novel. The light client conducts Data Availability Sampling (DAS) verifying validity proofs from KZG Polynomial commitments. In simple terms, it uses math to check the network is operating correctly, and your phone can find out for itself when it’s not. This is what extends the capability of a full-node to a user’s pocket.

Traditional light clients rely on a trusted full-node, but because we have DAS and validity proofs (along with erasure coding and some other technologies) we remove the necessity for Avail light clients to have a trusted full node that they’re connected to – they instead sample the network directly. We believe this is the only way to create a scalable blockchain ecosystem that extends full node capabilities to every network user.

Speed is addictive, but does slashing block times compromise liveness or validator diversity? Where’s the sweet spot between UX and decentralization?

TurboDA offers a fast pre-confirmation which gives immediate UX benefits, however Avail’s block time (to date) is still 20 seconds. There is a constant tension between UX and decentralization, but the goal is to improve the decentralized technology to a point where the UX doesn’t suffer.

This is why our infinity blocks roadmap has taken a radically different approach to achieving scale, speed and decentralization – aimed at achieving 10GB blocks in 600ms without any centralized infrastructure. This is one of the areas our development team is working hard on, and we’ve already begun implementing the core foundations.

For banks experimenting with tokenized deposits, how do encrypted blobs, key-management, and auditability co-exist on EnigmaDA?

With EnigmaDA, Avail’s encrypted Data Availability upgrade, institutions can encrypt their data before posting to the base layer, keeping sensitive transaction data confidential while maintaining public availability and verifiability

Lens Chain (650 k profiles) and Sophon both stake their core infra on Avail. What have these deployments exposed as the next technical bottlenecks?

Avail DA is sound and reliable. While we have other projects underway to improve throughput, speed and interoperability, the existing DA infrastructure is extremely solid as it is.

You’re at 105 validators and a Nakamoto coefficient of 34. What’s the roadmap to triple those numbers without killing performance?

The Nominated Proof of Stake architecture that Avail’s mainnet is built on is capable of handling higher validator numbers which will continue to grow as the ecosystem expands.

Benchmarks show 128 MB today and an ambition for 10 GB / 600 ms tomorrow. What engineering breakthroughs (erasure-coding, blob markets, state pruning) must land before that’s main-net ready?

A comprehensive overview can be found here and here.