Polygon Deploys Custom Blockchain Scaling System 'Avail'

Polygon has deployed Avail, a scaling system designed for developers to launch their blockchain applications atop the main Polygon chain and other blockchains.

Avail lead developer Anurag Arjun told CoinDesk the new product would allow developers to access blockchain data “off-chain,” meaning they would not need to continually check data from the network for an application deployed on Polygon.

Applications built on Avail would give developers the ability to update, fork and change how their blockchains handle execution.

“This is critical for [decentralized finance] and game developers that may need to patch bugs, experiment with execution or just reduce their dependencies on external chains,” Arjun told CoinDesk.

The product is intended to address “data availability” problems faced by scaling applications, he said. This is a complex problem faced by blockchain developers: How are nodes sure about when a new block is produced, all of the data in that block was actually published to the network? There’s no way to detect malicious transactions hidden within that block in case a block producer doesn’t release all of the data of that block.

Avail uses advanced mathematical techniques to assess blockchain data provided by node operators to determine the authenticity of data, without needing to rely on all node operators to verify the data.

“Availability can be determined by only downloading a very small random sample of the total data, effectively solving the data availability problem,” Arjun told CoinDesk.

Currently, so-called "monolithic" blockchains, such as Ethereum, can not scale as there are too many tasks to perform (execution, settlement, and data availability). Scaling products, such as Avail, focus on just one part of the application requests at a time to speed up transactions.

Avail can be deployed on any Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM)-compatible blockchain. EVM refers to the software platform that developers can use to create decentralized applications (dapps) on Ethereum.