Scaling Blockchain Infrastructure for Mass Adoption

Transforming blockchain technology from academic curiosity into a robust, widely usable infrastructure is a significant challenge for the industry. 

This article compiles insights from the founders of two leading Ethereum scaling protocols, Steven Goldfeder, CEO and Co-Founder of Arbitrum , and Sreeram Kannan, Founder of EigenLayer & CEO of Eigen Labs. 

From Academia to Real-World Impact

Steven Goldfeder (Arbitrum) and Sreeram Kannan (EigenLayer) both emphasized a crucial shift in their careers: moving from pure academic research to practical problem-solving. Goldfeder noted that Offchain Labs focuses on developing practical, deployable solutions by adapting existing academic tools or creating new ones to address current challenges.

Kannan reflected on his 10-year journey to create real-world impact. His experience with PRISM, a consensus protocol developed at the University of Washington that faced adoption hurdles due to difficult network upgrades, underscored the vital need for practical application. This directly led to EigenLayer's core idea: building an “infrastructure for academics, thinkers, and developers worldwide to build whatever they want on the same platform.” 

From Theoretical Frameworks to Production Systems

The leap from theoretical concepts to production-ready systems presents unique challenges. Steven Goldfeder recounted Arbitrum's journey, which began as academic research in 2018. He highlighted the stark difference between writing a paper and building a system that can securely hold billions in Total Value Locked (TVL). Goldfeder used a party planning analogy: academia focuses on the “signature dish,” but in production, you must ensure all the “plates, cutlery, and napkins” are ready for the event to succeed. These seemingly "boring" details are crucial for reliable system operation.

Beyond technicalities, the most surprising challenge has been community building. Regardless of a technology's strength, widespread adoption relies on convincing developers, builders, and users that the system is valuable and superior. Both Goldfeder and Kannan learned that customer feedback is paramount, not just investor interest.

Building During a Bear Market

Both founders agreed that building a platform amidst a bear market is “one of the best things that can happen to a long-term project.”

Sreeram Kannan noted that while funding might be scarce, a bear market provides clear signals about “what matters,” forcing teams to focus on essential customers, products, and features. This contrasts with bull markets, where funding is readily available without clear signals of market fit.

Steven Goldfeder emphasized that the key in a bear market is survival, which demands founders to be disciplined. He aims to maintain sufficient liquidity for three years, allowing continuous project development without market pressure. This enables builders with strong conviction to focus on long-term value, as the absence of external "frenzy" allows for intense development, preparing for the next bull run.

EigenLayer's Advancements in Shared Security

Addressing concerns raised by Vitalik Buterin about systemic risks from many services relying on a single security source (e.g., ETH staked on Ethereum), Sreeram Kannan explained EigenLayer's innovative security model.

EigenLayer functions as a restaking platform, allowing users to stake Ether (ETH) on Ethereum and then restake it to secure other networks or Autonomous Verifiable Services (AVSs). These AVSs can operate permissionlessly and are auditable via on-chain slashing contracts that penalize misbehaving stakers.

EigenLayer's research, particularly in a paper called StakeShare, clarified the fundamental security model of blockchains: a blockchain's security in “slow mode” doesn't solely come from stakers, but from social consensus. This insight explains why a smaller amount of staked value (e.g., $50 billion) can secure a much larger network (e.g., $500 billion in assets), because staking secures “value in motion,” not “value at rest.”

EigenLayer offers two models for AVSs:

• Fully shared security: Where a single stake can secure multiple services.
• Unique security: Where stakes can be partitioned for specific services, allowing for more granular risk management.

The long-term vision is for applications to “mix and match services,” similar to cloud computing platforms like Google Cloud, enabling aggregated security for a suite of services rather than incurring separate fees for each.

Arbitrum's Evolution in Application-Specific Scaling

Steven Goldfeder clarified Arbitrum's design philosophy, emphasizing the benefits of Ethereum's diverse experimentation ecosystem. He views innovation as Ethereum's core strength, and different scaling solutions are suitable for different applications.

He highlighted the efficiency gained from Arbitrum's off-chain sequencer, which allows for extremely fast transaction processing, typically within 100-250 milliseconds. This is a significant advantage over “pre-confirmations”in “based rollups,” which offer limited guarantees about future blocks and restrict scaling and batching intervals.

Goldfeder also revealed that Arbitrum initially started with what is now called a “based rollup” in their 2018 academic paper, and he himself was initially resistant to the sequencer concept. However, seven years of real-world experience and openness to new ideas led to the evolution of Arbitrum's design, demonstrating a commitment to solving problems rather than adhering rigidly to initial concepts.

A prominent example of this iterative philosophy is Arbitrum's decision to discontinue their custom-built Arbitrum Virtual Machine (AVM) in 2022 in favor of WebAssembly (Wasm). Despite years of AVM development, Goldfeder clarified, “I'm not building an AVM company; I'm building a company that's trying to solve a problem.” This adaptability also extends to their view on ZK-rollups, with Offchain Labs maintaining a strong ZK research team and being ready to adopt new concepts as these technologies mature and become suitable.

The Future: Beyond Finance and Democratizing Blockchain

The vision for widespread blockchain adoption extends far beyond current financial applications.

Sreeram Kannan believes EigenLayer has the potential to become “humanity's coordination engine.” He sees EigenLayer elevating the internet's data infrastructure to a “coordination infrastructure” where contracts and agreements are automatically enforced by code. He believes current blockchain projects have been narrowly confined to just Bitcoin, stablecoins, and meme coins, but the true potential lies in making “our entire economy auditable and programmable” in any area where trust is a bottleneck.

Real-World Use Cases Beyond Finance:

Kannan is particularly excited about non-financial use cases such as:

• Automated insurance claim processing: Imagine claims being managed and settled automatically and instantly.
• Auditable scholarships: For example, students could repay 10% of their future income, made possible by verifiable on-chain income records.

Arbitrum's Role in a Decentralized Future

EigenLayer's ultimate goal is to expand programmability beyond traditional virtual machines, enabling advanced services like cross-network secret storage or using GPUs for complex computations. With over $12 billion in staked assets and more than 50 Actively Validated Services (AVSs) on the Mainnet, EigenLayer is pushing applications to leverage these diverse services to build an auditable economy.

Steven Goldfeder emphasized Arbitrum Orbit's role in democratizing blockchain creation, particularly for enterprises. Arbitrum offers a comprehensive product suite, from Arbitrum One (a top Layer 2) to Arbitrum Orbit, a highly customizable toolkit for securely launching tailored blockchains. He explained that the choice between Orbit and a public blockchain depends on an application's specific needs and user demand. Goldfeder views blockchain as a force for democratizing access across various industries, especially in decentralized finance (DeFi). It empowers individuals with strong ideas to access liquid markets and build new protocols using open-source components in a trustless, code-auditable environment.

For institutions with existing off-chain user bases, launching their own blockchain via Arbitrum Orbit is especially significant. It enables them to onboard users onto their own platform, similar to Web2, reducing the burden of managing complex blockchain infrastructure and allowing them to focus directly on application development.

The journey toward widespread blockchain infrastructure adoption is dynamic and multifaceted, as Goldfeder and Kannan have demonstrated. It requires a blend of academic rigor, a tangible shift from mere curiosity to impactful creation, and a relentless commitment to iteration and community building. The future of blockchain scaling is not a monolithic solution; instead, it demands diverse approaches—from shared security models to application-specific chains—all working collaboratively to create an auditable and programmable economy that elevates humanity's foundational coordination infrastructure.

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