Madara
Key Takeaways
- Madara is a Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) project in the Starknet ecosystem based on Substrate.
- Madara provides a CarioVM execution environment as default,
- Compared to other RaaS projects, Madara provides various sequencing schemes.
1. Overview
Madara is a RaaS project in the Starkware ecosystem, being developed by the Starkware Exploration Team, Keep Starknet Strange. Madara was started to support Starkware's fractal scaling vision. It's a service based on Substrate, a blockchain SDK of the Polkadot ecosystem, and due to Substrate's high generality, Madara-chain can freely set consensus, hashing function, signature scheme, and storage layout. Moreover, it has the advantage of being able to select various components of a modular blockchain freely.
2. Execution
The core component of Madara is the Starknet pallet, which provides a Starknet compatibility layer to Substrate. Madara-chain supports CairoVM as default, which can seamlessly execute Cairo code, and it provides easily switchable execution crates (blockifier by Starkware and starknet_in_rust by LambdaClass). It also plans to introduce a zkEVM environment in collaboration with Kakarot zkEVM.
3. Settlement
Madara chain ensures the validity of execution through validity proof. Currently, Starknet settles on the Ethereum network about every 5 hours due to the high cost of gas for verification. The settlement layer of Madara chain is not fixed, but if Starknet is used as the settlement layer, it is expected to settle frequently at a very low gas cost.
The hard finality of the transaction can only be achieved when the transaction is proven and verified on the settlement layer. In contrast, strong soft finality can be achieved by introducing various decentralized sequencing methods. Madara offers various sequencing methods, including the most basic GRANDPA & BABE provided by substrate, as well as the simplest FCFS method, PGA, Narwhall & Bullshark, HotStuff, etc.
4. DA
Madara is experimenting with using various networks for the DA layer. Options range from validium mode, which delegates the storage of transaction data to an off-chain Data Availability Committee (DAC), to EigenDA, Celestia, Ethereum, and more.
5. Use Cases
5.1 Dojo
Dojo is a provable game engine and toolchain for onchain games and autonomous worlds, which will be deployed through Madara.
