Interview with Eclipse Founder: Exploring New Possibilities for L2, Integrating Solana's High Performance with Ethereum's Security
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Interview with Eclipse Founder: Exploring New Possibilities for L2, Integrating Solana's High Performance with Ethereum's Security
Eclipse is an Ethereum Layer2 execution environment for SVM, aiming to become a widely-used general-purpose Layer2 on Ethereum.
Navigating Web3 tides with focused insightsWritten by: Ryze Labs
1. Introduction
Welcome to Ryze Up, brought to you by Ryze Labs. Ryze Labs serves as a bridge connecting East and West, aiming to accelerate Web3 development in emerging markets and influence the global Web3 landscape. Local Insights, Global Impact—let’s embark on this journey together. Time to Ryze Up.
Ryze Labs has successfully invested in high-growth potential projects such as Polygon, Sui, Solana, LayerZero, and Wintermute.
Host of this episode: Joven, Business Development Director at Ryze Labs, focused on expanding the fund's presence within global developer communities and providing strategic guidance to portfolio companies.
Guest: Neel, Founder of Eclipse. Eclipse is an Ethereum Layer2 with SVM (Solana Virtual Machine) as its execution environment, aiming to become a general-purpose Layer2 for mass adoption on Ethereum.
2. Combining Solana’s High Performance with Ethereum’s Security
Before founding Eclipse, Neel worked in traditional finance. Early in his journey into crypto, he developed within the Cosmos ecosystem but later became interested in rollups, recognizing their lower operational costs and reduced token inflation compared to Layer1s. This led him to begin building a Layer2 project, ultimately launching Eclipse in September 2022.
Eclipse is an Ethereum Layer2 that differentiates itself by using the Solana Virtual Machine (SVM) as its execution layer. As a result, it inherits Solana’s high performance while leveraging Ethereum’s security for settlement.
From a user perspective, Eclipse feels very similar to Solana—short block times, low latency, high throughput, and minimal network congestion. Technically, like other rollups, Eclipse ensures correct state execution via validity proofs rather than relying on a committee or large set of validators voting and signing each state change, as is typical in Layer1s.
In terms of proof mechanism, Eclipse uses Optimistic Rollup fraud proofs. However, unlike Optimism and Arbitrum, which rely on interactive fraud proofs, Eclipse employs RISC Zero to generate ZK-based fraud proofs—zero-knowledge proofs that demonstrate fraudulent behavior when it occurs. For data availability (DA), due to the high cost of Ethereum transaction fees, Eclipse has chosen Celestia as its DA layer.
3. The Challenges of RaaS (Rollup-as-a-Service)
The Eclipse team initially attempted to build a Rollup-as-a-Service (RaaS) offering but eventually realized it was impractical. Comparing RaaS to SaaS reveals that for a RaaS business to achieve SaaS-like profitability and reach billion-dollar valuation, it would need around $100 million in annual recurring revenue (ARR). Achieving this would require operating roughly 1,000 rollups, charging each customer $100,000 per year—demanding an enormous cluster of rollups to be viable.
However, such a scenario would lead to extreme fragmentation across rollups, severely degrading user experience. With over 30 rollups running, users would struggle to know where to store their funds, constantly switching networks in their wallets—an unfriendly and confusing experience. This realization ultimately led the Eclipse team to focus instead on becoming a single Layer2.
Neel sees this as aligned with Solana’s philosophy—a unified chain approach. In summary, from both a SaaS value model standpoint and a user experience perspective, the RaaS model is less prioritized, especially given the liquidity fragmentation caused by proliferating Layer2s. As a result, many RaaS providers may need to pivot.
4. Eclipse Is Better Positioned to Attract Ethereum Community Members Than Solana
On Solana, if we exclude approximately 4,000 consensus-related vote transactions, there are roughly 500 real transactions per second. Currently, Solana’s extremely low transaction fees make it vulnerable to spam attacks.
There is significant bot activity on Solana today. While some bots, like order book market-making bots, serve legitimate purposes, many others generate worthless spam transactions. To address this, Neel believes Ethereum excels over Solana in economic design and theoretical computer science. Eclipse aims to bring Ethereum’s theoretical rigor and economic frameworks to solve the spam issues arising from ultra-low fees on Solana.
Additionally, once launched, Eclipse will be highly suitable for migrating DePIN projects such as Helium and Render Network, though current focus remains primarily on DeFi and NFTs.
Eclipse’s key advantage lies in its low migration barrier. If building a new SVM-based Layer1, core Ethereum community members would face significant hurdles moving over. But as an Ethereum Layer2, the transition for users and developers is far smoother.
5. Eclipse’s Business Model and Deployment Complexity
Most Layer2 tokens only serve governance functions, which Neel finds of limited utility. Even if governance were implemented, it would likely be managed by the Foundation behind Eclipse Labs issuing governance tokens.
Instead, Eclipse’s chosen business model centers on sequencer revenue. Looking at Arbitrum’s income, which has already exceeded nine figures—over $100 million annually—it’s clear this represents a viable and sustainable cashflow model for Eclipse.
Regarding deployment difficulty: if a project already has Solana smart contracts written, they can be deployed on Eclipse almost immediately. However, if only EVM-compatible contracts exist, they must be rewritten in Rust. The exact complexity and time required depend on the project’s sophistication. Additionally, Eclipse has partnered with Neon, enabling EVM contracts to be converted into SVM-compatible ones and deployed on Eclipse via Neon’s infrastructure.
6. Eclipse’s Integration with Celestia and RISC Zero
For rollup execution, multiple transactions are typically batched and published to Layer1—this is how Optimism and Arbitrum operate, and Eclipse follows the same principle.
However, due to Ethereum’s limited bandwidth capacity (approximately 0.75 MB per block), Eclipse chooses to publish data to Celestia, which supports up to 2 MB per block. Eclipse integrates Celestia’s interfaces by running a Celestia client within its system to post data directly onto Celestia.
As for interaction with RISC Zero, it is only invoked when fraud or errors occur. The underlying mechanism involves RISC Zero generating a zero-knowledge proof for the incorrect portion of a transaction, demonstrating how it should have been executed correctly. This proof is then submitted to Ethereum, where it is interpreted and verified to confirm that fraud indeed took place.
7. Conclusion
Currently, 15 different DApps are already deployed on Eclipse, many originating from the Solana ecosystem—including consumer and gaming incubation projects, NFT marketplaces, and launchpads.
The project’s current Chief Business Officer is Vijay, formerly Head of Business at dYdX and with prior business experience at Unit Swap, bringing substantial industry expertise.
Looking ahead, Eclipse plans to launch its mainnet for developers early next year, initially accessible only to developers for several weeks. If all goes smoothly, once the first wave of applications have fully deployed their frontends and smart contracts, Eclipse will open access to the public.
Finally, we warmly welcome interested users to follow Eclipse on Twitter to stay updated with official news and developments.
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