The First L3–Nautilus Chain
The groundbreaking advantages offered by Web3’s first production-ready modular chain.
Zebec Protocol has been pioneering payment streaming technology. Zebec Protocol has expanded from Solana blockchain to BNB Chain and Near while actively seeking to transition from a protocol to a blockchain. The fruit of its efforts is a modular chain called Zebec Chain based on the Layer0 system Eclipse that is using Celestia for data availability to achieve greater interoperability with the Cosmos ecosystem.
Before the launch of Zebec Chain mainnet, Zebec the protocol released Nautilus Chain as an early “test” chain, using similar technology to Zebec Chain. After Nautilus proves its stability, the Zebec Chain mainnet will be released.
This article will delve into Nautilus Chain to help readers better understand its technical characteristics and features.
Nautilus Chain: a modular chain built on Eclipse and Celestia
Nautilus Chain is a Rollup chain, like Arbitrum or Optimism, but built on Eclipse. This allows developers to build customizable modular rollups using the Solana VM on any chain. As a new chain developed using this Rollup-as-a-service (RaaS) tool, Nautilus Chain is itself a rollup chain.
In fact, Eclipse is also a sovereign rollup based on the Cosmos ecosystem. In its early stages, Eclipse will use Celestia as its consensus and data availability layer, leveraging the Solana VM, PolygonSVM, and other environments for transaction settlement and execution. Nautilus is also highly compatible with EVM. Its ultimate vision is to build a customizable rollup execution layer for any Layer1 heterogeneous blockchain to connect all blockchains in a modular way.
Nautilus’ rollup settlement layer, based on Solana VM, will also be upgraded from an optimistic rollup to a ZK-rollup in the future. The change will have a number of benefits that we will discuss more below.
Eclipse uses Celestia as a low-level support. As a data availability layer, Celestia builds a highly scalable blockchain layer architecture based on Tendermint consensus. DApps can build their own rollups using rollmint (an application blockchain interface implementation) and deploy them to Celestia. Data is stored in the data availability (DA) layer while state roots and proofs are uploaded to the L1 for verification to ensure the security of transaction data.
Celestia is building a modular blockchain on the DA layer and providing support for Layer0 development tools such as Eclipse. This means that Nautilus Chain itself has the characteristic of being a modular blockchain, instead of a main chain like.
Because Celestia uses Cosmos’ IBC, any system built on Celsita will be highly interoperable with the Cosmos ecosystem, including interoperability of data, assets, information, and communication. Nautilus’s high degree of interoperability comes from its Celestia layer.
Modular chains, like Nautilus, are rare; in fact, Nautilus is the first one to market and it can achieve extremely high levels of interoperability and extensibility. The reason is because its storage, computing, and consensus are all in different layers. In the near future, Nautilus Chain is expected to become the first parallelized and fastest-running EVM rollup in Web3.
Nautilus’ modular design makes it far more functional and allows developers to customize the tech stack on which they build their dApps.
Although Celestia and Eclipse’s Layer 0 tool are already available in the market, Nautilus Chain is the first application chain that combines them. Nautilus’ launch is a landmark development for Eclipse, Celestia, and modular chains in Web3.
Optimistic Rollup or ZK Rollup?
Nautilus offers dApps a unique opportunity to tailor their tech stacks according to their specific needs. By providing customizable, app-specific rollups, Nautilus enables projects to strike the perfect balance between decentralization, throughput, performance, cost, and efficiency.
Rollups work by bundling transactions together on a Layer 2 (L2) network and then verifying the entire bundle on the underlying Layer 1 (L1) network. When built on Ethereum, these L2 solutions maintain the same high level of security of the Ethereum Network while offering vastly improved performance for users.
There are two main types of rollups: Optimistic Rollups and ZK Rollups. While ZK rollups boast superior performance, faster finality, and theoretically better security, optimistic rollups provides better compatibility and easier onboarding for developers. Optimistic rolloups are easier to work with starting out because they simplify transaction validation, reducing the need for high-performance machines and storage.
Nautilus Chain has devised a unique approach to leverage the benefits of both Initially, Nautilus Chain will use optimistic rollups because their superior compatibility lowers the barrier of entry for projects migrating to Nautilus. This will allow more projects to deploy quickly, creating a thriving ecosystem right from the start.
Once the Nautilus ecosystem reaches a certain level of maturity, it will transition to using ZK rollups. This transition will enable true customization, enhanced performance, and lower costs, which, for a platform focusing on streaming payments, will be essential. Security, transaction efficiency, and low-cost transactions are the most important qualities for payment and payment-streaming dApps.
A RaaS (Rollup as a Service) chain like Nautilus will benefit from ZK-rollups over Optimsitic rollups in the long term because ZK-rollups allow for trustless setups without the challenge period required by optimistic rollups. The faster finality of ZK-rollups combined with their increased interoperability means Nautilus will enjoy a competitive edge, able to adapt to market demand.
Therefore, Nautilus Chain’s strategy is twofold. During the early stages of ecosystem development, it will focus on lowering the barrier to entry for developers to encourage widespread adoption and promote growth. As the ecosystem matures, Nautilus Chain will move to ZK-rollups to achieve higher security, efficiency, and customization, catering to the more advanced needs of Web2 developers, such as compliance and privacy.
Nautilus Chain’s modular design: easy to deploy on ZK Rollup
ZK Rollup is crucial for creating an efficient ecosystem within the Nautilus Chain. By utilizing zero-knowledge proof technology, ZK Rollup can bundle numerous transactions into a single one, reducing network load and verification time while boosting operational performance.
Since ZK Rollup can combine multiple transactions, it helps reduce transaction fees, making them more affordable than those on the Ethereum main chain. Additionally, the zero-knowledge proof technology ensures transaction validity without revealing any sensitive information, further safeguarding user privacy and improving network security.
Every six months, ZK tech gets noticably better due to upgrades to zk-circuits, plug-in modules, and core algorithms. This means that, once Nautilus has transitioned to a ZK rollup set up, its performance should continually improve.
However, ZK tech comes with its own set of problems, especially when dealing with data availability and the transition process from Layer 1 (Ethereum main chain) to Layer 2 (Rollup chain). As a modular chain featuring support from Celestia, Nautilus Chain these issue for ZK-rollups.
Nautilus Chain offers several key technological advantages:
1. Modular design for Seamlessly Ecosystem Integration
With consensus, computation, and storage encapsulated in different layers, the Nautilus Chain enhances scalability and customization. Its integration with Eclipse connects it to Ethereum, and it can use Celestia for data availability (DA). This makes Nautilus interoperable with both EVM chains and Cosmos chains while maintaining high scalability.
2. EVM compatibility
As the first-ever parallel EVM rollup based on Eclipse, Nautilus is highly interoperable with other EVM chains. It can also syncrhonize data across chains with a different VM, a feat that is challenging for other Layer 2 or multi-chain EVM systems. This achievements sets a new milestone in the development of rollup technology.
3. Privacy
Nautilus is designed to provide private payments — and moving to ZK-rollups will enable even greater privacy capabilities. Privacy is essential for many commercial applications and the mass adoption of Web3 for payment infrastructure. To further facilitate adoption and compliance, Nautilus will implement ZK-based anti-money laundering controls that won’t violate on-chain privacy. This will let Nautilus protect consumers as well as comply with auditors as it becomes a more important part of global payment systems.
4. Faster Speed
Unlike other EVM chains, which need to process transactions in sequence, Nautilus allows for parallel processing of transactions. Parallel processing of transactions makes Nautilus the fastest EVM chain to date, with an initial TPS of 2,000 with faster speeds soon to come.
5. Lightweight and Friendly
Because of its modular design, Nautilus is “lightweight,” meaning it is highly interoperable, extensible, and customizable. Developers will be able to choose, in the future, which other major chains to use in the modular chain stack deciding between which VMs and execution layers to use. This not only aids developers but also helps other chains reach a higher level of performance and functionality.
6. Independence and Web 2.0 Scalability
By supporting efficiency, security, privacy, and compliance, Nautilus Chain is poised to better integrate Web3 into the Web 2.0 world. This has always been the goal and vision of Zebec Protocol which from the beginning has worked to replace traditional financial infrastructure with blockchain systems. It’s Zebec Pay tool is the premier tax-compliant payroll solution for payment streaming, used by both Web3 and We2 companies. Nautilus Chain further fulfills Zebec’s vision to extend Web3 tech.
The launch of Nautilus Chain is expected to provide value gains for ZBC tokens.
Unlike many other chains, Nautilus doesn’t issue its own native token. Instead, as a precursor to the Zebec Chain, it utilizes $ZBC for incentives, gas fees, and governance. It employs a proof of stake (PoS) consensus mechanism meaning that staking $ZBC tokens is required to become a validator. Validators not only receive $ZBC token rewards but will also be rewarded with the tokens of projects that deploy on Nautilus.
Users will be able to use either $ZBC or $ETH to pay gas fees, but, for the first 100 million transaction, paying in $ZBC will be 10x more cost effective. After the first 100 million transactions, gas fees may increase but will not exceed the equivalent of 0.01 US dollars (1 US cent) in ZBC.
Additionally, 25% of generated gas fees will be allocated to the ecosystem fund to support developers, another 25% will serve as validator rewards, and the remaining 50% will be burned to create deflationary pressure. In addition to this token burning, there is a proposal to burn 80% of the $ZBC token supply if Nautilus reaches 80% of the transaction volume of the Solana ecosystem. Nautilus will not only help $ZBC become extremely deflationary to protect its price, it will also add more utility to the token.
$ZBC has already garnered widespread support from the community and investors, like Coinbase. Nautilus expands $ZBC utility. Not only is it used for payment streaming, it will now be used as the governance and utility token for Nautilus.
Nautilus’ launch promises to benefit the price of $ZBC by increasing its utility and decreasing it’s supply. As the first modular chain to be developed on Celestia and Ecliplse, Nautilus is a huge advancement in blockchain technology. And as the first Rollup as a Service (RaaS), Nautilus is helping all of Web3 take a huge leap forward.
Follow Nautilus Chain
Website: https://nautchain.xyz/
DevDoc:https://docs.nautchain.xyz/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/nautilus_chain
Telegram: https://t.me/nautchain
Discord: https://discord.com/invite/pEgPqTS7JX
Medium: https://nautchain.medium.com/
Nautilus Chain: An L3 chain creating the fastest EVM environment in Web3.
