Leading options · 7 ranked from 10 screened

Data Availability Layers

Data Availability Layers evaluated across verifiable published cost per MB, what actually secures the data, sampling live + how long data stays retrievable, and blast radius if it halts + documented uptime.

#1 of 7 · published ranking

Ethereum Blobs (EIP-4844 / PeerDAS)

82ChainChoice Score

Why it leads

Best in the pool on published cost per mb and das and retention

Cost

Not priced · No comparable price is published

No provider can pay for a position in this table. The code that computes this order cannot read which links earn us a commission, and every build proves it. Every score below rebuilds from the published criteria.Ranking 2026.08 · 4 criteria · 7 products · same inputs, same order

Personal comparison

Data Availability Layers ranked comparison

No comparable price is published; ranking still uses verified product evidence.

RankProviderBest fitScore

Ethereum Blobs (EIP-4844 / PeerDAS)Native L1 blobspace, sampled since Fusa...Top ranked

Verifiable published cost per MB — 9/10Trade-off: 'As safe as Ethereum' is true for the attestation and false for the archive: consensu...

82score

Check availability for your countryVisit Ethereum Blobs (EIP-4844 / PeerDAS) · eips.ethereum.org

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

Ethereum L1 CalldataThe security ceiling: longest retention...

What actually secures the data — 10/10Trade-off: Almost nobody should pay this today, but it is the honest ceiling every 'as safe as E...

71score

Check availability for your countryVisit Ethereum L1 Calldata · eips.ethereum.org

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

CelestiaCelestiaSovereign DA chain with light-client sa...

Verifiable published cost per MB — 8/10Trade-off: The 7-day light-node sampling window is shorter than Ethereum's ~18-day blob window,...

70score

Check availability for your countryVisit Celestia · celestia.org

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

Avail DAAvail DASubstrate NPoS DA chain with KZG light-...

What actually secures the data — 5/10Trade-off: Avail is the only layer here that combines live light-client DAS with a completely un...

51score

Check availability for your countryVisit Avail DA · docs.availproject.org

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

EigenDARestaked-ETH DA from Eigen Labs, disper...

Verifiable published cost per MB — 4/10Trade-off: Three things compound against small rollups. Min blob size is 128 KiB, so a 4 KB batc...

46score

Check availability for your countryVisit EigenDA · docs.eigencloud.xyz

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

0G DAAI-oriented DA layer; no published pric...

Sampling live + how long data stays retrievable — 3/10Trade-off: 0G markets DA as a component of an AI data platform, and the documentation reflects t...

41score

Check availability for your countryVisit 0G DA · docs.0g.ai

Commission: This provider pays ChainChoice nothing for this link. Disclosure

Crypto products are high risk. Check the provider is authorised where you live before you deposit.

1 more assessed and ranked below — none of them hidden for commercial reasons.

Ranking blindCommercial terms excludedDated primary sources

Ranked on 4 published criteria weighted 30/30/25/15, which set goal alignment — 30 of the 86 points. The rest: regional access 20, evidence depth 18, ease of use 10, institutional trust 8. Profile match is shown in breakdowns but carries no weight.

Audit

Infrastructure

Methodology

2026.09.15

published 2026-09-16

Providers tracked

980+

across 119 categories

Last verified

2026-09-15

newest dated pricing or sentiment read

Named on the roster

2 people

managing directors · 6 automated processes

Decision guide

What matters most before choosing in this category

Weighted on verifiable published cost per MB (30), what actually secures the data (30), sampling live + how long data stays retrievable (25), and blast radius if it halts + documented uptime (15). The heaviest is verifiable published cost per MB: Can a buyer read a real price per MB off a public page or on-chain parameter today, and what is it when converted to USD at spot?

What matters most before choosing in this category

Can you read a real price per MB off a public page or on-chain parameter today, or does it require a sales conversation?

How many days is your data guaranteed retrievable before you depend on archival nodes or your own snapshots?

If the layer halts, does sequencing stop and can the L1 bridge still verify the attestation?

Current editor lead

Expert review and scoring weights

Ethereum Blobs (EIP-4844 / PeerDAS)Data checked Sep 2026

Native L1 blobspace, sampled since Fusaka, pruned after about 18 days

Native L1 blobspace, sampled since Fusaka, pruned after about 18 days. Strongest on published cost per mb (verifiable, not negotiated) (9/10): The most machine-readable price in this pool, a protocol parameter with no vendor in the loop: over blocks 25,982,517-25,983,541 on 2026-09-15 the blob base fee had a median of 5,748,814 wei per blob gas = $0.0145/MiB, and each block's value is reproducible from its excessBlobGas (block 25,983,538: 210,133,829, giving 64,599,554 wei = $0.163/MiB during a fee spike). No account, no deposit, no negotiation. Weakest on sampling live + how long data stays retrievable (8/10): PeerDAS went live with Fusaka on 3 December 2025, with 'each full node holding only 1/8th of the data'; blob capacity now target 14 / max 21 per block after BPO2 on 7 January 2026. Retention is capped: MIN_EPOCHS_FOR_BLOB_SIDECARS_REQUESTS = 4096, 'which is around 18 days'.

Best forVerifiable published cost per MB — 9/10

Main tradeoff'As safe as Ethereum' is true for the attestation and false for the archive: consensus clients are only required to serve blob sidecars for 4096 epochs, about 18 days. After that the data is gone from the protocol and you need your own archive or a third-party blob indexer. Also, the price you see is a spot price on a volatile fee market — the $0.0145/MiB measured here is the median of blocks 25,982,517-25,983,541 on 15 September 2026 (5,748,814 wei per blob gas, ETH at $2,402.28); within that window block 25,983,538 reached $0.163/MiB, and the later blocks 25,983,956-25,984,979 had a median of $0.0321/MiB.

Verify before signupEIP-4844 (Final, fetched 2026-09-15): GAS_PER_BLOB 2**17 (131,072); MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS 1; the blob base fee rule 'is intended to approximate the formula base_fee_per_blob_gas = MIN_BASE_FEE_PER_BLOB_GAS * e**(excess_blob_gas / BLOB_BASE_FEE_UPDATE_FRACTION)'. Live mainnet, 2026-09-15: eth_config (ethereum-rpc.publicnode.com) current blobSchedule {"target":14,"max":21,"baseFeeUpdateFraction":11684671}. Block 25,983,538 (14:43:59 UTC) had excessBlobGas 0xc866345 = 210,133,829, which fake_exponential(1, 210,133,829, 11,684,671) turns into 64,599,554 wei per blob gas; Blobscan's API reports the same blobGasPrice for that block. eth_feeHistory (eth.drpc.org) over blocks 25,982,517-25,983,541 gives a blob base fee of min 2,681,061 / median 5,748,814 / max 64,599,554 wei; it first exceeded 20,000,000 wei at block 25,983,244. DERIVED at ETH $2,402.28 (CoinGecko 2026-09-15): at the median, 131,072 x 5,748,814 wei = $0.00181 per 128 KiB blob = $0.0145/MiB raw, $0.0149/MiB on the 126,976 usable bytes. At block 25,983,538 it is $0.0203 per blob = $0.163/MiB raw, 11x the window median. Fees stayed elevated later that day: blocks 25,983,956-25,984,979 have a median of 12,748,326 wei ($0.0321/MiB raw) and a max of 355,396,641 wei. This is a spot price on a fee market, not a fixed rate.

Methodology

How this category is reviewed

Reviewed on published cost per MB, what actually secures the data, sampling and retention, and blast radius if the layer halts.

The order on this page is the published ranking for this category. Every criterion, weight and source behind it is on the methodology page.

Frequently asked

Questions people ask before choosing da layers

Is Ethereum blobspace really much more expensive than alternative DA layers?

Not by the margin the category claims. Measured on 2026-08-05 with every price taken from the parameter or page that sets it and converted the same day, Ethereum blobs came to $0.0177/MiB and Celestia — the cheapest verified layer in this comparison — to $0.0121/MiB. That is roughly a 1.5x gap, not the 25x or more that alternative-DA marketing typically cites, because those figures were written when blob base fees were at a different level. EigenDA is the sharpest example: its own payments documentation quotes 0.015 ETH/GB, which works out to $0.0274/MiB, making it more expensive than the Ethereum blobs it is sold as an alternative to.

How long does my rollup data actually stay available?

Every layer in this category prunes, including Ethereum, and the guaranteed windows differ by more than an order of magnitude. Ethereum consensus clients are only required to serve blob sidecars for 4096 epochs — around 18 days. Celestia light nodes sample a 7-day window as of celestia-app v6 under CIP-36, and its docs warn that archival nodes serving historical data for free is not guaranteed. NEAR DA prunes from consensus after roughly 36 to 60 hours. Only Ethereum L1 calldata is permanent, and it measured 334x the cost of blobs. If a rollup node can go offline for a long weekend, that retention window is a real operational constraint, not a footnote.

Which DA layers actually run data availability sampling today?

Sampling lets a light client establish that data was published without downloading all of it. Celestia runs it in production, with light nodes sampling a share matrix and gossiping verified shares. Avail runs it light-client-side, sampling cells against per-row KZG commitments to compute a confidence score. Ethereum began sampling with PeerDAS at the Fusaka upgrade, with each full node holding a fraction of the data. EigenDA has none — validators hold disjoint erasure-coded shards sized to their stake — and what 0G describes as sampling is a node-side workload optimisation rather than the trust-minimising kind a rollup user runs.

REVIEWEDAugust 5, 2026METHOD4 criteriaCATEGORYdata_availability

Not financial advice · For informational purposes only · Always do your own research