About HMDA
What is HMDA?
Hybrid Modular Data Availability (HMDA) is a settlement layer that can settle on Bitcoin at 10% of the cost.
Mission
We aim to accelerate Bitcoin's capabilities and adoption of verifiable computation by enabling efficient, economical verification, and validation proofs on Bitcoin at 10% less of the cost with aggregated proofs.
What values does HMDA bring to the Bitcoin Ecosystem?
The Blocksize War marked a significant chapter in Bitcoin's history, dividing its community between proponents of Large Block Size, advocating for greater transaction capacity per block, and supporters of Small Block Size, prioritizing network security and decentralization. Large Block Size proponents suggested increasing the block size, while Small Block Size supporters argued maintaining the 1 MB size and focusing on second-layer solutions like the Lightning Network for transaction scalability.
In 2017, the debate concluded with the adoption of segregated witness (SegWit), which effectively optimized data storage within the existing 1 MB blocks to accommodate more transactions.
Since then, various Layer 2 solutions (e.g., Lightning Network) and Layer 1 applications (e.g., sidechains like Liquid and RSK) have been developed on Bitcoin, leading to a significant increase in transaction volumes and data demands on the Bitcoin network. This growth has resulted in a backlog of transactions, causing data congestion and subsequently driving up transaction fees.
Hybrid Modular Data Availability (HMDA) emerges as a potential solution to address these challenges of data congestion and high transaction fees.
HMDA combines multiple individual proofs into a single aggregated proof to optimize efficiency and reduce computational overhead. This process is also called Batching proofs.
Here’s how batching proofs work:
Individual Proofs: Initially, each participant or entity generates proof for a specific transaction. These individual proofs have been designed to enhance the settlement of Bitcoin in a cost-efficient manner.
Aggregated Proof: Instead of processing and verifying each proof separately, batching allows these individual proofs to be combined or aggregated into a single proof. This aggregated proof serves the same purpose as the individual proofs.
Benefits of Aggregated Proofs:
Cost Efficiency: Bitcoin generates state proofs by hashing data approximately every 10 minutes through the mining of new blocks. Assuming a gas cost of $20 per hashing operation, the annual cost would amount to $1,051,200. However, by utilizing aggregated proofs and batching 10 transactions together, the yearly cost can be reduced to $105,120 representing a reduction of over 90%.
Improved Throughput: Aggregated proofs boost transaction throughput by consolidating multiple transactions into single proofs. This efficiency enhancement enables quicker confirmation times and improved scalability, empowering the blockchain to manage higher transaction volumes per block.
Network Optimization: Aggregated proofs optimize network resources by reducing the computational and storage overhead required to process transactions. This optimization fosters a more sustainable and efficient blockchain ecosystem, ensuring smoother operation and enhanced reliability across decentralized applications.
In summary, HMDA's use of aggregated proofs is a big step forward for Bitcoin. By grouping transactions, it makes them cheaper and faster. This helps Bitcoin handle more transactions efficiently and opens the door for new and useful applications, especially considering the current state of the chain.
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