The majority of Ethereum rollups have converged on a single model, in which the EVM is still the execution engine. So parallel execution remains a vague ambition rather than a feature of most Ethereum L2s. Eclipse takes a different path. It brings the Solana Virtual Machine into an Ethereum-anchored environment and restructures the rollup stack around it.
The latest report by Cointelegraph Research examines how this design emerged, the problems it solves and what questions it raises for the broader layer-2 ecosystem. It highlights where Eclipse diverges from existing rollups and why these differences matter for developers, users and institutions.
Why Eclipse is not just “another L2”
The SVM introduces deterministic parallelism into the Ethereum rollup landscape. Instead of competing for the same global queue, applications can operate in separate lanes. This affects congestion control, fee markets and how system-level performance scales in periods of high activity.
Localized fee markets isolate busy applications, so spikes in one program do not raise costs network-wide. This combination of lane-based execution and isolated fee formation is a key reason the system behaves differently under load compared to EVM-based rollups.
The design also reflects Eclipse’s deliberate retreat from the hyper-modular Rollups-as-a-Service model that they first pursued. Rather than offering dozens of configurations, Eclipse fixed its architecture. Our report traces the path from Eclipse’s original experiments with Polygon SVM and Cascade to a single shared network that executes on the SVM, settles on Ethereum and publishes data to Celestia.
An alternative proving system
Eclipse uses ZK-accelerated fraud proofs powered by RISC Zero. In most optimistic rollups, disputes unfold through multi-round interactive games that replay parts of the execution on Ethereum. Eclipse instead encapsulates the contested computation in a single succinct proof, which can be submitted when a challenge arises. This shortens the dispute process and avoids reconstructing intermediate states on Ethereum.
Our report examines how this proving system fits into Eclipse’s broader security framework. Fraud proofs use a bond mechanism that assigns clear economic consequences to challengers. Any correct challenge results in a reward, while an incorrect one leads to the loss of the posted bond. This structure maintains the incentive model familiar from optimistic rollups while placing the disputed computation inside a zk-proving environment rather than on Ethereum.
The next milestone: Moving toward a Stage-2 rollup
Eclipse publicly targets L2BEAT’s Stage-2 classification, which requires permissionless fraud proofs, strict upgrade rules and a clear exit window for users. Our report examines the gap between the current design and these technical requirements. It also explains why Eclipse is currently listed in the “Other” category by L2BEAT and what steps are necessary for it to be recognized as a full Ethereum rollup.
A recent upgrade toward this end is the ZK data-availability challenge subsystem, which verifies Celestia commitments on Ethereum at a predictable cost. It improves on the requirement for verifiable data availability as it lets Ethereum smart contracts check Celestia’s commitments rather than trusting them implicitly. While meaningful, this alone is not enough to satisfy Stage-0 requirements.
Eclipse is attempting what no Ethereum layer-2 has yet proven in production. It merges a high-performance SVM runtime with Ethereum’s settlement assurances and an external data-availability network. Whether this blend produces a new class of rollups or reveals the limits of modular design remains an open but exciting question.
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