Unifying the Ethereum Ecosystem with Puffer
Since its launch in 2015, Ethereum has become one of the world’s leading blockchain platforms. However, as one of the earliest ecosystems and with rapid growth over a short period, it has faced significant challenges, including scalability issues, ecosystem fragmentation, and high transaction costs.
Enter Puffer: a research-driven infrastructure solution for Ethereum, designed to address many of the critical challenges confronting the Ethereum community today.
We sat down with Amir Forouzani, Founder of Puffer, to discuss the new UniFi product and how Puffer is driving innovation to tackle the most pressing challenges in the blockchain space.
What is Puffer Building and what are you all about?
Amir: Puffer can be thought of as a user-focused infrastructure built on top of Ethereum, designed to address some of the core challenges Ethereum itself faces. In simple terms, our goal is to solve user risks related to slashing and permissionlessness, especially after launching our anti-slashing, permissionless LRT (Liquid restaking)
We’ve expanded our focus to improving the user experience on Ethereum, particularly in the areas of liquidity fragmentation that many users face when engaging with Layer-2 solutions.
When you look at what users want from blockchain, it’s pretty clear: accessible yield, low-cost transactions, and fast settlements. These are exactly the areas that Puffer focuses on. We’re building a suite of yield products, which will be expanded soon, that offers yield across the entire Puffer protocol.
We have the Puffer Unifi based rollup, which aims to solve liquidity fragmentation on Ethereum. Our goal is to enable composability on Ethereum, meaning users can seamlessly interact with decentralized applications (dApps) without having to worry about choosing between Layer-2 solutions or managing complex bridges. They simply select the dApp they want to interact with, and Puffer handles the rest.
Why the UniFi Based Rollup? Why is this a better solution than existing Ethereum scaling solutions?
Amir: Currently, most rollups rely on centralized sequencers. What makes Puffer UniFi different is that it leverages a unique form of shared sequencing that offers the highest level of availability: Based sequencing. But let’s break it down a bit.
Shared sequencing means that, today, assets across different rollup ecosystems (for example, on the Optimism stack or Arbitrum stack) can’t easily communicate with one another. These rollups are isolated, and cross-rollup interaction often requires a trusted third party, such as a messaging or bridging system.
Puffer UniFi introduces composability by enabling assets to flow freely between different rollup ecosystems — whether that’s Optimism, Arbitrum, or even ZK rollups — through a shared sequencer. This shared sequencer can hold a state across all these rollups, making it possible for assets to move seamlessly between them.
However, one of the challenges with shared sequencing is determining who should host or run the shared sequencer. Instead of struggling with this coordination issue, we solved it by utilizing Based sequencing, proposed by Justin Drake. With this model, Ethereum validators themselves can sequence transactions. This allows Ethereum validators to play a key role in the sequencing process, while also benefiting from additional rewards. They’re also responsible for ensuring data availability, which is critical for the rollup.
In addition to the shared sequencing advantage, we’ve also introduced preconfirmations, which are a game-changer. Preconfirmations help address Ethereum’s speed limitations by allowing us to achieve sub-100 millisecond transaction processing. This is essential for ensuring the fast transaction speeds required for an optimal user experience.
To sum up, the Puffer UniFi Based Rollup overcomes some of the key challenges faced by existing Ethereum rollups, such as liquidity fragmentation and slower settlement times. By combining based sequencing with preconfirmations, we’re creating a more scalable, fast, and composable solution for Ethereum.
How about the Ethereum community at large? How does the UniFi Rollup and AVS benefit the broader community?
Amir: The Ethereum community today is primarily focused on achieving cheap, fast transactions. With the UniFi Based Rollup, users can access unified yield opportunities and capital efficiency across any rollup, enabling them to perform transactions more efficiently within Ethereum’s ecosystem.
The UniFi Rollup lays the foundation for solving many of the challenges the Ethereum community is actively working to address. One of the key benefits of base rollups is that they empower Ethereum validators themselves, allowing them to play a more active role in securing the network.
Additionally, by implementing mechanisms like MEV burn or other solutions currently in the research phase, we can make Ethereum’s base layer and ETH itself more deflationary. This would be similar to EIP-1559, but with an even greater potential for reducing the circulating supply of ETH.
In summary, this Based Rollup architecture is designed to meet multiple objectives that the Ethereum community is striving for — namely faster transactions, higher capital efficiency, and a more deflationary ETH asset.
Your roadmap mentions an upcoming Puffer V2. Can you tell us more about this?
Amir: Puffer V2 is the next evolution of our staking product, or more specifically, our restaking product. When we first launched the restaking product on Eigenlayer, both the underlying infrastructure and the staking layer were not fully developed. At that time, we also introduced several innovative technologies, like Validator Tickets (VTs), among others, that were still in the research phase.
Puffer V2 will be an enhanced version of Puffer V1, focused on improving the restaking experience. It will introduce new mechanisms designed to increase efficiency for VTs and address some of the challenges that VTs face. The goal is to create more effective and scalable solutions for validators, which ultimately contributes to achieving greater decentralization within the network.
Puffer started as a liquid staking solution and has evolved into a project actively innovating in the Ethereum ecosystem. Are there any ways you can see Puffer improving Ethereum in the future beyond UniFi?
Amir: At Puffer, we’ve always aimed to address the challenges that Ethereum faces. Initially, our focus was on solving the issue of validator centralization, which we tackled with our permissionless liquid restaking platform. This solution has scaled successfully, and through initiatives like our “carrots” campaign, we were able to attract a significant amount of ETH into our protocol.
As we’ve grown, we’ve continued to evolve, focusing on deeper issues within Ethereum by believing in its core stack — validators, consensus, and execution. Our work on the UniFi preconfirmation rollup, for example, enables composability and faster transactions.
Looking ahead, if new challenges arise in the Ethereum ecosystem, we, as a research-driven and Ethereum-aligned project, will remain committed to tackling those challenges. We’ll continue to innovate and launch solutions to help Ethereum scale and improve.
You’ve recently launched the $PUFFER token with an overwhelmingly positive community reaction. What does your growth strategy look like from here?
Amir: The launch of the governance token was designed to give more power to our users. Moving forward, we’re planning to release an upgraded version of our Season 2, which will provide greater transparency and more efficient points distribution. Our goal is to offer non-dilutive rewards to our users, ensuring they get the most value. This is one of our key immediate priorities as we continue to grow.
Our roadmap focuses on improving the user and developer experience. While the protocol is still evolving, we’re laying the groundwork for based app chains. This means better infrastructure and a more streamlined UX in the future. Our general-purpose rollup is designed to improve both developer and user experiences, setting the stage for the app chains of tomorrow.
We’re working towards a future where developers can focus on building apps without worrying about the underlying infrastructure. Just like in Web2, where users don’t think about whether an app runs on Amazon, GCP or other services, we want to make the experience seamless and focused on the app itself.
Lastly, as someone who’s actively been actively building and monitoring crypto and Web3 for over two years, to a new investor in the crypto space, what makes Puffer an excellent company to invest in or just to watch in the coming years?
Amir: We’re still in the early, experimental phase of the blockchain and crypto space, with a tremendous amount of room to grow and innovate. The total market cap of crypto is still small compared to other asset classes like fiat or gold, which shows just how much potential is left. We have a long way to go, and I believe there are many exciting opportunities ahead.
What makes Puffer — and projects like it — stand out is our team’s focus on research and solving the real, existing challenges in the ecosystem. By continuously working to create a more efficient system, we’re positioning ourselves to drive significant advancements in the space. That commitment to innovation and problem-solving is what makes Puffer unique and a company to watch closely in the years to come.
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Visit puffer.fi to explore all of Puffer’s innovative products.
The Puffer team is excited to be launching UniFi, and they encourage all Ethereum developers — especially those familiar with Solidity or the EVM — to try deploying their contracts or dApps on Puffer’s UniFi testnet.
