Near Foundation is entering the competitive race to create innovative “data availability” solutions that aim to alleviate the Ethereum blockchain’s burden of storing and broadcasting large amounts of data. The non-profit organization, dedicated to supporting the Near Protocol blockchain, has unveiled a new offering called “NEAR DA.” They claim that posting data on their network could be 8,000 times cheaper than doing so on Ethereum. NEAR DA, similar to Celestia and its recent airdrop of TIA tokens, aims to provide an alternative platform capable of handling data generated by a rapidly expanding network or auxiliary blockchains (also known as “layer-2 networks”) built on top of Ethereum. Avail, another competitor in this space, plans to launch in early 2024 and is currently conducting tests on various networks. NEAR DA offers immediate benefits for Web3 founders exploring the modular blockchain development landscape, as stated in a press release. Some initial users of NEAR DA include Madara by Starknet, Caldera, and Movement Labs. The Foundation made this announcement during their annual conference in Lisbon, Nearcon, on Wednesday. According to the press release, while it would cost approximately $26.22 for an optimistic rollup (a type of layer-2 network) to post 100 kilobytes of calldata on Ethereum, the same amount of data can be posted on Near Protocol for just $0.0033.