Preconfs, recognized as a necessary patch for Based Rollup, has finally taken a key step towards standardization.
Written by Web3 Farmer Frank
Why has Based Rollup, which is regarded as the "orthodox" expansion of Ethereum, always been "popular but not popular"?
On the one hand, by returning the sorting rights to L1, it achieves the most thorough security and decentralization alignment with the mainnet, but on the other hand, it has to endure a confirmation delay of up to 12 seconds, which almost makes high-frequency trading and real-time financial scenarios prohibitive.
Therefore, Preconfs was proposed as a necessary patch for Based Rollup, attempting to smooth out delays with sub-second transaction commitments. However , for a long time, Preconfs has remained in the small-scale, non-standardized exploration stage, lacking a unified mechanism and stable returns, and has never been able to truly scale up.
Recently, Puffer Finance launched the Ethereum security infrastructure product "UniFi AVS", which finally attempted to upgrade Preconfs from a temporary performance patch to a reusable standardized infrastructure to bring sub-10ms confirmation speed and introduce institutional design at the security and economic incentive levels.
From the perspective of an industry observer, this article will break down UniFi AVS’s core capabilities, technical path, and ecological impact, and discuss whether it can truly become a key variable in Based Rollup—and even the broader Ethereum Rollup ecosystem.
1. UniFi AVS: Preconfs, more than just "patching"
To understand the importance of this upgrade, we need to first review the core logic of Based Rollup.
In Ethereum's scaling narrative, Based Rollup fully aligns with the mainnet in terms of security and decentralization by returning the sorting rights to L1 validators, but this also brings an inevitable trade-off - while inheriting the security of the mainnet, it also brings a block confirmation delay of about 12 seconds.
To this end, pre-confirmation (Preconfs) has become a necessary patch for Based Rollup, which is responsible for providing users with transaction execution commitments in advance before the transactions are actually submitted to L1. It can be said that if the potential of Based Rollup is to be fully realized, a permissionless, neutral and flexible pre-confirmation service must be implemented.
However, for quite a long time, Preconfs has remained in the "small workshop" stage (non-standardized, point-to-point solution), usually run by a few nodes or project parties themselves, lacking unified standards and a stable profit model. Once the node responsible for pre-confirmation goes offline or acts maliciously, the transaction may fail or even suffer a MEV attack, and there are serious deficiencies in reliability and sustainability.
UniFi AVS launched by Puffer is a systematic solution to this dilemma. It no longer treats Preconfs as a temporary patch, but upgrades it to a callable infrastructure layer. The core idea is to reconstruct Preconfs into an AWS-style standardized cloud service.
Specifically, UniFi AVS takes three main approaches, not only making Based Rollup run faster, but also providing sustainable returns and institutionalized security mechanisms:
- In terms of performance, transaction confirmation is compressed to sub-10ms, bringing an instant usage experience comparable to Solana and even centralized exchanges;
- On the economic level, through the protocol layer profit-sharing mechanism, Rollup no longer "works for L1" but instead shares profits with validators and gateways;
- On the security level, relying on the guarantee and slashing mechanism of up to $13 billion of Restaked ETH, "verbal promises" are transformed into "costly contracts", forming institutional constraints;
For developers and Rollup projects, the emergence of UniFi AVS means that they no longer need to design and maintain complex sorting and confirmation logic on their own. Instead, they can directly access a set of verified pre-confirmation infrastructure just like calling AWS cloud services, which is plug-and-play and scalable on demand, allowing them to devote more energy to the product and user levels.
This modular design also makes Preconfs likely to be further productized and have a spillover effect - not only can Rollup project parties avoid reinventing the wheel, but in the future, wallets, DApps, and upper-layer protocols will also be able to access through standardized APIs and uniformly enjoy the capabilities of "instant confirmation + economic alignment + security guarantees", turning "fast and stable" into a true public underlying service of the Ethereum ecosystem.
From this perspective, UniFi AVS allows Preconfs to go beyond its positioning as a simple performance patch, and instead standardizes performance, revenue, and security at one time, pushing it from an additional function to an intermediate layer infrastructure for Ethereum expansion, paving a more sustainable path for the large-scale implementation of Based Rollup.
It is worth noting that Puffer also emphasized that the applicability of UniFi AVS is not limited to Based Rollup. From a design point of view, its registry mechanism can also provide sub-10ms instant confirmation capabilities for any OP Stack Rollup, and plans to support more Rollup architectures in the future. In other words, it is positioned as a universal pre-confirmation infrastructure with cross-architecture potential.
Of course, whether all Rollups are willing to transfer sequencer revenue to AVS remains uncertain, and it can even be asserted that it will be difficult to do so in the early stages. After all, sequencers are never just a technical issue, but a deeply intertwined issue of interest distribution.
In the L2 economic system, who is responsible for dividing the cake, who will it be divided to, and how should it be divided?
Therefore, whether Preconfs will eventually evolve into the public standard of the entire Rollup ecosystem or mainly serve the Based path is not only a choice of technical route, but also a game of business model and profit distribution. It is destined to be an issue that needs to be continuously observed in the next few years.
2. How is Preconfs reconstructed into standardized infrastructure?
Objectively speaking, since the concept of Rollup was proposed, what Ethereum has lacked in expansion is not the concept, but the engineering implementation capability.
After all, for a technology to evolve from a clever "function" to a robust "infrastructure", it usually needs to meet three core conditions: a clear service commitment, reliable security guarantees and a sustainable economic model.
In other words, it is to move from technical concepts to "engineering" implementation, which can make it truly have the conditions for large-scale operation. Puffer's UniFi AVS idea is similar to this - to reconstruct Preconfs from scattered small-scale attempts into a reusable, scalable infrastructure with economic incentives.
In other words, how to make Preconfs no longer a "temporary commitment" of certain nodes, but be designed as a standardized network service.
1. Execution Preconfs: From “Block Entry Guarantee” to “Execution Guarantee”
The first is to realize the upgrade from Inclusion Preconfs to Execution Preconfs.
In the traditional Inclusion Preconfs model, users are only promised that their transactions will be included in the block, but the status of the transaction when it is executed cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, users may still encounter price slippage or even MEV front-running.
Execution Preconfs are further upgraded to "execution guarantees", which ensure that the transaction will be executed in the state when the user submits it - once the user places an order, the state will be locked, and the transaction will only be executed in this state, otherwise it will not be established.
For example, you place an order to buy ETH at a price of 4400 USDC:
- In the inclusion mode, by the time the transaction is actually executed, the market price may have become 4410 USDC. The transaction will still be completed, but the transaction price will not be the expected 4400.
- If it is Execution mode, then no matter how the market fluctuates, the system will guarantee a transaction price of 4400 USDC. The transaction will only be executed if this condition is met.
This upgrades Preconfs from an "early entry ticket" to a "deterministic transaction", significantly improving the user experience and providing greater reliability for price-sensitive financial applications such as DeFi, derivatives, and payments.
2. Gateway architecture and frags technology: compressing latency to less than 10 milliseconds
Puffer also introduced the Collateral-backed Gateway architecture (pioneered by the Gattaca team), allowing L1 proposers to delegate pre-confirmation execution rights to more professional Gateways.
With the help of frags technology and lookahead mechanism, Gateway can process transactions in advance before the official block is produced, shortening the window period for state switching. In theory, under the optimal configuration, transaction latency can be reduced to below 10 milliseconds (sub-10ms).
The result is that its user experience can theoretically reach the level of high-performance public chains such as Solana.
3. Restaked ETH Security Endorsement: Making Commitments “Costable”
In the past, Preconfs relied heavily on the "self-awareness" of nodes. Once they were offline or engaged in malicious activities, users had almost no compensation mechanism.
The upgraded version of Puffer uses EigenLayer's restaking mechanism to ensure that each Gateway is backed by ETH staked by validators (implemented in stages) - if the node becomes inactive, it may be fined 1 ETH; if MEV is maliciously withdrawn or a promise is violated, it may trigger a slashing of 1,000 ETH.
Unlike PoS penalties, Preconf's ETH slashing will compensate users who use Preconf services, directly enhancing economic alignment and transforming the previous soft commitment that relied on node reputation into a hard commitment with a clear slashing mechanism, greatly improving institutional constraints.
At the same time, Puffer established the Canonical Preconf Gateway Registry to ensure that all Gateways enter an orderly, public, and verifiable registration system.
4. Programmable Profit Sharing: Institutionalized Multi-Party Value Distribution
Speed and security alone are not enough; if Preconfs is to become infrastructure, it must also operate sustainably.
To this end, the upgraded UniFi AVS has a built-in Rewards Distributor, which allows for flexible distribution of revenue among Rollup teams, Ethereum proposers, and Gateway providers, enabling programmable profit sharing at the protocol level:
- Rollup team: retain some transaction fees and no longer "work for L1";
- Ethereum proposer (validator): earn extra income by providing Preconfs;
- Gateway providers: receive incentives to operate the network and ensure service stability;
The profit sharing is no longer a temporary agreement, but a system written into the protocol and automatically executed, forming a long-term closed loop of economic alignment among Rollup, validators, and Gateway.
This multi-dimensional mechanism design is the key to Preconfs's transformation from a single point solution to a scalable and trustworthy public infrastructure.
3. Beneficiary Landscape under Multi-party Game
Any infrastructure upgrade is not just a technological evolution, but also a redistribution of interests.
What makes UniFi AVS special is that it bundles performance, security, and economic incentives together, allowing multiple ecosystem roles to find value in the same mechanism—from Rollup project parties to Ethereum validators, developers, and end users. It transforms Preconf from a patch into a sustainable modular service, allowing all participants to benefit from being on a stronger ship.
The first is naturally the Rollup project party, which has obtained the dual unlocking of performance + benefits.
In the past, Based Rollup was criticized by the market for being "slow and unprofitable", especially in terms of its economic model, which almost completely gave benefits to L1 validators. With the help of UniFi AVS's Execution Preconfs, Rollup can achieve sub-10ms confirmation speed in a plug-and-play manner, greatly improving the user experience.
At the same time, the profit-sharing mechanism at the protocol layer allows the Rollup team to retain part of the economic benefits without having to rely entirely on external subsidies. For the project party, this is a double bonus of speed increase + profit sharing.
The second is Ethereum validators/Restakers, who have gained a new source of income.
Because L1 validators are the direct executors of Preconfs, by participating in UniFi AVS, validators can obtain new Preconf service benefits in addition to traditional block rewards.
At the same time, Restaked ETH not only provides security endorsement, but also increases the profit opportunities of validators, which in turn increases the attractiveness of staking ETH, thereby enhancing the overall economic security of Ethereum, and enabling validators to move from simply running nodes to "providing value-added services and obtaining additional income."
Also included are Gateway providers, whose roles are formally institutionalized in this upgrade.
Puffer established the Canonical Gateway Registry, making Gateway a standardized node in the network, rather than just a temporary role. After obtaining delegation rights, Gateway can achieve pre-confirmation in less than 10 milliseconds by running frags technology and lookahead mechanism.
Their services are directly linked to economic incentives and are subject to the Slashing mechanism, which has both benefits and costs. This has transformed Gateway from a "volunteer" into a true infrastructure service provider.
At the same time, developers can get lower thresholds and stronger composability.
After all, in the past, if developers wanted to achieve instant confirmation on Rollup, they often had to build complex mechanisms on their own, which was time-consuming and difficult to standardize. The upgraded UniFi AVS allows developers to directly access instant confirmation capabilities through a modular API, just like calling cloud services.
Whether it is DEX, derivatives protocols or high-frequency GameFi applications, they can quickly enjoy the improved experience brought by sub-10ms confirmation. This not only reduces the cost of infrastructure construction, but also reduces the risk of MEV being stolen, allowing developers to focus more on application-layer innovation.
Finally, ordinary users are the most direct beneficiaries. For the first time, they have gained a smooth experience on the Ethereum Rollup level, which is even close to the Solana level and CEX:
- In terms of speed, transaction confirmation time is shortened from 12 seconds to 10 milliseconds, and the experience is comparable to that of centralized exchanges;
- In terms of certainty, Execution Preconfs guarantees price lock-in from the protocol commitment level, avoiding slippage and front-running;
- In terms of security, the Restaked ETH endorsement and slashing mechanism make commitments "cost-effective," allowing users to receive compensation when they default.
From a higher level, the upgrade of Puffer UniFi AVS is not just a product evolution, but also the establishment of industry standards for Preconfs, allowing it to upgrade from a patch to infrastructure, and even become a standardized middle-layer service for Ethereum.
This not only makes Based Rollup truly capable of running fast, making money, and being secure, but also strengthens Ethereum's long-term narrative as a security settlement layer.
Final Thoughts
Looking back at Ethereum’s expansion process over the past five years, Rollup is undoubtedly the absolute main line, but how to find a truly feasible balance between performance, economy and security, this “Blockchain Trilemma” has always remained unresolved.
In particular, Based Rollup, Ethereum's "orthodox expansion path", has been stuck at the last piece of the puzzle for large-scale and commercial operation. Therefore, objectively speaking, the UniFi AVS upgraded and launched by Puffer this time is one of the explorations that attempts to fill this puzzle and is highly feasible.
The more profound significance lies in that it depicts a clear "end game" possibility for the future of modular blockchain: any emerging Rollup does not need to reinvent the wheel, but can be built directly on UniFi AVS to quickly obtain performance experience comparable to Solana, Ethereum mainnet-level security, and a self-consistent economic model.
However, whether it can eventually become an industry consensus depends not only on the robustness and openness of its own design, but also on whether it can find the optimal balance point in the complex Rollup ecosystem and the game of interests among multiple parties.
Therefore, for the industry, it is a key observation window to measure whether the Based Rollup narrative can truly mature in the next one to two years.
