eas-comparison

Ligate Chain vs Ethereum Attestation Service

A research note positioning Ligate Chain's attestation primitive against the Ethereum Attestation Service (EAS): where the two systems overlap, where they diverge architecturally, and where they could compose rather than compete.

Latest

• Working paper: eas-comparison.md + eas-comparison.pdf
• Version: v0.2 (2026-05-27)
• Author: Stefan Stefanović (Ligate Labs)
• Status: Research note v0.2 promotes the v0.1 outline to substantive content across all sections. §2 surveys EAS architecture in detail (two-contract design, tokenless economic model, schema collaboration, SDK + deployment footprint). §3 quotes Ligate primitives from the v0.2 paper portfolio. §4 fills the six-axis comparison table with documented EAS behavior + citations. §5 maps representative use-case profiles. §6 sketches cross-chain composition between the two architectures. Appendix A (EAS deployment-footprint snapshot) deferred to v0.3 pending data collection.

Why this note exists

EAS is the closest direct peer to Ligate Chain in the attestation space. Investors, design partners, and EAS users evaluating Ligate will ask the same question: "why not just use EAS?" This note answers that with technical honesty.

The differentiator is not that Ligate does attestations and EAS does not; both do. The differentiators are:

• Economic security floor: PoUA Lemma 1 (cost-to-grind floor) vs EAS's reliance on L1/L2 gas alone.
• Threshold attestor sets as a native primitive: not single-signer, not bolt-on multisig.
• Per-schema fee markets: per-schema base-fee dynamics vs single chain-wide gas.
• Typed cross-schema composition: typed-reference primitive with cascade semantics vs untyped pointer composition.
• Schema-bound tokens: native token issuance with threshold mint authority vs no-token primitive at EAS.
• Recall and time-locked attestations: native runtime primitives vs absent / bolt-on.

The note positions Ligate not as "EAS but better" but as "EAS in a different architectural family." Several use cases lean toward EAS for simplicity reasons; several lean toward Ligate for economic-security reasons. The note states which.

Planned outline

When v0.2 authoring opens, the paper will follow this section structure. Each is [**v0.1:** intent annotation] only at v0.1.

1. Abstract. One paragraph stating the comparison axis and the headline claim.
2. Introduction. Why this comparison matters, who asks the question, what the note answers.
3. EAS architecture in brief. Two-contract design, tokenless framing, schema registry collaboration, SDK story, current deployment footprint.
4. Ligate Chain architecture in brief. Attestation as native chain operation, PoUA economic floor, attestor-set primitive, per-schema fee market, typed composition, schema-bound tokens, time-locked attestations.
5. Side-by-side comparison axes. Economic security, signer model, fee market, composition, token primitives, recall semantics, cost per attestation. Table-driven with per-axis discussion.
6. Where EAS is the right choice; where Ligate is the right choice. Honest assessment by use-case profile. Cooperative-attestation workflows lean EAS for integration simplicity; adversarial / high-value / threshold-required workflows lean Ligate.
7. Composition rather than competition. A Themisra attestation referencing an EAS attestation via CSC v0.2 §4.3 + cross-chain bridge. The cross-chain attestation portability follow-up paper (research-research#136) is where this fully unfolds.
8. References. EAS docs, Sign Protocol, Verax, and Ligate Chain's parent papers (PoUA, per-schema-fees, CSC, SBT).

Discipline

This note adopts the v0.7-PoUA discipline:

• Every comparison claim links to documented EAS behavior (EAS docs, deployed contract behavior, public statements) or a citation
• Subjective claims (e.g., "EAS is simpler for X") are framed as judgment, not assertion
• Composition claims (§7) are framed conditionally on the cross-chain follow-up paper landing

Dependencies

• PoUA paper at v0.9.2+. The Lemma 1 economic floor is the central differentiator from EAS; quoted but not re-derived.
• Per-Schema Fees at v0.2+. The per-schema fee market vs EAS's single gas market is one comparison axis.
• Cross-Schema Composition at v0.2+. The typed-reference primitive vs EAS's untyped pointers is another axis.
• Schema-Bound Tokens at v0.2+. SBT vs EAS-as-no-token-primitive is another axis.

What this paper does NOT do

• Argue that EAS is broken or insufficient for its use cases (it is not)
• Claim Ligate replaces EAS (it does not; different architectural family)
• Specify the cross-chain bridge between Ligate and EAS in detail (lives in the cross-chain follow-up paper, research-research#136)
• Provide quantitative cost comparison across EAS-on-L2 instances (would require empirical measurement; v0.3+ if useful)

Building locally

From this directory:

pandoc eas-comparison.md -o eas-comparison.pdf \
  --pdf-engine=tectonic \
  --include-in-header=../poua/header-includes.tex \
  -V geometry:margin=1in \
  -V documentclass=article \
  -V fontsize=11pt

The note shares the PoUA paper's header-includes.tex for LaTeX styling.

Related

• PoUA paper — source of the economic-security claim
• Per-Schema Fees — fee-market comparison axis
• Cross-Schema Composition — composition comparison axis
• Schema-Bound Tokens — token-primitive comparison axis
• ligate-research#83 — tracking issue
• ligate-research#136 — cross-chain follow-up paper (composition section depends on this)

License

Apache-2.0 OR MIT for any code, CC-BY-4.0 for the paper text. Matches the parent repository.