Decentralization Storage and the Evolution of Data Availability Layer

With the vigorous development of the data economy, everyone is deeply involved, inevitably engaging in various data storage activities. The arrival of the Web3 era has driven a comprehensive upgrade and transformation in the tech field, and decentralized storage, as an important infrastructure, will expand more application scenarios in the future. For example, the data storage networks behind social data, short videos, live broadcasts, smart cars, etc., may adopt decentralized storage models in the future.

Data is the core asset of the Web3 era, and the right of users to own their data is its main feature. Ensuring that users safely own their data and the assets represented by it, while eliminating concerns about asset security, will help attract more users into the Web3 ecosystem. In this process, an independent data availability layer will become an indispensable link.

From Decentralization Storage to Data Availability Layer

Traditional centralized cloud storage methods have struggled to meet current market demands. As users' requirements for personal information security and data storage continue to rise, especially after data breach incidents involving large data operators, the drawbacks of centralized storage are becoming increasingly evident. The advancement of the Web3 era and the development of blockchain applications have diversified data, leading to continuous growth in scale, with personal network data becoming more comprehensive and valuable, making data security and privacy protection all the more important.

Decentralization storage has emerged as one of the earliest and most关注的 infrastructures in the Web3 field. Compared to traditional centralized storage, Decentralization storage follows the principles of the sharing economy, utilizing massive edge storage devices to provide services, with data actually stored on the storage provided by Provider nodes. In this model, project parties cannot control this data, and users can truly take control of their own data, greatly enhancing the security of the data.

Decentralization storage fragments files or sets of files and stores them in different storage spaces through a distributed method. It addresses many pain points of centralized cloud storage, aligning more with the development needs of the big data era, enabling the storage of unstructured edge data at lower costs and higher efficiency, empowering various emerging technologies.

Currently, there are mainly two types of decentralized storage projects: one aims to produce blocks and mines through storage, but this model may lead to slow storage and download speeds; the other uses one or several nodes as centralized nodes for verification, but there is a risk of single point of failure.

Compared to these projects, some emerging storage solutions adopt more advanced technologies. For example, some projects address the issue of storage download speed through a layered storage mechanism, achieving second-level speeds. Other projects introduce randomly selected verification node roles, avoiding the problem of centralization while ensuring security. Some projects have also developed innovative technologies that significantly improve data recovery capabilities, enhancing the security, reliability, and availability of storage.

The essence of Data Availability (DA) is to allow light nodes to efficiently ensure the availability and accuracy of data without participating in consensus, and without needing to store all data or maintain the entire network state in real-time. This is crucial for ensuring the immutability of blockchain data. An independent data availability layer effectively prevents single points of failure and maximizes data security.

In addition, Layer 2 scaling solutions such as zkRollup also require the use of a data availability layer. Layer 2 relies on Layer 1 as the consensus layer, and in addition to updating the result state of batch transactions to Layer 1, it also needs to ensure the availability of the original transaction data. This allows for the recovery of the Layer 2 network state in extreme cases, preventing user assets from being locked. Storing data in a dedicated data availability layer and only recording the Merkle root of the data computation in the consensus layer is a more reasonable and long-term design trend.

Analysis of Independent Data Availability Layer

An independent data availability layer as a public chain is safer than a usability committee composed of individuals with subjective consciousness. This design can avoid off-chain data availability issues caused by the theft of private keys, thereby protecting user assets.

Some projects are committed to making the data availability layer more decentralized, providing an independent DA public chain with a range of validating nodes, block producers, and consensus mechanisms to enhance security levels. In this scheme, Layer 2 publishes transaction data to the DA main chain, where validators sign the Merkle Root of the DA Attestation and send it to the DA Bridge Contract on the Ethereum main chain for verification and storage. This approach significantly reduces overhead.

Some DA solutions use optimistic proof mechanisms, which are very efficient when the network is operating normally. Light nodes only need to receive data and recover it according to the encoding, making the entire process highly efficient when there are no issues.

Other projects focus on building the next generation of high-capacity, high-availability enterprise-level storage networks. These projects are based on blockchain peer-to-peer technology, achieving high security and high reliability for large-scale decentralized data storage. Unlike traditional one-to-many centralized storage, they realize decentralization, supporting many-to-many storage operations. In these systems, the main chain primarily stores smart contracts that constrain all nodes, controlling key operations such as data uploading, storage node matching, system operation, and penalty mechanisms.

In terms of technology, some projects have improved storage capabilities using erasure coding and data recovery techniques, enhancing data security and download efficiency. In addition to optimizing storage usability, new roles have been introduced to prevent nodes from being maliciously attacked, maintaining economic balance through mutual constraints among multiple roles. These systems can support high-capacity, high-availability enterprise-level commercial storage use, providing secure and reliable cloud storage services for NFTs, GameFi, DeFi, SocialFi, etc., and are compatible with Web2, representing the perfect integration of blockchain and cloud storage.