Data Availability Layer: The Cornerstone of the Web3 Era

With the vigorous development of the data economy, everyone inevitably participates in various data storage activities. The arrival of the Web3 era has prompted most technology sectors to gradually upgrade or transform in the coming years. As a key infrastructure of Web3, decentralized storage will expand more application scenarios in the future, including backend data storage networks for social data, short videos, live streaming, and smart vehicles.

In the Web3 era, data is the core asset, and user ownership of data is its main characteristic. Ensuring that users securely own their data and the assets it represents, while alleviating the concerns of ordinary users about asset security, will help attract more users into the Web3 ecosystem. An independent data availability layer will become an indispensable part of Web3.

From Decentralized Storage to Data Availability Layer

The traditional centralized cloud storage method can no longer meet the current market demands. As users' requirements for personal information security and data storage continue to rise, especially after data breach incidents involving some large data operators, the drawbacks of centralized storage have gradually become apparent. In addition, the advancement of the Web3 era and the development of blockchain applications have made data more diversified, with scale continuously expanding, and the dimensions of personal network data becoming more comprehensive and valuable, further highlighting the importance of data security and privacy.

Decentralized data storage has emerged. As one of the earliest and most关注的 infrastructures in the Web3 field, decentralized storage is fundamentally different from traditional centralized storage. Decentralized storage follows the principles of the sharing economy, utilizing a massive number of edge storage devices to provide services, with data actually stored on the storage provided by Provider nodes. In this model, decentralized storage project parties cannot control this data, thereby enhancing the security of the data.

Currently, there are two main types of common decentralized storage projects. The first type aims at block production and uses storage for mining, but this model may lead to slower on-chain storage and download speeds. The second type uses one or several nodes as centralized nodes for verification, but this approach has the risk of a single point of failure.

Data Availability (DA) refers to a mechanism that allows lightweight nodes to ensure data availability and accuracy efficiently without participating in consensus, storing all data, or maintaining the real-time state of the entire network. An independent data availability layer effectively avoids 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 serves as the execution layer, leveraging Layer 1 as the consensus layer, and needs to ensure the availability of the original transaction data to prevent user assets from being locked in Layer 2 under extreme circumstances. Storing data in a dedicated data availability layer while 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

Celestia

Celestia provides an independent DA blockchain, equipped with a series of validator nodes, block producers, and consensus mechanisms to enhance security levels. Layer 2 publishes transaction data to the Celestia main chain, where Celestia's 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 method significantly reduces overhead.

Celestia uses an optimistic proof mechanism, which is highly 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 in the absence of issues.

MEMO

MEMO is a next-generation, high-capacity, high-availability enterprise storage network that aggregates global edge storage devices through algorithmic features. Built on blockchain peer-to-peer technology, MEMO enables decentralized, multi-to-multi storage operations. In the mainchain of MEMO, smart contracts govern key operations such as data upload, storage node matching, system operation, and penalty mechanisms.

MEMO utilizes erasure coding and data recovery technologies to enhance storage functionality, improving data security and storage download efficiency. In addition to the User and Provider roles, MEMO also introduces the Keeper role to prevent nodes from being maliciously attacked. This multi-role system design that mutually constrains each role helps maintain economic balance and supports enterprise-level commercial storage applications with high capacity and high availability.

MEMO provides secure and reliable cloud storage services for NFTs, GameFi, DeFi, SocialFi, etc., and is compatible with Web2, making it a perfect fusion of blockchain and cloud storage.