The Rise of Decentralization Storage and Data Availability Layers

With the in-depth development of the data economy, everyone inevitably participates in various data storage activities. The arrival of the Web3 era prompts most technology sectors to begin upgrading or transforming in the coming years. As a key infrastructure of Web3, Decentralization storage will be implemented in more application scenarios in the future, including data storage networks for social data, short videos, live broadcasts, and smart vehicles.

In the Web3 era, data has become a core asset, and user ownership of data is its main feature. Ensuring that users securely own their data and the assets it represents, while eliminating the concerns ordinary users have about asset security, will help attract the next billion users into the Web3 ecosystem. In this process, an independent data availability layer will become an indispensable component.

From Decentralization Storage to Data Availability Layer

Traditional centralized cloud storage methods have become inadequate 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 have gradually become apparent. At the same time, the advancement of the Web3 era and the development of blockchain applications have made data more diverse, with a continuously growing scale, a more comprehensive dimension of personal network data, and higher value, further highlighting the importance of data security and privacy.

Decentralization storage has emerged, becoming one of the earliest and most关注的 infrastructures in the Web3 field. Compared to traditional centralized storage, decentralized storage follows the principles of the sharing economy and utilizes a vast amount of 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 are the true masters of the data, greatly enhancing the security of the data.

Decentralization storage fragments files or file sets and stores them in different storage spaces through a distributed approach. It addresses many pain points of centralized cloud storage in Web2, better aligning with the development needs of the big data era, and allows for the storage of unstructured edge data at a lower cost and higher efficiency, empowering emerging technologies. Therefore, decentralized storage is regarded as the cornerstone of Web3 development.

Currently, decentralized storage projects are mainly divided into two categories: one type aims to generate blocks through storage mining, but this model may lead to slower storage and download speeds; the other type uses one or several centralized nodes for verification, but if these nodes are attacked or damaged, it may result in data loss.

Data availability (DA) refers to the ability of light nodes to efficiently ensure the availability and accuracy of data without participating in consensus, without the need to store all data or maintain the full network state in a timely manner. An independent data availability layer effectively prevents single points of failure and maximizes data security.

In addition, Layer 2 scaling solutions like 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 not only needs to update the result state of batch transactions to Layer 1 but also ensure the availability of the original transaction data. This guarantees that in the absence of a prover willing to generate proofs, the state of the Layer 2 network can still be restored, avoiding extreme situations where user assets are locked in Layer 2.

Analysis of Independent Data Availability Layer

Celestia

Celestia, as an independent data availability blockchain, has a series of validation nodes, block producers, and consensus mechanisms, aiming to enhance the level of decentralization and security of the data availability layer.

Layer2 publishes transaction data to the Celestia main chain, where Celestia's validators sign the Merkle Root of DA Attestation and send it to the DA Bridge Contract on the Ethereum main chain for verification and storage. This approach effectively replaces all data availability proofs with the Merkle Root of DA Attestation, significantly reducing the storage overhead on the Ethereum main chain.

Celestia adopts 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. The entire process is very efficient as long as there are no issues.

MEMO

MEMO is a new generation high-capacity, high-availability enterprise-level storage network that aggregates global edge storage devices using algorithmic characteristics. It is based on blockchain peer-to-peer technology, achieving high security and high reliability for large-scale decentralized data storage.

The main chain of MEMO contains smart contracts that constrain all nodes, controlling key operations such as data upload, storage node matching, system operation, and punishment mechanisms. Technically, MEMO improves storage functionality by utilizing erasure codes and data recovery techniques, enhancing data security and storage download efficiency.

In addition to the User and Provider roles, MEMO also introduces a Keeper to prevent nodes from being maliciously attacked. This multi-role mutual restraint mechanism helps maintain economic balance and supports high-capacity, high-availability enterprise-level commercial storage purposes. MEMO can provide secure and reliable cloud storage services for NFTs, GameFi, DeFi, SocialFi, etc., and is compatible with Web2, making it a perfect integration of blockchain and cloud storage.