Data Storage Innovation in the Web3 Era: From Decentralization to Data Availability Layer

With the rapid development of the data economy, everyone inevitably participates in various data storage activities. The arrival of the Web3 era is driving upgrades and transformations across most technology sectors, and as a key infrastructure of Web3, Decentralization storage will expand more application scenarios in the future. For example, data storage networks in areas such as social data, short videos, live streaming, and smart cars are all likely to adopt decentralized models.

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

From Decentralization Storage to Data Availability Layer

Traditional centralized cloud storage methods can no longer meet the current market demands. As users' requirements for personal information security and data storage continue to rise, especially following data breach incidents involving some large data operators, the drawbacks of centralized storage are becoming increasingly apparent. At the same time, the advancement of the Web3 era and the development of blockchain applications have made data more diverse, with continuously growing scale, and the dimensions of personal network data are more comprehensive and valuable. These factors have made data security and privacy even more important, leading to increasing requirements for data storage.

Decentralization of 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. It follows the principles of the sharing economy, utilizing massive edge storage devices to provide services, with data actually stored on storage provided by Provider nodes. In this model, project parties cannot control this data, and users can truly take control of their own data, significantly enhancing data security.

Currently, there are mainly two types of decentralized storage projects. One is aimed at block production, using storage for mining, but this model may lead to slower on-chain storage and download speeds. The other uses one or several nodes as centralized nodes for verification, but this method carries the risk of data loss due to centralized nodes being attacked or damaged.

Data availability (DA) refers to the ability of light nodes to ensure data availability and accuracy efficiently without participating in consensus, storing all data, or timely maintaining the entire network state. An independent data availability layer effectively avoids single points of failure, maximizing data security. In addition, Layer 2 scaling solutions like zkRollup also require the use of a data availability layer to ensure that the Layer 2 network state can still be restored under extreme conditions, preventing user assets from being locked.

Analysis of Independent Data Availability Layer

Celestia

Celestia provides an independent DA blockchain, featuring 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 adopts an optimistic proof mechanism, achieving high efficiency when the network is operating normally. Light nodes only need to receive data and recover it according to the encoding, making the entire process very efficient as long as there are no issues.

MEMO

MEMO is a highly secure and reliable large-scale decentralized data storage protocol based on blockchain peer-to-peer technology. It controls key operations such as data upload, storage node matching, system operation, and penalty mechanisms through smart contracts. MEMO improves storage functionality and enhances data security and storage download efficiency by utilizing erasure coding and data recovery technology.

MEMO introduces the Keeper role to prevent malicious attacks on nodes, maintaining economic balance through mutual checks among multiple roles. This system supports high-capacity, high-availability enterprise-level commercial storage use, providing secure and reliable cloud storage services for NFTs, GameFi, DeFi, SocialFi, and more, while being compatible with Web2, achieving a perfect integration of blockchain and cloud storage.

With the continuous development of Web3 technology, independent data availability layers will play an increasingly important role in the future digital ecosystem, providing users with safer and more efficient data storage and management solutions.