The data availability solution of the decentralized storage network can be achieved in a variety of ways, such as sharding and storing data on different nodes, or connecting more storage miners to improve data security. These solutions are all designed to ensure the availability of data in a decentralized storage network. At the moment, Filecoin and Arweave have their own unique data availability solutions, and there may be more innovative solutions in the future.
The significance of data availability
Data availability is very important for decentralized storage networks. In a decentralized network, the security and reliability of data depends on the stability of storage nodes. If the data is unavailable, then the entire network will be affected, and it may even lead to permanent data loss. Therefore, data availability is one of the core elements to ensure a decentralized storage network.
Filecoin and Arweave are two projects with different solutions for data availability. Filecoin relies on incentives and intermediary roles to enable storage redundancy and data retrieval, while providing an economic mechanism for the financialization of storage. Arweave, on the other hand, naturally implements storage redundancy and improves data retrieval and access speed through protocol design and SPoRA (Concise Proof of Random Access) consensus mechanism.
An evaluation metric for data availability
Filecoin's data availability solution is primarily based on IPFS technology. This scheme verifies that the storage miner actually owns and stores all of the file's data. Filecoin's data availability solutions provide a high degree of reliability, but can impact performance due to high computational complexity. Arweave's data availability solution is based on PermaWeb technology. Arweave stores files in a "permanent storage layer on the blockchain" to ensure the security of the data. Arweave's data availability solution delivers high performance.
Data Storage Model:
- Filecoin uses financial incentives to achieve storage redundancy. By introducing the roles of Replication Worker and Repair Worker, Filecoin has established a storage network based on financial incentives. Storage demanders can generate storage orders on the Filecoin network through replication workers and monitor and maintain the integrity of the data through repair workers. This economic model gives storage providers an incentive to preserve the data of storage demanders, which enhances data availability.
- Arweave enables storage redundancy through protocol design. Its SPoRA consensus mechanism encourages miners to save as many historical blocks and Blockweave data as possible to increase data redundancy and reliability. This protocol design enables the data of storage demanders to be distributed across multiple nodes in the network, improving the availability of data.
Data consistency:
- Filecoin's economic incentives help maintain the consistency and integrity of your data. Through the role of a maintenance worker, the Filecoin network is able to keep up to date with expired or terminated storage orders, ensuring that the data saved by the storage vendor is consistent with the data uploaded by the storage demander.
- Arweave's SPoRA consensus mechanism requires miners to keep data on all recalled blocks, ensuring consistency across the network between historical blocks and Blockweave data. This consensus mechanism ensures that the data stored in the network is complete and consistent.
- Economic model:
- Filecoin's economic model is highly flexible and scalable. Storage providers are required to provide a certain amount of FIL tokens as collateral to provide storage services. By introducing mechanisms such as staking protocols and storage derivatives, FIL token holders can participate in storage services and receive corresponding economic rewards.
- Arweave's economic model focuses on incentives for storage miners, encouraging them to keep more historical blocks and Blockweave data. However, Arweave's value network may be a little sluggish after Filecoin rolls out an EVM-compatible storage network.
The data availability of these two storage networks is affected by the storage model, data consistency, and economic model and ecosystem building. The difference between Filecoin and Arweave in terms of data availability is mainly in the differences in the data storage model and the economic model. Filecoin uses economic incentives for storage redundancy and data consistency, while Arweave naturally implements storage redundancy and data consistency through protocol design and SPoRA consensus mechanisms. The two also differ in terms of data retrieval, with Filecoin introducing a separate economic incentive system, while Arweave improves the speed of data retrieval and access by upgrading the SPoRA consensus mechanism. Filecoin and Arweave excel in terms of economic models and ecosystems, with incentives to promote node participation and data storage, and active communities and developer ecosystems.
Trends in decentralized storage
Arweave and Filecoin decentralized storage networks have formed two relatively independent ecosystems. In terms of scale, Filecoin leads the way in terms of revenue, FDV, and market share. Analyzing the current situation and trends of decentralized storage networks from the perspective of data availability, we believe that:
- Storage Scalability in the Era of Capacity Expansion: The development of Layer 1 storage expansion networks is one of the important directions to solve the data availability challenges of decentralized storage networks. By adding storage capabilities at the L1 level of the blockchain, the performance and capacity of the storage network can be improved, further enhancing the availability and security of data. In particular, the expansion of the data storage layer on mainstream blockchains such as Ethereum will have a profound impact on the entire decentralized storage ecosystem. Ethereum's EthStorage project is one example. EthStorage aims to improve the performance and scalability of the storage network by adding storage capabilities at the L1 level of Ethereum. This storage expansion can better meet the needs of data storage and improve the availability of data.
- Aggregation of storage networks: The advent of DSN aggregators marks an important step forward for decentralized storage networks in improving data availability. By aggregating different storage networks, you can achieve efficient use of resources and higher availability of data. This aggregation mode helps solve the problem of storage network fragmentation and improves the storage experience of users. PROJECTS SUCH AS 4EVERLAND, 4EVERLAND'S DECENTRALIZED CLOUD COMPUTING PLATFORM INTEGRATES MULTIPLE STORAGE NETWORKS, ALLOWING USERS TO ACCESS AND MANAGE DATA ACROSS NETWORKS. The project provides better data availability and storage efficiency, and users can get a more reliable data access experience from the aggregated storage network.
- Integration of compute and storage: The development of off-chain computing will further promote data availability in decentralized storage networks. Combining computing power with storage power enables more efficient data processing and storage services. This integration model can improve the speed and efficiency of data processing, providing users with a more flexible and reliable data storage solution. In addition to this, future solutions will involve storing data in a dedicated data availability layer, with only the Merkel root computed to that data recorded in the consensus layer. This design can not only ensure the security of data, but also improve performance, and effectively solve the problem of more and more centralized consensus nodes.
Conclusions and outlook
In the future, the development trend of decentralized storage networks in improving data availability is multifaceted, including the enhancement of the aggregation of storage networks, the integration of computing and storage, the storage expansion of blockchain, and the enhancement of data security. These developments will further improve the availability of data and promote the widespread adoption and development of decentralized storage networks. Based on the above considerations, we need to pay more attention to the following issues when selecting projects:
- The challenge of cross-chain data availability: With the development of cross-chain technology, data exchange between different blockchains has become possible. However, there are many challenges to ensuring the availability of cross-chain data, such as data consistency, privacy protection, and scalability. Future research and innovation will address these challenges for more efficient and reliable cross-chain data availability.
- Balance between data availability and blockchain performance: The performance limitations of a blockchain can have an impact on data availability. A storage network with high throughput and low latency may excel in terms of performance, but may have limitations in terms of data availability. Future research can explore how to improve performance while ensuring data availability, and find a balance between performance and availability.
- Impact of community governance on data availability: Community governance is an important part of decentralized storage networks and can influence the development of data availability. Establishing a sound community governance mechanism and encouraging community participation and consensus building can promote the improvement of data availability. Future research can focus on the impact of community governance on data availability and explore how community governance can be optimized to promote stronger data availability.
- Combination of data availability and emerging technologies: With the emergence of emerging technologies, such as artificial intelligence, edge computing, and the Internet of Things, the combination of these technologies with decentralized storage will open up new possibilities for data availability. In the future, we can explore how to use technologies such as artificial intelligence and smart contracts to improve data availability, and explore the application of data availability in the field of edge computing and the Internet of Things.
Over time, the ecosystem of decentralized storage will continue to grow, with more nodes and users and more use cases emerging, further improving data availability and allowing more people and organizations to benefit from decentralized storage. From the perspective of data availability, different decentralized storage projects can explore deeper ecosystem synergies. By establishing a cross-project data sharing and exchange mechanism, different projects can complement each other and improve data availability and synergies across the ecosystem. This synergistic development model helps build a stronger, more sustainable decentralized storage network.
In summary, the author believes that future research and development will continue to explore technological innovation, cross-chain data availability, performance and availability balance, community governance, and emerging technology applications to further improve the data availability of decentralized storage networks. In the future, more storage network projects are likely to be adopted, adopting more advanced technologies and protocols to provide more robust data storage and access services.