In this blog, we'll look at what actually data availability is and why it is important to scale the blockchain ecosystem.

Need of data availability

As we all know, that the blockchain technology is famous for a significant challenge know as the blockchain trillema. The blockchain trillema states that it is impossible for a blockchain to achieve security, scalability and decentralization at the same time.The concept data availabilty tries to implement a solution to solve the problem of data availability.

The idea of data availability is to make sure that the data is available to verify whenever a node requires it.

What is data availability?

Let's take an example of how rollups work, for instance optimistic rollups helps ethereum scale by performing the computation off-chain and publishing the batches of transactions to the ethereum blockchain. This helps ethereum scale by increasing throughput and reducing gas.

But we still need a way to verify if the result posted by a rollup is in fact correct or not. This requires each rollup to post the compressed transaction data - CALLDATA to the ethereum blockchain which can then be verified and challenged later on if the sequencer is found behaving maliciously. This availabilty of data helps in making sure that the rollups are behaving as expected and that no malicious act is being performed.

But storing a large amount of data can be problematic as it requires each full node to download and store complete block data which leads to scalability issues as blockchain keeps getting bigger and bigger.

Data availabilty solutions

• Blockchain level solutions

  Several solutions have been developed to address the problem of data availability effectively. One such solution is Data availability sampling(DAS). DAS involves randomly selecting nodes on the network to store data, reducing the resources required to maintain data availability. DAS reduces the amount of data each node has to download which significantly improves scalability.

  Another essential concept in data availability is erasure coding. This technique plays a vital role in ensuring data integrity by adding redundant pieces of data, known as erasure codes, to the original dataset. In the event of data loss or corruption, these erasure codes can be used to reconstruct the original data, enhancing the overall reliability of blockchain networks.

• Off chain data availability solutions

  An off-chain data availability can be another solution that has emerged as a viable approaches to address data availability challenges. One such solution is Data Availability Committees (DACs), which consist of a group of nodes responsible for storing and verifying off-chain data. DACs play a crucial role in ensuring the availability and integrity of data outside the blockchain, contributing to a more robust and scalable blockchain ecosystem.

Danksharding: A Game-Changer

Ethereum just implemented EIP-4844 aka Danksharding and it reduced the gas fees on rollups by almost 10 times. Danksharding aims to reduce the cost of data posted by rollups on ethereum blockchain which eventually leads to cheaper gas fess on rollups and higher scalability. Danksharding introduces a new sharding architecture that leverages binary large objects (BLOBs) for data storage. By utilizing blobs to store information, danksharding significantly reduces storage requirements for individual nodes while enhancing the scalability and performance of the network.

The rise of data availability layers

Data availability layers emerges as a significant step towards the scalability of blockchains. Data availability layers seperates the data storage and execution functions into distinct layers. By doing so, it allows blockchain networks to achieve greater flexibility and scalability. Additionally, they improve security by reducing vulnerabilities and making the network less susceptible to attacks.

Celestia: The first modular blockchain

Celestia is a modular network that adopts a modular approach, aiming to address scalability by solving the problem of data availability. This network differentiates itself by separating execution from consensus and implementing data availability sampling (DAS) as a core feature. As official celestia documentation says: Celestia is a modular data availability (DA) network that securely scales with the number of users.

Rollups and layer2 blockchains can use celestia as a network for publishing and making transaction data available for anyone to download.

Celestia is the first modular blockchain. The way modular blockchain works is that instead of one blockchain doing everything, modular blockchains specialize and optimize to perform a given function. This structure provides flexibility and scalability.

The Data Availability (DA) layer in Celestia stands out as a solution to a longstanding challenge. In permissionless blockchain networks, ensuring accessible and verifiable transaction data is crucial. Celestia’s DA layer introduces innovative features like Data Availability Sampling (DAS) and Namespaced Merkle Trees (NMTs), which collectively accelerate its scalability while ensuring security.

For more information about celestia, check out celestia official docs here.

Celestia docs

Conclusion

In summary, the future of blockchain appears to be modular, with the integration of new modular blockchain systems into the ecosystem. This integration is expected to enhance scalability and reduce transaction costs, thereby fostering widespread user adoption.