When the data economy grows to a certain level, people are widely and deeply involved in it, and everyone is inevitably involved in different data storage activities. In addition, with the advent of the Web3 era, most technology fields will slowly start to upgrade or transform in these years, and decentralized storage, as an important infrastructure for Web3, will land more application scenarios in the future. For example, we are familiar with social data, short videos, live streaming, smart cars, etc. The data storage network behind them will also adopt the decentralized storage model in the future.
Data is the core asset of the Web3 era, and user ownership of data is a key feature of Web3. The independent data availability layer will be an indispensable part of Web3, allowing users to securely own data and the assets it represents, and dispelling the various concerns of ordinary users about the security of their assets.
From decentralized storage to a data availability layer
In the past, data was stored in the cloud through traditional centralized methods, where data were usually stored intact on centralized servers. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is the originator of cloud storage and is currently the world’s largest cloud storage provider. With the passage of time, users’ demand for personal information security and data storage has been increasing, especially after the data leakage of some large data operators, the drawbacks of centralized storage began to emerge gradually, and the traditional storage methods are no longer able to meet the current market demand. In addition, with the advancing of the Web3 era and the development of blockchain applications, data have become diverse and the scale of data has grown. The dimensions of personal network data have become more comprehensive and valuable, making data security and data privacy more important, and the requirements for data storage have also started to rise.
Decentralized data storage has emerged. Decentralized storage is one of the first and most talked about infrastructures in the Web3 space, with the earliest solution being Filecoin, which went live in 2017. Decentralization is fundamentally different from centralization compared to AWS, which establishes and maintains its own data center consisting of multiple servers, and users who need to purchase storage services can pay AWS directly. Decentralized storage, on the other hand, follows the sharing economy and uses a massive amount of edge storage devices to provide storage services, with data actually stored on the storage provided by Provider nodes.
As a result, the decentralized storage project owner has no control over this data. The fundamental difference between decentralized storage and AWS is whether users have control over their own data. In such a system, where there is no centralized control, the data is highly secure.
Decentralized storage is primarily a storage business model that stores files or sets of files in pieces in a storage space via distributed storage. Decentralized storage is important because it solves all the pain points of Web2 centralized cloud storage, is more responsive to the needs of the Big Data era, can store unstructured edge data at lower cost and higher efficiency, and empowers various emerging technologies. Therefore, decentralized storage can also be said to be the cornerstone of Web3 development.
There are currently two common types of decentralized storage projects, one is to use storage for mining purposes with the aim of producing blocks. The problem with this model is that the storage and downloading done on the chain slow down the actual usage, and it can often take hours to download a single photo. The other is to use one or several nodes as the centralized node, which can be verified by the centralized node before storage and downloading, which can also cause loss of stored data if the centralized node is attacked or damaged.
Compared to the first project, MEMO’s storage layered mechanism solves the storage and download speed problem very well, making the storage and download speed in the order of seconds. Compared to the second project, MEMO adopts the role of Keeper to randomly select the verification nodes, avoiding the emergence of centralization and ensuring security at the same time. Furthermore, MEMO’s original RAFI technology, which enables repair capabilities to be improved several times, makes storage much more secure, reliable and available.
DA (Data Availability) is essentially light nodes that do not need to store all the data or maintain the state of the entire network in a timely manner without participating in consensus. For such nodes, efficient ways to ensure data availability and accuracy are required. This is because the heart of blockchain lies in the immutability of data. The blockchain is able to ensure that data is consistent across the network. Consensus nodes will have a tendency to be more centralized in order to ensure performance. Other nodes need to obtain consensus-confirmed availability data via DA. The independent data availability layer effectively eliminates the single point of failure problem and maximizes data security.
In addition, Layer2 scaling solutions such as zkRollup also require the use of a data availability layer. Layer2 as the execution layer leverages Layer1 as the consensus layer, and in addition to updating the resultant state of bulk transactions to Layer1, it also needs to ensure the availability of the original transaction data to ensure that the state of the Layer2 network can be restored when no provers are willing to generate proofs, avoiding the extreme case of user assets being locked in Layer2. However, if the original data is stored directly in Layer1, it is contrary to the function of Layer1 as the consensus layer under the modularity of the blockchain network. Therefore, it is more reasonable to store the data in a dedicated data availability layer and only record the Merkel root calculated on this data in the consensus layer, which is also a longer-term inevitable trend.
Independent data availability layer analysis-MEMO
MEMO is a new generation of high-capacity, high-availability enterprise-class storage networks built by aggregating global edge storage devices through algorithmic features. the team was established in September 2017 and focuses on the field of decentralized storage. MEMO is a highly secure and reliable, large-scale decentralized data storage protocol based on blockchain peer-to-peer technology, which enables large-scale data storage. Unlike one-to-many centralized storage, MEMO enables de-centralized, many-to-many storage operations. In the main chain of MEMO, a smart contract is mainly kept to bind all nodes. The uploading of storage data, the matching of storage nodes, the normal operation of the system, the operation of the penalty mechanism and a series of other key operations are all controlled by the smart contract.
On the technical side, among the existing decentralized storage systems, represented by Filecoin, Arweave, Storj, etc., they allow all computer users to connect and rent their unused hard disk space for a fee or tokens. Although all are decentralized storage, they all have their own characteristics. MEMO is different in that it uses erasure coding and data repair technology to improve storage functionality, making data more secure and storage and downloads more efficient. Creating a more purely practical decentralized storage system is the ultimate goal of MEMO.
MEMO optimizes the Provider’s incentives while enhancing the storage's ease of use. In addition to the User and Provider roles, Keeper has been introduced to protect nodes from malicious attacks. The system maintains economic balance through multiple roles constraining each other and is capable of supporting high capacity, high availability enterprise-class commercial storage uses, providing secure and reliable cloud storage services for NFT, GameFi, DeFi, SocialFi, etc. It is also compatible with Web2 and perfectly blends blockchain and cloud storage.
MEMO is a new-gen blockchain decentralized cloud storage protocol that organizes global edge storage nodes to provide users with safe, reliable and highly available storage services.
All Comments