How Does ‘Data Availability’ Relate to the Security of Both Sharding and Layer 2 Rollups?
Data availability is crucial because it ensures that all necessary transaction data is published to the Layer 1 chain. For rollups, this data is needed for users to reconstruct the off-chain state and for fraud-proof or validity-proof verification.
Without data availability, a malicious sequencer could hide the data for an invalid state, making it impossible to challenge. In sharding, data availability ensures all nodes can access the data from all shards to maintain the overall network state.
Glossar
Availability
Latency ⎊ Availability, within cryptocurrency and derivatives, fundamentally concerns the speed at which a system can respond to requests, impacting order execution and arbitrage opportunities.
Sharding
Fragmentation ⎊ Sharding, within cryptocurrency networks, represents a database partitioning technique designed to enhance transaction throughput and scalability by dividing the blockchain into smaller, more manageable segments known as shards.
Data Availability
Requirement ⎊ For decentralized systems, the ability for all participating nodes to access and verify the entirety of the transaction history is fundamental to trustless operation.