Data Availability Sampling is a method of verifying data availability without needing to download full blocks.
Data Availability Sampling is a method of verifying data availability without needing to download full blocks. By using DAS, light clients can sample small, random subsets of data to probabilistically ensure the complete dataset is accessible. This provides a secure and efficient way to verify that data is available across a peer-to-peer network.
Anyone can use DAS to verify that the blockchain is operating as it is meant to. For example, if someone decides to give themselves an extra 100 tokens, everyone can use DAS to verify that the person just made up this transaction and rejected it. This is because they all have the ability to verify the real data through data availability sampling.
With traditional verification, the only way to be sure of a valid transaction is to download all the data. As the blockchain gets bigger this becomes harder and harder requiring massive computers. Traditional light clients attempt to solve this by having access to a trusted full node, but traditional light clients have no way of independently checking if the full node they are connected to is lying to them or not. With Data Availability Sampling, this is not the case. The light client possesses the ability to independently check and verify whether data is in fact available or not.
About Author: Anurag Arjun, Co-Founder
Anurag Arjun is the co-founder of Avail, a web3 infrastructure layer designed to allow modular execution layers to scale and interoperate in a trust-minimized way. He entered the blockchain industry in 2017, founding Matic Network, which evolved into Polygon Labs. By 2020, he launched Avail within the Polygon ecosystem, utilizing his background in research, economics, and engineering. In March 2023, he led Avail's development from Polygon to focus on developing a more modular and scalable blockchain stack for the web3 community.
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