Celestia Improvement Proposals (CIPs)

Abstract

The term data availability isn’t as straightforward as it should be and could lead to misunderstandings within the community. To address this, this CIP proposes replacing data availability with data publication.

Motivation

The term data availability has caused confusion within the community due to its lack of intuitive clarity. For instance, in Celestia’s Glossary, there isn’t a clear definition of data availability; instead, it states that data availability addresses the question of whether this data has been published. Additionally, numerous community members have misinterpreted data availability as meaning data storage.

Specification

The key words “MUST”, “MUST NOT”, “REQUIRED”, “SHALL”, “SHALL NOT”, “SHOULD”, “SHOULD NOT”, “RECOMMENDED”, “NOT RECOMMENDED”, “MAY”, and “OPTIONAL” in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119 and RFC 8174.

The term data availability is RECOMMENDED to be renamed to data publication.

Data availability in existing works, such as research papers and docs, and cohesive terms, such as data availability sampling, MAY retain the existing wording.

Rationale

Motivations:

• Data publication is the act of making data publicly accessible. In Celestia’s context, it means the block data was actually published to the network and ready to be accessed, downloaded, and verified. This aligns more precisely with the intended meaning, which revolves around whether data has been published.
• The community already favors and commonly uses the term data publication.
• Data publication maintains a similar structure to data availability, making it easier for those familiar with the latter term to transition.

Alternative designs:

• Proof of publication: While intuitive, it differs in structure from data availability and may be too closely associated with terms like proof of work, potentially causing confusion within consensus-related mechanisms.
• Data availability proof: While logically coherent, it may create issues when used in conjunction with other terms, as the emphasis falls on “proof”. For instance, “verify a rollup’s data availability” and “verify a rollup’s data availability proof” might not refer to the same concept.
• Data caching: While indicative of the intended time frame of the existence of proof of publication, the term “caching” is not widely adopted within the context of blockchain networks.

Copyright

Copyright and related rights waived via CC0.