Goodwill, best effort infrastructure and assumptions cannot be relied upon to provide data availability. The situation becomes different when accountability is not clear, information is gradually lost, not by attacks, but due to indifference.
@Walrus 🦭/acc modifies this by rendering availability a mutual and binding network property. Storage nodes are not trusted to act in the correct way, they must demonstrate it. The data should be made retrievable and the retrievability is constantly checked with cryptographic proofs which are associated with financial incentives.
This transforms the availability of a service that is optional to a quantifiable network guarantee. When the data cannot be established to exist, the system considers it as a failure and not as acceptable down time.
By making availability a shared discipline, Walrus constructs a churn resistant, operator-exit resistant, and market changing resistant infrastructure. Perseverance is no longer presupposed. It is enforced.
