Problem

The data retrievability problem:

<aside> đź“Ś How can clients delegating data storage to a network of SPs have the guarantee that the retrieval requests are fulfilled (ie, guaranteed retrieval)?

</aside>

Goal

We have already designed an MVP to guarantee retrieval (see Retriev.org). That protocol relies on the help of semi-trusted parties (”referees”). In this effort, we want to design a protocol without dependency on “special parties” (eg, referees) to improve the decentralization feature of our solution to the data retrievability problem.

Outcome

No clear yet (paper + proof of concept implementation? FIP?)

Timeline

No clear yet, developed in Q2

Team

Researchers: @Irene(DRI), @Luca , @Nicola

Engineers: ?

PM: ?

Protocol (WIP, brainstorming phase).

Intuition:

in order to mine a block, the provider needs to add a “proof of delivery” for the retrieval requests it received. If we have this, we can state that the blockchain itself takes the place of the referee committee and “slash” the bad providers (ie, they don’t win the block reward if they do not provide the retrieval service).

Protocol (just a draft for now):

  1. Retrieval deals: A client that is interested in accessing a file with public tag T that is stored by the network proposes a retrieval deal. Any SP can accept the deal (the acceptance messages are on-chain) and from now it is responsible for answering retrieval requests for the file from the client.