The Tezos Data Availability Layer Just Activated - Here's What It Means

Tezos has officially activated its Data Availability Layer (DAL)—a foundational upgrade for scalable Layer 2 rollups. The DAL acts as a proof-of-publication system, ensuring that rollup data is publicly available, sharded, and verifiably distributed across the network. This solves the long-standing bottleneck of limited Layer 1 block space, paving the way for high-throughput applications.

Key Ideas

DAL Enables Secure, Off-Chain Data Posting for Rollups: Rollups can now offload large volumes of data using sharding and error-correcting codes. Bakers store and attest to data based on their stake, enabling decentralized, scalable data availability.
Rio Upgrade Introduces Incentives for DAL Participation: Bakers running DAL nodes receive 10% of participation rewards (provided 66% of the network’s stake attests to the data) creating strong incentives for decentralized stability and performance.

Why It Matters?

The technology allows to launch a Decentralized Data Monetization service. One example could be the data taken from IoT sensors. In this scenario the raw data could be directed to the DAL and the data access could be sold to verifiably published streams at lower costs that are available from traditional providers, targeting B2B clients who need trustworthy, high-frequency data.