Continuous Data Availability Assurance Mechanism for Trustworthy Data Spaces

Abstract

Trustworthy Data Spaces (TDS) provide fundamental functions for data aggregation, productization, and data circulation. They are an important component of national data infrastructure. In TDS, continuous data availability is critical to ensuring stable support for data sharing, circulation, and collaborative activities. However, existing mechanisms such as log recording, evidence preservation, and compliance traceability mainly focus on business processes and operational behaviors. They cannot independently prove whether the underlying data state remains continuously available throughout the entire storage period. To address this issue, this paper proposes, for the first time, a continuous data availability assurance mechanism for TDS. The proposed mechanism is designed for multi-party collaboration and continuous state auditing. It constructs a closed-loop verification framework that covers data hosting, verification triggering, proof generation, public verification, and result evidence preservation. It transforms the continuous storage state maintained by storage service providers during the agreed period into automatically verifiable, auditable, and traceable technical evidence. To achieve continuous data availability verification, this paper further designs the WesoPoSt+ protocol. The protocol adopts techniques such as sequential challenge chains, Merkle commitments, and optimized Verifiable Delay Function (VDF) proofs to achieve public verifiability, client statelessness, and lightweight deployment. Experimental results show that the proposed mechanism can effectively support continuous data availability verification in TDS. WesoPoSt+ achieves low client-side state overhead, efficient verification, and good deployment adaptability.

Keywords

Trustworthy Data Spaces / continuous data availability / Proof of Storage-Time / assurance mechanism / public verifiability

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Higher Education Press 2026

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