Definition
A data shard is a logically distinct partition of a blockchain’s data space, designed to hold and organize transaction or rollup data without necessarily executing it. As a system component, a data shard provides bounded storage and bandwidth capacity that can be independently verified and sampled by nodes, contributing to overall data availability and scalability within a sharded or modular blockchain architecture.
In Simple Terms
A data shard is one slice of a blockchain’s total data space. Each slice stores part of the network’s data so that no single component has to handle everything. Nodes can check each shard’s data, and together all shards form the full data layer of a scalable blockchain system.
Context and Usage
The term data shard is primarily used in discussions of sharded and modular blockchains, especially in relation to how networks scale data throughput and guarantee data availability for rollups. It appears in protocol specifications, research on blobspace organization, and node architecture descriptions, where the focus is on how data is partitioned, addressed, and verified across multiple shards rather than concentrated in a single monolithic data layer.