Alpha3 - fleming will have sharding, alpha 2 has already but not as secure as we would wish. alpha3 increases that security. tl;dr sharding is done/being improved/will be part of the secure routing network known as safe-Fleming. Sharding had to be done before we could have a secure routing network, data chains required sharding to happen and sharding allows PARSEC to scale much simpler.
Data in a sharded network will be alpha4 though, not as tricky as we have secure message relay and all that sorted out. Alpha3 will be the most boring and the most important thing we ever release. It will be obscured by lack of bells and whistles, but underlying it is the critical components of one way of securing a fully decentralised network, none exist to date and some hopefully will in the future, but this is our version. Like tcp was boring but essential alpha3 will be the same, it will answer most of the questions and criticisms about why fully decentrlaised cannot exist, not by arguing they can, but by showing they do already and alpha3 is the worlds first.
One of these days I am gonna just make up a word and have folk ask about progress towards it and have people shout why its a critical component etc. In fact lets call it “Byzantine proof at a distance” (BPD). I can explain the details of it and show how we need BPD to carry out remote network proofs otherwise the network will fail.
_Come on BPD, we need to to happen now, we want to ask about it every weekly update and know who is working on it (Santa and the elves 
) BPD all the way 
_Of course we already have BPD as without it sharding is broken, but don’t tell just yet
Seriously though I did make up a protocol at a huge design meeting with some USA folks and Arabs in a very high level meeting once, it was something like a Time domain Refractive Internet Protocol, to handle poorly connected or partially connected comms lines, even space craft. The folks at the meeting were mad for it and realised it was essential. My Canadian co-worker never really forgave me for that one It was OK though as after a meeting all is forgotten, as long as some folk can massage their ego and show their intelligence and technical prowess, all else is forgotten
Sorry for the sarcasm here, I just find it all funny at times.