You must not know this silently growing ecological kingdom: Arweave has been online for 3 years. So far, there have been more than 200 applications based on the Arweave network, involving social networks, infrastructure, content distribution, and verification tools. Etc. multiple categories.
Written by: LeftOfCenter
Knowing that the previous discussion titled ” Is there a place to permanently store data? ” has received more than 980,000 views. Although the hot reviews are full of amazing brains, what we can see is the information The problem of long-term storage is helpless and staying away.
After all, Internet storage products that are currently well-known to most people are not reliable. Once the operation team behind the product loses control, data will be lost, and self-purchasing hard drives to save data also has the risk of hard disk damage and unreadable. .
But in fact, as early as two years before this issue was raised-in 2017, the Arweave team dedicated to creating a ” permanent storage of information ” solution was established, and at the beginning of its establishment, it threw out a very ambitious vision: Permanently preserve human knowledge and history. But for a long time, because the product is not yet mature, Arweave has not really entered the public eye.
In the past three years or so, we have seen Arweave progress towards its goals. As the network effect of the developer ecology gradually emerges, more and more web applications appear on the Arweave protocol, no matter exquisite or rough, a gradually approaching complete ecological puzzle begins to appear gradually .
So far, there have been more than 200 applications based on the Arweave network, covering multiple categories such as social networks, infrastructure, content distribution, and verification tools.
As the Arweave development team will release version 2.4.0.0 today, introducing a new consensus mechanism SPoRA , this agreement may increase the number of data copied in the network to 100-1000 times the order of magnitude, and at the same time more on the network The calculation is transferred to storage. This will be an important development milestone.
It’s time to summarize the development status of Arweave ecology.
What is Arweave?
Arweave was founded in 2017 and graduated from the Techstars Startup Acceleration Program in Berlin in April 2018. As a blockchain-based file storage protocol , Arweave has the characteristics of one-time payment and permanent file storage. Through a set of simple economic incentive rules, miners can store data for a long time. Internet users can use the Arweave browser plug-in to permanently store digital files and data such as web pages, emails, and social media posts on the blockchain.
At present, the data loss rate on the Internet is very high. Data shows that more than 95% of the information on the Internet will no longer exist every 20 years. This is the problem that the blockchain data storage protocol Arweave wants to solve, that is, to provide a permanent data storage solution for the Internet, and based on an encryption incentive mechanism, to encourage developers to build a permanent application ecosystem based on the protocol.
Permanent storage is the core function of AR. On the Arweave protocol, permanent storage of 1 GB of data consumes 2.45 AR, which costs about $ 19 (due to the fluctuation of AR prices, storage costs will fluctuate to a certain extent).
Arweave can guarantee the perpetual data retention, stable price, and cheap. Relying on blockchain technology, the data stored in AR also has the characteristics of verifiable and traceable, which is very suitable as a “Turing paper tape” for trusted computing.
The Arweave protocol introduced Smartweave smart contracts, which is a Javascript-based scripting language stored on the Arweave network.
Unlike the smart contracts of Ethereum (and other public chains), Smartweave is not executed by miner nodes, but is downloaded and executed locally by the caller. Since the caller node has executed (and verified) all the transactions in the history of the contract, he does not need to trust or rely on any nodes to obtain credible calculation results (that is, the new state of the smart contract). Therefore, every Smartweave contract can be regarded as Arweave’s second-layer chain , and executing smart contracts is the full synchronization and verification of the second-layer chain.
This design solves the scalability/computing cost problem of the DApp business logic layer of the Arweave protocol. Smart contracts can almost unrestrictedly contain any complex calculations, and only need to pay a very low marginal cost, because usually the caller’s computing equipment has been purchased or long-term leased.
In addition, the caller can form a snapshot of the contract state by naming the result state of the contract. If the caller is trustworthy (for example, if the caller is a smart contract developer), subsequent callers can specify the state snapshot as the initial state. Only the transactions after the snapshot need to be executed to solve the problem of state explosion.
Regarding Arweave’s technical principles and development prospects, Liu Yi , the founder of Cdot Network and partner of Random Capital, once wrote an article for Chain News, ” The potential of Arweave is to rejuvenate the Library of Alexandria, not a Filecoin substitute “, specifically introducing it.
Arweave will undergo a major technological upgrade recently. Its development team released version 2.4.0.0 , which will activate the hard fork at block height 633720 at 2021-02-24 11:50 UTC, and will introduce a new consensus mechanism SPoRA , which can be fundamentally stored in the network The number of data replications increased to 100-1000 times the order of magnitude, while more calculations on the network were transferred to storage.
In addition, Verto Exchange co-founder and CTO John Letey recently released a SmartWeave patch, which supports the embedding of smart contracts in any asset created on Arweave. Just add two tags to convert data formats such as web pages, images, videos, and audios into profit-sharing tokens or NFTs. After that, you can trade on The Verto Protocol, just like any other asset.
Profit sharing token PST and its community PSC
It is worth noting that Arweave has adopted a Profit Sharing Token (PST) mechanism , which can fundamentally improve the way developers create network services.
In this mechanism, a permanent application developed based on the Arweave protocol can issue a ” profit sharing token PST “. Whenever a user interacts with the application and generates a transaction on the Arweave network, a specific PST token will be issued Holders send tips billed in Arweave’s native token AR, and the allocated amount will be based on the share ratio of the PST token.
The PST mode is of great significance to both the developers and users of Web applications.
First of all, as long as the developed Web application has sufficient use value, developers can get paid for their work without performing any other operations, and support the immediate realization of sales in the secondary market.
Second, it is fundamentally different from the ICO model. This profit-sharing token mechanism is a more practical investment model. In the past ICO model, the development team of a project usually crowdfunded based on future ideas. In this case, investors often need to believe that the team has the ability to build and launch a product, and then invest in the system through ICO. A token of a certain value. The shortcomings of this model are obvious, resulting in a large number of unrealizable and even false projects.
The profit-sharing token mechanism is completely opposite to the ICO model. Only when a transaction actually occurs will tip payment be generated. This means that token holder developers can obtain tip income after the product is launched. This is a well-established business model.
When the PST token is launched on the exchange, community members can become the holder of the token by purchasing, betting and sharing the future success of the application. At this time, investors buy a reliable and predictable micro-dividend, which is collected in real time every day and can be sold for cash in the secondary market.
Furthermore, Arweave also proposed a profit sharing community PSC (Profit Sharing Communities). Developers issue specific tasks by rewarding PST tokens. Contributors receive tasks that they are interested in and are good at. After completion, they can obtain shares representing the application. PST tokens for rights and income rights.
In this way, these applications can widely absorb external contributors, and at the same time, distribute the project’s PST equity tokens to active community builders.
Users who want to participate in the PSC construction of the Arweave profit sharing community can claim tasks here . The categories currently involved are bugs, designs, functions, etc.
What are the PSCs in the profit sharing community?
At present, the number of applications created based on the Arweave protocol has exceeded 250 , and the categories include content distribution platforms, social platforms, file storage solutions, developer tools, archive robots, decentralized exchanges, etc.
Financial applications
Verto (Popular App)
Verto is an exchange based on Verto Protocol, created by the development team th8ta , and is still in the beta version of ALPHA.
Verto is a decentralized exchange dedicated to trading PST tokens based on Arweave. Currently, 10 PST tokens have been listed. Verto also released the scene mining tool Astatine , which can be used by the creators of the profit sharing community to reward early adopters and supporters with profit sharing tokens.
Verto recently added support for the Ethereum bridge, allowing users to purchase profit sharing tokens PST with one click. Specifically, the Ethereum bridge will allow users to exchange ETH, AR and any PST tokens at will through the Verto exchange. In addition, the new bridge will also allow holders of Verto’s native token VRT to receive Ethereum-denominated transaction fees.
As one of the ecological projects of the Arweave agreement, Verto recently received a Pre-A round of financing. Investors include 1kx, Variant and Arweave teams, Liquidity Ventures, Alex Pack, Jack Herrick, Thomas Bailey, Scott Moore, Garrett MacDonald and Rob Chan .
The development team th8ta recently released the arweave.js library, which can achieve an Arweave wallet experience similar to the MetaMask experience.
everPay
everPay is a trusted cross-chain settlement protocol based on the Arweave network and using a storage-based computing paradigm. everPay will lock the encrypted assets on other public chains in smart contracts and map them to the corresponding assets, thus enabling users to transfer and make payments based on specific protocols. everPay transaction costs are very low, thousands of transactions only cost $0.05. In addition, everPay has no TPS limit, and the size of TPS depends on the application architecture and server performance of each protocol.
everPay has just released the Beta version.
Limestone
Limestone is a decentralized oracle that provides price data for multiple financial agreements, and provides affordable financial data storage, efficient query processing and permanent availability solutions for the Arweave network.
Limestone’s pledge mechanism guarantees a robust and fair dispute resolution solution and encourages community members to evaluate reports and report errors. Limestone can even achieve cross-chain bridging and link user identities.
Content distribution applications
Mirror.xyz
Mirror.xyz is a content publishing product created by Denis Nazarov, a former partner of a16z crypto. It combines DAO, Web3, and NFT to build an ownership economic model, providing content creators with a set of crowdfunding tools to solve creators’ When it comes to money, it is difficult to realize the value of content. Early investors can even earn content in the future through their keen sense of smell.
Mirror uses Arweave to store data to achieve permanent storage, including the content published by the creator and all related changes, and all the information needed to verify the authenticity of the author. Arweave not only provides permanent data storage, but also only pays once for the first upload.
The platform has just recently migrated its registered token Mirror Write Token (WRITE) to the mainnet.
This is a content crowdfunding platform that combines NFT and ownership economy, which has great potential for getting out of the circle. It may have a revolutionary impact on the field of content creation and distribution. For the specific introduction of this product, you can refer to the reading: “We have seen the revolution of content creation and the dawn of the Web 3 era from the new product Mirror.”
ArcLight
ArcLight is a peer-to-peer music and audio content distribution platform built on the Arweave network. Creators can use ArcLight to upload encrypted content (including singles, albums, podcasts and sound effects), and at the same time set their own prices for downloads, eliminating the centralized middlemen in the traditional music industry.
Bandplay
Bandplay is a music platform owned by the community. Music lovers can fund their favorite musicians. At the same time, if they are optimistic about the future success of a certain musical work, they can also invest in it.
Myco
Myco is a communication publishing platform based on community ownership, which can be owned and governed by users. In addition, Myco also provides a set of tools to facilitate user-owned community creation and distribution of value.
OpenBits
OpenBits is an open source software package publishing platform that aims to provide open source contributors with a more diverse return.
W3Stream
W3Stream is a video streaming platform based on the Arweave network. Content creators can directly get rewards from viewers through their works, while supporters share part of the creator’s income.
Storage and archiving applications
Permanent Archives (Popular Applications)
The Permanent Archive is dedicated to capturing important political and historical information on the Arweave permanent network. The first data set was stored in January 2021. The stored content was the U.S. Capitol riots on January 6, 2021. It contained 12GB of pictures, videos and streaming media from Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch platforms. You can access the content by accessing app.ardrive.io and attaching the following drive ID “afa4f6e1–2401–46e1-ae2e-0d84926394e9”.
ArDrive (popular application)
ArDrive is a full-featured permanent file storage application , a decentralized version of Dropbox, with privacy and anti-censorship features, and can provide a more secure permanent data storage solution.
Sarcophagus (Popular Application)
Sarcophagus is a smart contract network hosted on Arweave, allowing users to create a universal, autonomously controlled, digital version of the disabled switch, thereby providing a defense mechanism against digital threats. Sarcophagus use cases include the storage of wills and testamentary documents and password recovery.
Dead man’s switch is a switch that can automatically act when the operator loses his behavior, such as death, loss of consciousness, or leaving the control device. Originally refers to switches used in vehicles or machines, and later also used in virtual fields such as computer software.
Permabot
Permabot is a Twitter bot service dedicated to archiving tweets, not just URLs. Once archived, the content will be permanently stored on the Arweave network, and users can re-access it at any time. The public beta of Permabot will be released in the first quarter of 2021.
Gitopia
Gitopia is a decentralized version of the code repository service , which ensures that the developer’s code will never be lost or damaged maliciously or unintentionally. Gitopia, previously known as dgit, is currently used by most profit-sharing communities to host open source code libraries. In addition, the code repository of the Arweave development team is also mapped to Gitopia.
Nest.Land
Nest.Land is a completely decentralized community project that supports the publication of a permanent and undeletable Deno module registry on the Arweave network. By using Arweave’s permanent storage capabilities, Nest.Land provides developers with a truly reliable storage solution and access to important Deno software packages.
Infrastructure tools
Amplify
Amplify is a decentralized economic solution based on the Arweave gateway, designed to provide incentives for trusted gateway operators. As an Arweave gateway consensus protocol , the Amplify protocol uses pledge and voting mechanisms to ensure the effective operation of trusted gateways and can increase the query speed on Arweave by more than 20 times.
ArGo
ArGo is a permanent deployment tool that allows developers to deploy permanent applications with one click. It supports Angular&Next web applications and DNS integration. ArGo supports collaboration, automation, and can integrate with GitHub and GitLab, allowing one-stop maintenance of multiple development versions and tracking logs of the application, ensuring that it can never be changed or lost.
ArGo is still in the Beta version, and the current number of users has exceeded 100 developer users, and more than 200 dapps have been deployed.
CommunityXYZ
CommunityXYZ is a decentralized dashboard and governance platform dedicated to profit sharing community projects. Project founders can create and manage communities on CommunityXYZ, publish specific tasks that provide PST token compensation, and potential contributors can receive and complete tasks Get paid.
Koi
Koi is a data layer protocol for building an open source code library, which uses an attention incentive mechanism to promote contributions to the permanent network.
Verification Service
ArVerify
ArVerify is a real identity verification tool that can verify whether the account is a real person, a fake or a bot. With just one line of code, ArVerify can easily integrate existing DApps.
Feather
Feather is a cloud computing solution based on the Arweave permanent network, allowing developers to use cloud services to execute code in a safe manner, and the execution of the code can also obtain economic incentives.
fQR Weave
fQR Weave is an anti-counterfeiting solution that combines QR code and Arweave permanent storage. fQR Weave has obtained more than 7000 academic certifications.
WeaveID
WeaveID is an Arweave wallet solution that allows users to log in to the Arweave wallet based on their email address and password. This means that users can use WeaveID to log in to the app from any device without having to deal with key files. For developers, adding WeaveID to the app only takes a few minutes.
social media
Decent.Land
Decent.Land is a new type of social network platform based on the Arweave permanent network. It is currently under development. Users can join the network through the registration waiting list.
The recent history of Tesla’s investment of 1.5 billion US dollars in Bitcoin has been permanently stored through Decent.Land.
On February 22nd, decent.land released the decentland-js API, allowing users to call the API to interact with the DecentLand protocol.
Since all applications in the Arweave network are open protocols, any permanent application in the network can access decent.land and increase the users of decent.land. Through the benefit-sharing community model, it will bring benefits from the integration of the protocol developers.
squad.vision
squad.vision is a social network protocol based on the Arweave permanent network, which was also developed by th8ta, the team behind the Verto exchange.
Based on this agreement, users can generate their own PST token QUAD . Once the user follows another user, it will automatically mint a PST token and send it to the other party; when a user publishes a post, an NFT is generated. NFT can be jointly owned by multiple QUAD token holders or sold to other users; if someone likes the post, QUAD token holders can earn income in the form of tips.
Whether it’s likes, following or creating content, squad.vision can add value to these actions, making them a scarce resource. This means that users are motivated to focus only on people who are valuable to them, or they will return Followers; this means that users can become shareholders of other community members, and social operations can generate revenue. As a community ownership experiment, all profit-sharing tokens QUAD will be airdropped to users who hold more than 0.1 AR.
DAO
ARCA DAO
ARCA DAO is a DAO organization in the Arweave network. It operates independently. Its members are long-term miners, developers, and supporters from the Arweave community. The goal is to coordinate, plan, and allocate funds for projects and programs that benefit the Arweave community in the long run. ARCA DAO currently has 17 senior community members. Membership is not fixed. New members can join and old members can leave. The core Arweave team has donated 25,000 DAI to ARCA DAO and provided follow-up funding.
Financing status
So far, Arweave has completed multiple rounds of financing, many of which are star crypto funds.
Arweave’s early investors include 1kx and Techstars . In June 2018, Arweave raised US$8.7 million through ICO.
November 2019, Arweave completed $ 5.0 million financing, encryption asset investment institutions a16z lead investor, venture Union Square (Union Square Ventures) and Multicoin Capital investment parameters.
In March 2020, Arweave completed a new round of US$8.3 million in financing. Investors included Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Union Square Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures, who led Arweave’s last US$5 million financing round. The funds from this round of financing will be used to expand Arweave’s community ecological construction plan.
In February 2021, the venture capital firm Version One Ventures announced that it has invested in Arweave, and the investment amount has not been disclosed.
Arweave has always attached great importance to the support of the developer ecosystem, including incubators and funding programs. Recently, Arweave announced that it will start a six-week open web incubator Open Web Foundry on March 1st. Projects participating in the event can receive expert training and support, as well as the opportunity to obtain a total of US$100,000 in official investment and Arweave The investment quota of other investors in the ecosystem. The winning project will be submitted to Gitcoin by the Arweave core team before April 9th, and then the official will discuss with each project and its founder individually.
With the development of the developer ecosystem, there will be more Web applications Arweave protocol, these applications based on Arweave agreement known as the “profit-sharing applications” (Profit Sharing Applications). Like Arweave, these applications have some specific attributes, including permanence, based on a token, governed by the community, developers and users in the community have the same economic motivation, and can share the future success of the community and its applications .
Reference materials:
https://medium.com/everfinance/everpay-a-trusted-cross-chain-payment-protocol-eba4a0af7d66
https://twitter.com/samecwilliams/status/1361817571410984966
https://www.chainnews.com/articles/124011762292.htm
https://github.com/ArweaveTeam/arweave/releases/tag/N.2.4.0.0