Over the years, the way people store their data has evolved from simple hard drive storage to cloud storage solutions that are mostly controlled by vendors such as Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. While these data storages are convenient, some users worry about security since centralized companies hold their data.
With this problem in mind, the founders of Arweave thought that decentralized and permanent file storage may be the answer. However, data can still be lost in decentralized networks due to various reasons such as user negligence and hackers. This is one of the problems Arweave tries to solve with their crypto technology.
The goal of the Arweave platform is to create a space where developers and users can archive and access sites and sources anytime they want for as long as they can. In other words, it aims to be a global and permanent hard drive using decentralized network storage.
Read on and learn more about Arweave’s native token as well as the tech within its network here at Cryptoshimbun.
An overview of Arweave cryptocurrency
The Arweave (AR) coin is the utility token used throughout the Arweave network to pay the network miners. Also, users who wish to store data within the network should purchase AR to gain permission. It has a maximum supply of 66 million AR.
As of October 2021, more than 63 million AR have already been minted which leaves 3 million as the remaining mintable coins. The token was initially sold at $0.73 each but is now sold at $60.57 each. An all-time high price of $74.03 was recorded last September 10, 2021, on CoinMarketCap.
Arweave founder and team
Arweave is led by its CEO, Sam Willians who is a PhD candidate in Computer Science from the University of Kent. Its CTO, Jesper Noehr has over two decades of experience in the field of technology and is also the founder of BitBucket which is a code hosting and collaboration tool that lets you share code segments and build third-party apps using any development language.
Sebastian Campos Groth, its COO specializes in business development and project management which gave Arweave a background in venture capital. The rest of the Arweave team consists of competent technical experts and developers such as Willian Jones, India Raybould, Damon Sweeney and Jon Sherry.
The tech within Arweave’s network
Check out what technologies Arweave uses that help in delivering fast and efficient storage below:
Blockweave
Blockweave is Arweave’s data structure where nodes are connected to validate blocks of transactions and update the network. It operates like any blockchain but Blockweave is more scalable and does not require the whole network to validate blocks. Instead, it uses the Proof of Access consensus mechanism which you will learn as you read on.
Various types of nodes operate within Blockweave and they all receive rewards in the form of AR tokens. Check out the different work each node can do below:
- Rent out hard drive space
- Replicate valuable data
- Validate blocks
Succinct Random Proof of Access
Arweave’s Proof of Access validates sets of blocks by linking them to multiple previous blocks from the network. With this, new nodes do not have to sync the whole network, and they only have to download the latest block instead. Since validation is easier, less energy is needed to maintain the network.
Blockhash
Each block consists of a blockhash and a wallet list. A Blockhash contains not just the hash of the previous block, but also the hash of all previous blocks. This makes it easier and faster for the nodes to validate transactions. A wallet list, on the other hand, consists of all active wallets which allow transactions to be verified quicker.
Wildfire
Wildfire is Arweave’s incentive system that aids in fast block creation and sharing. In this system, nodes that provide great service and accept data from others quickly will receive a higher rank while those who will classify as the lowest rank will be removed from the network. This ensures that data storage and retrieval will always be fast and optimized.
Blockshadows
Most blockchains require sending of both the hash of the previous block and the hash of the wallet to allow the entire block data to be shared to all the nodes. This process leads to larger block sizes that slow down the network’s transmission rate.
In Arweave, Blockshadows partially strips down data while still allowing nodes to reach validation and consensus. So, rather than sending huge amounts of data across the network, it decouples transactions from the blocks. Doing this makes it possible for the network to make 5,000 transactions per second.
Bundled Transactions
Bundled Transactions mixes multiple transactions into one before it is uploaded on the main network. This tech can make the Arweave storage near ‘infinite’.
SmartWeave ‘Lazy’ Smart Contracts
Traditional smart contracts used by most blockchains like Ethereum let nodes process or reject transactions. SmartWeave ‘Lazy’ Smart Contracts, on the other hand, uses a different process where validations are pushed to the smart contract users instead of nodes.
The smart contracts are placed inside the Arweave blocks then the users will evaluate prior transactions until reaching the end of the network. Using this frees up validators within the network.
Permaweb
Permaweb is a collection of Arweave’s decentralized apps (dApps) and documents. One dApp in the Permaweb is the Ardrive, which allows users to save data permanently for a certain fee that depends on the size of data you want to store.
You only have to pay the fee once for your data to be permanently stored. The price for 1 GB worth of data is $5 which is a lot more expensive than Amazon’s which costs $0.276 per 1 GB. But, keep in mind that Amazon charges yearly while Arweave does not.
Arweave’s network is built on an HTTP protocol which means any web browser can access all the data stored on it. It is compatible with any platform or operating system so you can store all types of data from basic web pages and applications to videos and documents.
Once you store something on the Permaweb, it will be permanently stored and accessible anywhere in the world as long as the user has an internet connection. Also, the data can’t be changed in any way even by the user who uploaded it.
Experience it all with Arweave
Storage is one of the biggest problems in blockchain and there is now an increasing number of projects that address this, one of them is Arweave. It uses various technologies that eliminate the use of heavy energy consumption requirements, which proves that mining AR is more sustainable compared to other cryptos.
Using Arweave’s services and investing in its native token will let all your important data be safely stored forever inside limitless storage, making it possible to become one of the primary methods of storage in the future. For more articles like this, visit the blog section of Cryptoshimbun.