Thread by @tzehingchan

The Internet allowed us access to almost any information with just a click. However, it has yet to solve one very big problem.

@ArweaveTeam is poised to fix & revolutionize the way we store data.

🧵 Why you shouldn't fade #Arweave $AR. If you're reading this anon, you're early.

1/42 Arweave plans to provide data permanence with its blockchain aimed at the decentralization and permanent storage of data.

That sounds like a tall order, but how do we make online data ‘permanent’?

Before we even get to the 'how', we need to start with the 'why' first...

2/42 Since the beginning of recorded history, humans have an innate desire to store, record and pass on information throughout their lives.

We started from individual papyrus scrolls and tablets to parchment paper, libraries, electronic databases and now online cloud storage.

3/42 However, humanity always failed. Data, being stored at centralized repositories is always at risk of being destroyed, either by natural disasters or other people themselves.

4/42 Besides that, how sure are we that the data we store is even correct information and accurate accounts of history?

Winston Churchill once said (probably):

"History is written by the victors".

5/42 Currently, most data is stored by single institutions or individuals, which brings problems:

• Single point of failure
• Lack of privacy
• Data can be manipulated during to storage
• Data can be modified or forged prior to storage
• Central server resources are finite

6/42 Arweave plans to solve this, we’ll get into the how later. First, let’s see how Arweave works

Arweave is providing a permanent cryptographically verified archive for the internet called the Permaweb

Imagine file storage which can never be deleted. How do they achieve this?

7/42 TECH

PoA and the Blockweave

Arweave’s core technology is called the Blockweave. As the name suggests, a blockweave is a mesh of blocks containing data which are linked to multiple previous blocks on the network, as opposed to the traditional chain of blocks.

8/42 Along with the blockweave comes Arweave’s Proof of Access (PoA) consensus algorithm, where miners have to recall a previous block in the network to generate a new block.

9/42 This is to prove that the miner can access on-chain data, which also incentivizes miners to store as many old blocks as possible (as they have no idea which will be recalled) to have an advantage when mining new blocks.

This is how Arweave achieves permanent storage as it

10/42 leads to high levels of data replication on the network. Basically it’s Proof of Work (PoW) but incorporates data from a randomly selected previous block.

However, miners weren’t incentivized to retrieve data quickly and this caused them to pool their databases in cheaper

11/42 and farther regions, ultimately decreasing network speed.

In February 2021, Arweave upgraded from its PoA consensus to Succinct Random Proofs of Access (SPoRA).

https://twitter.com/ArweaveTeam/status/1365367278984982529

12/42 SPoRA incentivizes miners to store data as close to their mining rigs as possible to replicate data quicker, and its architecture requires less energy to maintain the network.

13/42 The Permaweb

The centralized web loses 98.4% of its contents every 20 years. Staggering to hear for a service we’ve come to take for granted daily.

George Orwell said (maybe): "He who controls the past controls the future, he who controls the present controls the past"

14/42 Arweave's permanent storage solves this & lets us understand the past as a collective activity that anyone can take part in, as opposed to the control of information by one entity which acts in its own interest (in the case of oppressive regimes/authoritative governments)

15/42 How is the permanent storage on Arweave priced?

Users pay a one-time fee to store what data they need on the network, making it much more affordable than traditional data storage solutions in the long run.

When you put info in the system, you pay upfront for 200 years.

16/42 This costs half a cent per MB, and the cost declines over time.

In contrast, it would cost around $20M to store 1GB of data on the Ethereum blockchain

17/42 APPLICATION

How does Arweave's storage tech translate into real life applications?

Since its inception, Arweave has partenered with numerous projects. Most recently, Meta announced using Arweave as a storage solution to archive creators' digital collectibles on Instagram.

https://twitter.com/samecwilliams/status/1587937640342437889

18/42 Arweave also allows NFTs to fully be truly permanently be stored on the blockchain.

Other partnerships with blockchains include
- Polygon
- Avalanche
- Solana
- Cosmos
- Near Protocol
- The Graph

https://twitter.com/Maximonee_/status/1440162242486423563

19/42 In 2020, Arweave partnered with @internetarchive (creators of @waybackmachine) to ensure cryptographically verifiable and fault tolerant access to their data, ensuring they're not tampered with.

https://twitter.com/TheBlock__/status/1282738783381786624

20/42 A permanent data presence helps keep receipts of parties like media organizations permanent on the net, making them accountable for the information they put out (or information they choose to modify/delete).

An example of this is @nytimes blatant support of criminal SBF

https://twitter.com/ClayTravis/status/1598392562620006423

21/42 Similarly, publicly editable databases like Wikipedia can be tampered and edited with to present false, inaccurate information.

Saving an entire copy of Wikipedia only takes up to 20GB

https://twitter.com/sayestheorem/status/1592679370342428672

22/42 Archiving internet data bypasses censorship and helps parties like:

• Whistleblowers
• Victims of oppressive govts
• Academics - Imagine a world where journalists can securely store articles, ensuring work is preserved for posterity and can't be censored or altered.

23/42

• Content consumers consume verified information
• Medical patients - control over their own health data + share it with doctors/researchers easily and securely

The possibilities are endless, and we're only just scratching the surface of what can be done with Arweave.

24/42 TEAM

Arweave is founded by @samecwilliams. Sam is a Ph.D. dropout with extensive experience in decentralized system design and implementation, and has been a speaker at many conferences, most recently at @token2049 Singapore ()

25/42 BACKERS

According to Crunchbase, Arweave has raised up to $22M in funding till date.

Notable backers:
@a16z
@multicoincap
@arringtonXRPcap
@1kxnetwork
@cbventures
@blockchaincap
@ledger_prime
@Techstars
@usv
@Meta_Cartel
@GenblockCapital
@Greenfield1One
@Signum_Capital

26/42 TOKENOMICS

The main function of AR is to incentivize miners to maintain copies of data on the network. Users pay AR to add data onto the Arweave network.

Max Supply: 66 million
Circulating Supply: 50 million

The rest of the 11 million AR will be used as mining rewards

27/42 ARWEAVE ECOSYSTEM

Arweave's ecosystem of dApps is currently nascent, while most of them are still in the process of being built, they all have very interesting use cases.

Here are some of the more prominent projects on Arweave.

28/42 @BundlrNetwork
Bundlr Network is basically the hard carry when it comes to processing transactions on Arweave. It's a layer 2 scaling solution which managed to increase transactions by 4000% without sacrificing security/usability & is around ~3000x faster at uploading data.

29/42 Bundlr Network accounts for over 90% of data uploaded to Arweave and is a multi-chain solution, allowing Arweave to provide its permanent data storage functions to other blockchains.

Great piece by @HartleyLeroy from @DelphiDigital:

members.delphidigital.io/reports/arweav…

30/42 @ardriveapp

ArDrive is currently one of the core dapps on Arweave. Pay once to securely save your files forever on the Arweave permaweb. This is the basic function of Arweave at its core.

31/42 @AkordTeam

Similar to ArDrive, Akord provides a more personalised and end-to-end encrypted file storage experience for users.

Privacy is the main goal of Akord, and coupled with its intuitive UI, makes it one of the go-top apps for file storage on Arweave

32/42 Permafy.com

Created by @sayestheorem, Permafy allows you to create shareable links to your uploaded files on Arweave. Think of it as WeTransfer or Dropbox but decentralized!

https://twitter.com/sayestheorem/status/1593041334386184192

33/42 @0x_ECHO

ECHO is a social engagement protocol which provides the fundamental infrastructure of Web3 social by introducing comment widgets that can be deployed on any Web3 website.

Users comment without worry of having comments censored.

A simple yet necessary feature!

34/42 @CommunityLabs

Community Labs is a software company and venture studio focused on accelerating developer tools, use cases, and adoption of Arweave. They're basically the launchpad for most of the apps here!

They recently raised $30M in funding 🔥

blockworks.co/news/this-19-y…

35/42 @everVisionHQ

everVision builds Web3 solutions through the use of Arweave based infrastructure. Their solutions:

EverPay - Real-time payments solution
Permaswap - Zero gas fee DEX
Web3Infra - Development tool for builders

36/42 @MetaweaveTeam
Metaweave is an on chain and decentralised social network hosted on Arweave.

Pretty interesting app which will probably see a boom once adoption of Arweave's tech increases. Again, we're still in the early stages of decentralized storage adoption.

37/42 @permacastapp

Permacast lets users store their podcasts permanently on Arweave.

Imagine one day YouTube decides to start censoring content from @UpOnlyTV or @joerogan, this is where we'll go to to find all their episodes 🤣

38/42 WHERE TO BUY

$AR is currently available on all top tier exchanges:

@binance
@cryptocom
@kucoincom
@HuobiGlobal
@MEXC_Global

39/42 POTENTIAL

In the case of Arweave, the TAM would depend on a number of factors, such as the size of the market for decentralized data storage, the demand for data storage on the Arweave platform, and the average revenue per customer on the platform.

40/42 According to the Cloud Computing Market Report 2021–2026, the total market for decentralized data storage is around $2 trillion for public cloud computing , ranging between $10 trillion (optimistic scenario) and $0.6 trillion (conservative scenario)

iot-analytics.com/product/cloud-…

41/42 One thing I'm particularly excited about it their possible partnership with @brave, another privacy focused browser wherein a collaboration would make synergistic sense. The only part left is to see how $AR and $BAT would compete against (or work with) each other.

https://twitter.com/BrendanEich/status/1594088253006974976

42/42 CONCLUSION

In theory, Arweave's capabilities could support almost any use case in crypto, so the possibilities are endless.

Partnering with Meta and blockchain projects further solidified their seat as the go-to decentralized storage solution.

Only time will tell 👀

Accounts to follow for the latest on @ArweaveTeam

Team & Community:
@samecwilliams
@dameon_h2o
@DMacOnArweave
@TateBerenbaum
@onlyarweave
@mclars
@rakis_me
@vilenarios
@ArweaveAz
@david_karstens
@Lorimer_Jenkins
@criptoalfa
@krindzhall
@Cedriking
@abhav_k
@GerryWon
@xylophonezy

Arweave Pages & Groups:
@ar_io_team
@TheArWiki
@ArweaveNewsCN
@ArweaveNews
@ARweaveDAO
@AR__JP
@ArweaveFees
@ArweaveMemes
@ArweaveArchives
@Arweavers
@OpenWebFoundry

This took many hours of research :')

If you've found this thread useful, follow me @tzehingchan for more.

Like/Retweet the first tweet below to support me!

https://twitter.com/tzehingchan/status/1601258192935084032

..or read my previous thread on why @alephzero will be the next big thing in blockchain privacy 👀

https://twitter.com/tzehingchan/status/1594353250836172800