Arweave

Arweave is a decentralized storage network designed to provide a platform for data to be stored indefinitely. Described as "a collectively owned hard drive that never forgets," it primarily supports "the permaweb" — a permanent, decentralized web enriched with various community-driven apps and platforms.

To explore this project further, check out our comprehensive analysis of Arweave.

Arweave operates using its own cryptocurrency, AR, which compensates "miners" for persistently storing the network’s data.

Initially unveiled as Archain in August 2017, the project rebranded to Arweave in February 2018 before officially launching in June of the same year.

Arweave was established by Sam Williams and William Jones, both Ph.D. candidates at the University of Kent. Williams brought his knowledge in decentralized and distributed systems to the project, having developed an operating system called HydrOS during his academic pursuits. Meanwhile, Jones specialized in graph theory and neural networking. While Williams left his studies to dedicate himself to the company, Jones departed from the project in mid-2018 to finish his Ph.D.

Williams explained that the concept of Arweave came to him during a hike in Scotland, after which he collaborated with Jones to flesh out the technical aspects. Following the launch of Arweave, Williams later became an advisor to Minespider, a blockchain-based supply chain tracking company for raw materials, and took on a mentorship role with the Techstars accelerator program.

Although Arweave began with centralized leadership, it transitioned to a decentralized autonomous organization in January 2020, comprising key community members to drive the network's growth and ecosystem expansion.

Arweave, as outlined in its yellow paper, aims to preserve the "collective ability to store and share information between individuals and across generations." To achieve this, its main feature, the permaweb, is built on the "blockweave," a unique twist on blockchain technology where each block connects to the previous one and a randomly selected earlier block. This setup encourages miners to store more data, as they must access these random past blocks to add new ones and earn rewards.

Arweave is dedicated to fostering a sustainable ecosystem around its network. In June 2020, it introduced "profit sharing tokens," allowing developers to earn dividends from network transaction fees generated by their applications. The project also supports the creation of permaweb-based applications through incubators and collaborates with startups via its "Boost" program, which offers free storage, team access, and connections to industry investors.

In March 2020, Arweave secured $8.3 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Coinbase Ventures. This followed a previous investment round in November 2019 involving Andreessen Horowitz, Union Square Ventures, and Multicoin Capital.

As per the yellow paper, the total supply of Arweave tokens is capped at 66 million AR. When the blockweave's genesis block was created in June 2018, 55 million AR were minted, with an additional 11 million set to be gradually released as block rewards.

In August 2017, Arweave conducted a token pre-sale, selling 10.8% of the initial token supply. Two more public sales followed in May and June 2018, selling 7.1% and 1.1% of the supply, respectively. The company set aside 19.5% for a private sale, 2.9% for project advisors, 13% for the team (with a five-year lock-up and 20% released annually), 19.1% for ecosystem development, and 26.5% for future project use (also subject to a five-year lock-up with 20% released each year).

Arweave relies on a modified blockchain technology called "blockweave," which uses a "proof-of-access" consensus mechanism — a variation of the proof-of-work model. In this system, each new block is connected to the preceding block and a randomly chosen earlier block, with both blocks being hashed to create the new one. Miners aren't required to store the entire blockchain but are motivated to store more data to prove they can access the old blocks needed for mining.

The mining protocol, RandomX, underwent a successful security audit in August 2019 by four cybersecurity firms: Trail of Bits, Kudelski Security, X41 D-Sec, and QuarksLab. Arweave plans to introduce a new mining algorithm called SPoRA in early 2021, which was audited by NCC Group in December 2020.

You can purchase AR on cryptocurrency exchanges like MXC.COM, Bilaxy, Huobi Global, and Hoo. It can be traded against Tether (USDT), Bitcoin (BTC), and Ether (ETH).

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