Skip to content
Liteseed

What is Arweave?

arweave

Arweave is a blockchain for data storage. For a fee, you can make some data permanent. Essentially a bitcoin for data.

Why Permanent Storage?

Permanent data storage has many applications including storage for a lot of humanities most important data. To get you started here are some applications listed below.

Link rot is the phenomenon where URLs stop working over time. The rate of link rot is still debated however it’s important as it quantifies internet’s ability to preserve information. Estimates of that rate vary dramatically between studies. Link rot could make important archival data disappear, potentially impacting the legal system and scholarship.

Storing private data

Apps like Ardrive and Akord offer services that allow permanent storage of private data. Things like important documents and photos can easily be stored on these platforms.

Archiving code repositories

Protocol.Land offers the ability to archive important code repositories. This is especially useful in cases where projects are dependent on critical libraries whose history needs to be vetted.

How does permanent data work?

The protocol is secured by a network of miners, who store and replicate data for a reward of AR token. Transactions are priced using two components

  1. A highly conservative estimate of perpetual storage. These rewards are funded by a storage endowment model which are distributed over a period of time. At a high level, this endowment mechanism quantifies the cost of permanent storage as a function of decreasing hard drive costs. Looking at historic price decreases per GB of storage, it calculates a transaction price for storage of data. In order for miners to store data, transaction cost should simply remain greater than cost of storage
  2. An instantly released transaction reward to incentivize miners to accept new transactions

This incentivizes network operators to keep as many copies of each data chunk as possible. This is a relatively high level overview of how storage data on Arweave works. To learn more in detail visit the arweave wiki page on Storage Endowment