Arweave is one of those blockchain technologies that looks like it will be around for a while yet. A decentralised data storage protocol, Arweave is a permanent storage application, allowing users to “store documents and applications forever”.
Since the inception of digital technology, more and more records have been stored in a digital format in one way or another. This has led to an information explosion, the phenomenon of an ever increasing amount of data being brought into existence and requiring storage. The issue of digital permanence has run alongside this increase in data, with viability of data over time being an important issue.
The idea behind Arweave then is to “make information permanence sustainable”. As a new form of storage, Arweave “backs data with sustainable and perpetual endowments”, which allows both users and developers to truly store their data forever. Using a decentralised, collectively owned hard drive which “never forgets”, Arweave allows for the remembrance and preservation of valuable apps, information and history indefinitely. According to Arweave the preservation of this history prevents others from rewriting it.
And what does this statement really mean? As most users of social media sites are well aware, we submit our data for storage to tech companies such as Meta every day, and unless we are the type of person to read the small print (not me!), we have no idea what is happening to our data. We have the sense of permanence in our data storage, the illusion of secure data, but really what is stopping the likes of Meta from deleting, overwriting or even losing our precious data.
The Arweave network then, sits beneath the “Permaweb”, a network similar to the traditional internet which is decentralised, and allows access to all sorts of permanent data including web applications. This is a global, community-owned web to which anyone can contribute or get paid to maintain. Data on the Permaweb is permanent, retrieved quickly, and fully decentralised, and it will remain this way forever. The aim of the Permaweb is to ensure the longevity of data over extremely long periods of time, with no more 404s, stealth edits, or web apps that decline in quality. Much like Bitcoin, the decentralisation of the technology ensures its cannot be turned off.
Those that are connected to the Arweave network offer up their disk space for storage, and those with disk space to spare are connected to others that need to use it. Financial incentives are given out to participants on the network in the form of ARtokens, and all of the data on the network is permanent and immutable.
Community management on the Arweave Permaweb can be read about at community.xyz. CommunityXYZ is a dashboard and a governance platform for all Profit Sharing Communities that are built on the Permaweb.
Profit Sharing Communities (PSCs) existent on the Permaweb are open source “companies”, that pay out an immediate dividend on profits. The idea is to empower founders, contributors and users and to offer a better web experience. PSCs remove the need for founders to focus so heavily on fundraising, and removes the need to sell a chunk of the business for capital. For contributors meanwhile, it means greater flexibility and makes it easier to generate revenue.
Technology such as this highlights the changes that web3 could potentially make to how business is carried out over the coming years. PSCs could potentially redefine how start ups are founded, and over time it is reasonable to assume that the technology has room to grow. This is another example of how traditional models are being flipped in favour of founders and creators.
Through the use of tokens, contributors can leverage both size and duration their holdings, as well as affect the direction of the community by owning more tokens or holding for a longer period of time. Barriers are removed and contributors can access liquidity through an active token market.
Crucially, the PSC model does not exploit or sell any data, and so the model is more ethical. There are no advertisements either, making the platform more consumer friendly.
In terms of tokens, income is generated with Profit Sharing Tokens (PSTs). User interactions on the Arweave network require a nominal spend of AR tokens, which are the native currency for all Arweave applications. This spend includes a miner fee, an endowment and a tip, with the first two powering the broader ecosystem, and the tip providing a revenue stream for community founder and for contributors in the form of PSTs.
Recurring revenue can be earned by dividends on PSTs held, and PSTs can also be sold on the open market.
See below community building clocks taken from the Arweave website, giving an overview of how the system works;
Community building blocks
Founding a Community
- Founders mint some amount of PSTs (e.g. 1mm) and split ownership among founders (e.g. 50/50). This means each founder will earn 50% of tip revenue as PSTs accumulate value.
- Build an application on the Arweave.
- Initial usage and adoption begins to generate tips, or Founders can farm work out to Contributors.
Contributing to a Community
- Founders mint additional PSTs to improve or scale the application with help from Contributors.
- Example contributions could be front-end UI improvements, back-end development, marketing, etc.
- Anyone can be a Contributor for a Profit Sharing Community and earn PSTs, so long as their contribution is approved through governance.
- Contributors have far more autonomy than a traditional “employee”. They can own a significant percentage of the Community and have meaningful influence through governance.
Governing a Community
- Upgrades to the application can be posted to a job board or proposed by existing or new Contributors.
- These upgrades from Contributors are voted on by the community of PST holders.
- Voting power is balanced through a function of your ownership share, as well as how long you hold PSTs.
Ardrive
While the community building aspect of Arweave is extremely exciting, the average user of the technology probably has a far simpler set of needs, namely to store their own personal files in a permanent manner, with no fear of loss over long periods of time.
Ardrive is an app built on top of Arweave which provides an option for retail customers for long term file storage that will not become obsolete over time. There is no risk of the company responsible for data storage going out of business and taking your data with it.
Of course, Ardrive technology bears a striking resemblance to already extant technologies such as apple iCloud, Dropbox and others, but as we all know these technologies have had their fair share of security issues. Some of these companies have been known to sell user information, and continually change the terms and conditions of their offerings.
The decentralisation of the Ardrive storage service makes these issues considerably less. The storage system becomes trustless, much as BTC is a trustless network. By eliminating the need to trust a third party to hold and secure your data, the risks of poor data management are also eliminated.
Below is the list of promises made by Arweave about the Ardrive product;
- You will never receive a notice from us, or from anyone, to the effect that your account will be deleted
- You will never have to login every three months to keep your account ‘current’
- You will never receive an invoice that says you forgot to pay your fees, and that if you do not pay, your data will be removed
- You will never receive a notice that says you cannot access your data at any time or anywhere
The long term data storage offered by Ardrive is structured in a pay once format. There is no on going subscription to the service, which ensures that permanent storage of user data is not dependent on the payment of a monthly bill.
Some of the features provided by Ardrive include; Multi-file upload, Secure sharing of files, Public sharing of files, and the ability to store all types of data (.png, .jpg, .mp3, etc).
Ardrive is also fully censorship resistant, and anything stored using Ardrive is there forever. Files can be shared with the public, and can be accessed from a permanent web address. These files cannot be deleted or censored.
Verto
Described as a “completely decentralised network of trading posts built on top of the blockweave, allowing the exchange of profit sharing tokens and more”, Verto is Arweave’s built in trading platform servicing the in build token economy. Assets can be swapped on Arweave using Verto.
Verto is an example of a protocol that can be built on top of Arweave. Read an interview with the Verto creator here.
