What is Arweave?
What is Arweave?
Arweave is a decentralized data storage protocol that is built through blockweave technology. Unlike traditional blockchain networks, where a chain of blocks contains all the data and transactions, a blockweave network is a bit different. In the case of Arweave, it stores its data in a graph of blocks, and each block is connected to two earlier blocks, thus forming a structure known as blockweave. Arweave is in direct competition with the likes of Filecoin and Sia, both of which also provide decentralized data storage options. Furthermore, the real competition is with the centralized industry giants such as Google and Dropbox.
Contrary to being just a data storage protocol, Arweave aims to create the Permaweb. It will be a version of the internet that is easy to access, hosts sites and apps cheaply, and forever retain its permanence. Permaweb is a layer that is built upon Arweave’s global permanent hard drive. Another unique aspect of Arweave is that the data stored on it can easily be accessed through any browser, unlike traditional crypto-based projects which require a specialized wallet or service.
Who Created Arweave?
The project was first announced as Archain in 2017, and later rebranded as Arweave in February 2018, and officially launched in June later that year. The founders of this project are Sam Williams, and William Jones, both of whom were Ph.D. candidates at the University of Kent. Sam Williams had extensive experience in distributed and decentralized systems, and also developed an operating system known as HydrOS. William Jones, on the other hand, is known for his work on graph theory and neural networking.
The Arweave mainnet launched in June 2018, with 1800 participants chosen from around the world. In the November of 2019, several venture capital firms funded the projects and almost $5 million were raised. Another $8.3 million was raised six months later. The project started with very centralized leadership, however, a decentralized autonomous organization was launched in January 2020, which consists of core members of the community, and they can discuss and make decisions about the development of the network, and its ecosystem.
How it Works?
The basic purpose of Arweave is to connect those people who have spare space available on their harddisks, with those who require data storage. It is designed to provide cost-effective, scalable, and most importantly permanent data storage. For this purpose to be achieved, it is built upon a blockchain-like structure known as blockweave. Like all typical blockchains, the collection of blocks in Arweave’s blockweave hold all the information regarding the websites or DApps on the platform. However what makes blockweave unique is that, unlike traditional blockchains in which each block is linked to the previous block in a linear fashion, the blocks in blockweave are linked to the previous block and a second block from the network’s history. This second block is known as the recall block.
The recall block is essential in the functionality of the unique consensus mechanism of Arweave known as Proof of Access. This consensus mechanism is a variation of the Proof of Work mechanism used in Bitcoin and Ethereum. The way it works is that there are users who provide their disk space to gain AR tokens and are known as miners. In order to mine and verify a new block on the network, the miners must provide cryptographic proof that they have access to that block’s recall block. This is where Proof of Access comes into play, as the network intends to incentivize long-term data storage, as the miners have to access older and random blocks from the blockweave’s history, in order to mine new blocks and gain rewards.
Another incentive given to the miners is that the network encourages the miners to store the blocks that are not widely replicated. When a rare recall block is selected, then the competition between the miners becomes lower. This ultimately means that the miners who store rarer blocks earn more rewards in the long term. Another feature of Arweave is that allows the miners the freedom to choose which type of blocks and transactions they will store. Each miner can establish their own unique content policy which outlines the type of data that can and can’t be stored by the miner. Therefore when the data is being distributed by the network, it is first scanned against the individual content policy of each miner, and it will not be stored on a miner’s space if it contains content that has been prohibited by the miner’s content policy.
What is AR?
The Arweave Token which is also known as AR is the native cryptocurrency of the platform. In terms of utility, it has multiple uses in the network. However, generally speaking, it represents the transfer of monetary value across the platform. Users who wish to store their data on the platform can easily do so by paying the amount that Arweave predicts is necessary to host the data permanently. Similarly, those people who provide their excess storage space to the platform can also earn passive income which is also in the form of AR tokens.
The total fixed supply of the AR token is 66 million, out of which 55 million AR were created in the genesis block which went live when the network launched on the 8th of June 2018. 11 million AR tokens will further be introduced into the system gradually. The first AR token pre-sale was held in 2017, in which 10.8% of the initially generated tokens were sold. Two public sales were also carried out in May and June of 2018 and collectively sold about 8.2% of the total supply. About 19.5% of the supply has been allocated for a private sale, while 13% has been allocated for the team, and 2.9% for the project advisors. 19.1% has been put aside for ecosystem development, while 26.5% has been reserved for future project use.
Concerns
Arweave has come into a market in which there is a cut-throat competition. The traditional data storage giants like Google and Dropbox lead the industry at this point in time. While on the other hand whenever decentralized data storage is mentioned, the first name that comes to mind is Filecoin or Sia. Therefore it is obvious that Arweave still has a long way to go if it means to compete with the industry giants. Another concern is whether they can actually deliver on what they have promised. Arweave promises storage that lasts ‘forever’ for a one-time cost. The effectiveness of such a model can only be judged after a few decades have passed, as there is no such other example, to say the least.
Where to buy AR?
AR can be purchased on major crypto exchanges like Binance — similar to how one would buy any other cryptocurrency. You can either place a market buy or a limit buy. With a limit buy, you determine the price you’re willing to pay, and your order gets filled once the token price reaches your set limit price. If you want to get your hands on the token quickly, you can place a market order, where you agree to pay the current market price and have your order filled almost instantly. If you are interested in trading AR, you can do so by visiting Binance or Gate.io.
The post What is Arweave? appeared first on CryptosRus.
Read more: https://cryptosrus.com/what-is-arweave/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=what-is-arweave
Text source: CryptosRus
