An Analysis of the Features and Operating Mechanism of the Decentralized Storage Platform Arweave

Source: ArweaveNews

Original Title: 《What is Arweave? (AR)》

Translator: Evelyn｜W3.Hitchhiker

When trying to explain Arweave, it is easy to fall into the trap of using complex terminology, making it difficult for non-technical readers to understand. This is a common mistake when one is already embedded in the ecosystem—but we hope that Arweave is easy to understand for everyone, regardless of their background. This is the purpose of this article: we will break down what Arweave is and how it works—writing everything users need to know.

A Brief Overview of Arweave

Simply put, Arweave is a tool that helps anyone permanently store data. It works by distributing the stored information across a network of computers known as nodes or miners. This is different from the model we know today, where the internet is controlled by a few companies whose servers can go down at any time—editors can also quietly change content.

Arweave serves a parallel internet called the "permaweb" through a vast network of nodes, all of which earn money by providing existing data storage over a long period and storing new data as requested by clients.

Like many decentralized storage platforms, Arweave uses its own native cryptocurrency—AR—to operate its services. When people spend tokens to store data, they pay AR to the miners. From these transactions, AR is also stored in a donation fund (endowment), which can technically release rewards indefinitely over time. Through this mechanism, Arweave guarantees infinite permanent storage.

Some new features that make Arweave stand out include its accessibility through traditional web browsers; another feature is that it is open source, allowing the community to participate in its improvement process. The community plays a significant role in many ways, as Arweave has a voting mechanism that allows its users to review content and can mark certain items as illegal, in addition to a thriving ecosystem of new application developers.

How Arweave Was Created

As early as 2017, Arweave was known as Archain. In 2018, when the Arweave team participated in Techstars, it was renamed. In 2019, Arweave raised $5 million from well-known venture capital firms, including Coinbase, a16z, and Multicoin Capital.

In 2020, Arweave secured an additional $8.3 million in funding, which they planned to use to build a community of users and developers on top of Arweave. This includes projects like Verto, ArDrive, and Arweave News.

The creator and founder of Arweave is Sam Williams, "who has a PhD and extensive experience in designing and implementing decentralized systems." He established Arweave during his university years, inspired by Orwell's "1984," as a response to the rise of fake news.

How Arweave Works

Unlike typical blockchains (which store information about transactions in blocks), Arweave stores data in a graph of blocks. In this way, each block is connected to the previous two blocks, forming a structure known as the "blockweave."

There are several key aspects that make Arweave unique:

• Proof of Access Consensus
• Bundles
• SmartWeave
• Vartex Gateways
• Content Moderation

These features set Arweave apart, and we will take a closer look at each feature to see how they work and why they are important.

Proof of Access Consensus

Arweave differs from other cryptocurrencies in how it checks the accuracy of transactions. Typically, using a proof of work system, cryptocurrencies require computers to compete to solve a mathematical problem (hashing). Arweave uses a different approach to solve this problem, called SPoRA (Succinct Proofs of Random Access).

Arweave requires each node in the network to check whether a new transaction block contains a block randomly selected from earlier blocks; if it does, the new transaction can be added to the network.

This consensus mechanism helps verify the accuracy of new transactions and confirms that old transactions have not been tampered with. This method is known as proof of access, and the nodes adding new blocks are rewarded with AR tokens.

Bundles

Bundles are a way to ensure that a group of transactions will ultimately be mined into a block. It addresses a common problem in every blockchain, where transactions may be rejected if other transactions submitted by others reward miners more.

When Arweave is used as a way to store large NFT projects, with thousands of media files needing to be uploaded simultaneously, Bundles become a necessity. Projects may find that several files in their uploaded batches have been deleted, which would disrupt the upload.

The Metaplex on the Solana FT market was the first adopter of Bundles and collaborated with Josh Benaron of Bundlr to develop the Metaplex Candy Machine, an application that allows projects to use Arweave as a storage layer to batch upload NFTs. In fact, it is also commonly used for non-NFT projects.

SmartWeave

SmartWeave is a smart contract protocol that uses AR tokens, enabling developers to build smart contract applications using JavaScript. Like most (traditional web2 applications) code, it runs on the user's computer rather than on the blockchain itself.

Its operation differs from Ethereum's contract execution method, where the entire network is called to verify transactions; SmartWeave relies on smart contracts that users complete locally on their clients.

It does not require as much computational power, making it a more environmentally friendly choice and also more secure. If someone uses malicious code, it will not affect the entire blockchain. This way, it does not require as many security checks and constraints, allowing it to run faster.

Another notable feature is that SmartWeave contracts can serve as the entire backend of an application. This means developers do not need servers, and the entire application can run on the blockchain. Unlike Ethereum, the cost of interacting with SmartWeave contracts is less than one cent.

Vartex Gateways

Vartex is a tool that allows anyone to run their own gateway with just a few commands. While arweave.net is a primary way to access all data on Arweave through a browser, it is served by AWS, which is a potential single point of failure. Vartex provides a way for anyone to run their own gateway, meaning more gateways and less reliance on centralized servers.

This is a way to decentralize the permaweb, ensuring it does not depend on any major company. It is built on Amplify—the fork of the original arweave.net gateway. Developers can find the source code on GitHub, simply clone it, and follow the readme instructions.

Content Moderation

Content Moderation allows anyone running mining software to choose the types of data they wish to store. This type of moderation allows computers on the network to select the content they want to host.

However, since it is up to the gateways to decide what they block, the content may not be as important as the size of the data. For example, someone may only want to store images or only audio files. When a new file is uploaded to the network, Arweave asks each computer whether it accepts it. However, people will accept it due to incentives, especially if it is a larger file, because simply put, the more you store, the more rewards you receive.

It is also worth noting that it is still too early to launch this incentive mechanism, as no one has a comprehensive list of files they would or would not want to support. Arweave is relatively new; meanwhile, the volume of uploads is massive, making it quite difficult to browse all the files.

Nevertheless, we have added this feature as one of the methods to ensure content moderation. Here, it is not about political leanings or content preferences, but rather what Arweave tried to escape from at its inception.

About the Tokens

Arweave has its own currency—AR tokens. Users who want to store data must purchase it to pay for storage fees, while computers providing storage must accept AR tokens as payment. Interestingly, payments do not go directly to each miner but are pooled together and distributed to the network over time.

This fee pool is known as the Storage Endowment. Its purpose is to provide assurance for future data from this excess-charged AR pool. The fees are paid by users as mining rewards, and as this pool grows over time, it can pay miners future rewards for a long time.

It is important to note that storage on Arweave is a one-time payment rather than a subscription-based model. However, data is stored permanently, making Arweave attractive to both customers and the network, giving it real utility as a currency. The supply of AR tokens is limited to 66 million. Please check this guide for information on how to acquire it from anywhere in the world.