Who is right in the Arweave and Irys fork controversy?
Both parties hold their ground, and the community seems to lean more towards Arweave.Author: 0XNATALIE
Recently, the dispute between the decentralized storage protocol Arweave and its main ecosystem project Irys has attracted the attention of the community and the industry.
Arweave is a decentralized data storage protocol. Irys (formerly Bundlr Network), as one of the leading projects in the Arweave ecosystem, is an expansion solution for Arweave. The Irys bundler batches multiple transactions to help Arweave increase throughput. Data uploaded to Irys is permanent and censorship-resistant, with each piece of data having a high-precision timestamp, allowing users to always read and write data of any scale and accurately determine its origin.
The Dispute Begins
Arweave founder Sam Williams stated on December 18 on X that Irys plans to fork Arweave in a way that is detrimental to the ecosystem, intending to abandon the existing dataset and reset the token supply. On the blockchain, data is stored in blocks, with each block containing transactions and state updates over a period of time. Abandoning the existing dataset means that the new network will no longer have the transaction history, smart contract states, and other information of the original network. Resetting the token supply means that in the new forked network, the project will recreate tokens and redistribute them to network participants. Token holders in the original network will no longer have the same number of tokens and will need to participate in the new network's token distribution.
Sam stated that this approach violates Arweave's principles of protocol evolution. The principles of Arweave's protocol evolution are threefold:
Anyone can create a fork at any time: The principles of protocol evolution allow anyone to create a fork at any time. This encourages community members to participate in the development and improvement of the network.
Forks should inherit the network's dataset and token supply: Effective forks should retain the current state of the network, including the dataset and token supply. This ensures that new forks do not destroy existing data, thereby maintaining the permanence of information.
Forks can mint new tokens: To encourage innovation and reward the builders of forks, the principles of protocol evolution allow new forks to mint any number of new tokens. This creates an incentive mechanism that encourages people to propose improvements and competitively develop the protocol.
Sam accused Irys of being shortsighted and greedy, claiming they do not intend to maintain the dataset. In response to Irys's fork plan, they will remove the Irys bundler from the trusted central gateway of the Arweave mainnet. This move will lead to delays in content uploaded through Irys on the network. Additionally, Sam indicated that Irys might stop uploading user data to Arweave, so he advised users to use other free bundlers. A new 100% Irys-compatible free bundler is available at up.arweave.net, where users only need to change the URL of the Irys node to the new URL.
Irys quickly responded, stating that Sam Williams's actions are "tragically ironic." They claimed that Sam's attempt to remove Irys from Arweave contradicts the ideals of open-source and permissionless software. Irys emphasized that they have never and will never deprive users of their choice regarding data storage locations and have always been committed to censorship resistance, open-source, and permissionless technology.
Community Reaction
Framework Ventures co-founder Vance Spencer stated, "Sam threatens to sue the middleware that provides 90% support for the Arweave network, just like Vitalik suing L2. Suing builders trying to expand the network is completely insane; I hope this is not the future of Arweave, nor the future of every protocol built on Arweave," while Weave CEO Mardeni countered, "I haven't heard of any lawsuits, but your comparison is absolutely wrong. Resetting Arweave with new tokens and datasets means directly competing with Arweave, rather than just being L2."
The Graph member Paolo Diomede speculated that Irys is doing this to please VCs, believing that the attention the Irys project has received is due to Arweave, and that trying to please VCs now destroys loyalty and trust.
Community member Articlagoon stated that if resetting the chain + data + tokens is indeed very malicious, it serves no purpose for the scaling chain. Outside of the ecosystem, everyone's wallets will shrink.
Community member Silanael believes that the current situation is exactly Irys viewing Arweave as a trendy toy for making money rather than for data preservation purposes. Irys is not the only project with this mindset; this phenomenon is quite common.
Ongoing Developments
On the morning of the 19th, Sam tweeted again, updating and adding some information. He stated that over 97% of the transaction volume transmitted through Irys has begun to transition to the new bundler. Most data will transition to the new bundler in the next day or two, with more data starting to transition and integrate every hour. In this tweet, Sam also pointed out that when they first heard about Irys's plans, they proposed funding the fork and emphasized following the fair principles of protocol evolution within the ecosystem. However, Irys repeatedly rejected this suggestion.
Although many in the community have criticized Sam for being too controlling and centralized, Irys's previous responses have been suspected of evading the main issues and have not directly addressed Sam's claims of "malicious forking," leading to a community response that seems more inclined towards Arweave. Additionally, Sam's subsequent posts hinted that the interests of the fork's beneficiaries include VCs, prompting Irys to respond again on the morning of the 19th to clarify, further stating that their goal is to enrich the provenance of world data, noting that some scenarios, such as data availability or temporary data storage in Arweave, are not suitable, which is why Irys began exploring the possibility of forking Arweave.
Moreover, the exploration of the fork is still in its early stages, and there has not yet been any discussion of this possibility with the community, developers, or investors, nor has a final plan been determined. Irys emphasized that they will continue to support the Arweave ecosystem, and regardless of the path taken in the future, they will fully consider the opinions of the community. Regarding Sam's decision to remove the Irys bundler, Irys called on the community to restore application performance by using Irys's own gateway.
In summary, Irys's response to Arweave's accusations can be boiled down to: I am not, I did not, don't talk nonsense, I am just exploring possibilities.
The entire incident is still unfolding, and the Arweave community is actively seeking solutions. This debate about forking, data permanence, and open-source principles reveals the conflicts between infrastructure developers and project stakeholders' visions of interests. We hope the issues can be properly resolved to ensure the long-term stability and development of the Arweave ecosystem.
