In 24 hours, it surged over 50%. Is Arweave going to be the "Ethereum killer" again?

Author: Joyce, kaori

In the storage track, after FIL, it was AR's turn.

Yesterday, the blockchain storage protocol Arweave launched its public testnet Arweave AO, designed to provide a computational layer for social media and AI. Subsequently, the price of its native token AR surged, breaking through $24, with a 24-hour increase of 51% as of the time of writing.

ChainFeeds founder Zhixiong Pan posted on X stating, "Arweave is the most promising crypto protocol to make large-scale decentralized data storage a reality. We live lives that are fundamentally different from our ancestors, and the only reason is that we inherit and utilize the knowledge and experience accumulated by humanity over thousands of years. Perhaps this new technology will allow a machine like ENIAC to be placed in the revived Library of Alexandria."

So what mission does the testnet Arweave AO aim to accomplish? Arweave founder Williams even stated that Arweave AO is confident in competing with Ethereum, claiming to be an "Ethereum competitor." What exactly is Arweave AO?

Large-scale + Verifiable, the Supercomputer Vision of Arweave AO

What Arweave does is "permanent information storage," a decentralized data storage protocol based on blockweave technology, with its mainnet launched in June 2018. It utilizes the data structure of BlockWeave and the consensus mechanism of SPoRA to provide new solutions for the problem of permanent storage. Arweave's one-time payment and lifetime usage model also solves the cumbersome process of users needing to subscribe continuously, and Arweave has promised to provide users with at least 200 years of storage service.

The newly launched Arweave AO testnet is a new method for "infinitely" scaling the blockchain to handle larger computational workloads. "AO is a super-parallel computer, a decentralized computing environment that allows you to run any number of processes in parallel simultaneously. Previous decentralized computing systems either supported large-scale computing or verifiable computing. AO can do both at the same time," said Arweave founder Williams in the announcement video.

This means Arweave is starting to venture into the computing field, similar to Ethereum's "supercomputer" claim, and Arweave AO may even allow AI and large language models (LLMs) to run directly within smart contracts.

In an interview, Williams stated that the difference between Arweave AO and other high-performance blockchains like Aptos and Sui is that it can support the storage of large amounts of data, such as AI models. "This is largely because the core of the project is based on a data storage platform."

WeaveDB CEO Mardeni stated that Arweave's transaction volume today reached a historical high, with TPS far exceeding most blockchains, and we look forward to seeing how Arweave AO performs in the future.

However, before reaching this point, Arweave went through many explorations.

Starting from Storage, Arweave's Transformation Journey

Arweave was founded in 2017 as a blockchain-based file storage protocol, characterized by one-time payment for permanent file storage. Through a simple set of economic incentive rules, it enables miners to store data for the long term. By the end of 2021, applications based on the Arweave network had exceeded 200, covering various categories such as social networks, infrastructure, content distribution, and verification tools.

In the following two years, influenced by the NFT market and the development of the Web3 creator economy, Arweave's business data saw significant growth. By the end of 2022, Arweave's data storage volume was nearly three times that of the same period the previous year, with a year-on-year growth of 192%. At that time, Arweave's 30-day network revenue approached $300,000, ranking first among Web3 infrastructure service protocols, far exceeding star storage and DePin projects like Storj and Helium.

Related article: 《Review and Learn | Arweave's Potential is to Revive the Library of Alexandria, Not to Replace Filecoin》

However, entering 2023, Arweave's storage business growth has noticeably slowed. As of the time of writing, Arweave's data storage quality is 157TB, with only a 30% increase over the past year, and the revenue from storage services is not as high as before.

A 2023 Arweave Ecosystem Report written by the PermaDAO community shows that Arweave's network storage volume in 2023 performed worse than in 2022, with a total of 32.96 TiB for the year, a year-on-year decrease of 55.78%. In 2023, the monthly network storage volume hovered between 2-4 TiB, with the lowest network storage volume in June, only 1.43 TiB.

At the same time, the Arweave network was unusually active in 2023, with contract growth being one of the key indicators. The growth of contracts in 2023 saw a significant increase compared to 2022, with a year-on-year growth of 1063%.

These data indicators reflect the dilemma faced by Arweave: although many projects use Arweave's storage services, there are still relatively few projects developed entirely based on Arweave, making it difficult for Arweave to form a network effect solely through its storage business. On the other hand, the rapid growth of new contracts also proves that Arweave still has considerable development prospects.

It is well known that low-cost on-chain storage is crucial for the success of blockchain and Web3. Arweave founder Sam Williams revealed a shocking cost comparison in a conversation with ArDrive founder Philip Mataras: storing a 13 GB file on Arweave costs only $87, while storing the same data on Bitcoin would cost about $35,620,000, and on Ethereum, it would cost around $780,000,000.

As a permanent storage project, Arweave itself is a publicly visible and transparent permanent storage network, and the consensus paradigm based on storage, SCP, can already achieve off-chain scaling without losing on-chain finality, as long as it conforms to the scaling theory of SCP, it can be implemented as part of Arweave to achieve specific functions.

It can be said that Arweave inherently does not face scaling issues. PermaDAO author Azriel believes that "it is only a matter of time before Arweave steps into the spotlight." The public chain field has long faced issues of computing and storage costs, and Arweave has demonstrated its potential in promoting the full decentralization of DApps. Arweave's positioning is not only as a decentralized storage platform but also as a full-stack protocol supporting the complete decentralization of DApps in Web3.0.

After the launch of Arweave AO, Arweave founder Sam Williams stated in an interview, "We have built a super-parallel computer, a computer that can run any number of threads in parallel simultaneously, and its scalability is incredible."

Not only the founder, but this grand vision has also found believers within the Arweave community, where Arweave is seen as a data availability layer, directly supporting the development needs of DApps. In a space in 2022, the founder of Arweave ecosystem project everFinance, Xiong Wei, jokingly stated, "Arweave's beginning is Ethereum's endgame."

It is difficult to conclude how much impact the launch of Arweave AO will have on the current public chain landscape, but through nearly two years of planning, Arweave has completed its transformation from a storage business to a Web3 full-stack protocol, and the 50% increase in 24 hours is already enough to attract attention. It is foreseeable that Arweave's entry will make the competition landscape of public chains even more exciting.