{"id":213352,"date":"2022-02-09T09:00:09","date_gmt":"2022-02-09T09:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/?p=213352"},"modified":"2022-02-10T02:30:07","modified_gmt":"2022-02-10T02:30:07","slug":"intro-to-arweave-a-blockchain-cloud-storage-platform-footprint-analytics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/intro-to-arweave-a-blockchain-cloud-storage-platform-footprint-analytics\/","title":{"rendered":"Intro to Arweave, a blockchain cloud storage platform"},"content":{"rendered":"

Arweave is a decentralized cloud storage solution that aims to upend the traditional storage market using blockchain with the option of one-time payments plus added security benefits.<\/p>\n

If it succeeds, Arweave could become a top chain in the Web 3.0 world. In this article, we\u2019ll explain what Arweave aims to do. To find out more about the blockchain cloud storage and the project\u2019s long-term potential, you can read this more advanced article here.<\/p>\n

What is Arweave?<\/h2>\n

Arweave aims to create a system where a user can pay once to store their data forever. To do this, it has created the Storage Endowment to ensure permanent storage on the network. When a piece of data is written to the Arweave network, users pay an upfront fee and incur interest in the form of storage purchasing power.<\/p>\n

Arweave has also developed a REST API to develop various file storage applications, thus creating its ecosystem.<\/p>\n

What are Arweave\u2019s Innovations?<\/h2>\n

Business Model<\/h3>\n

Whereas Filecoin's business model is similar to traditional centralized cloud services, establishing a pay-as-you-go contract between users and storage providers, Arweave solves the problem of long-term data storage with a pay-once-store-forever business model.<\/p>\n

Operational Network<\/h3>\n

Permaweb is the operational network for Arweave's ecosystem of DApps. It provides developers with great flexibility and makes DApp development easier. Developers only need to use a standard API based on the stored consensus paradigm to develop, without any programming language limitation.<\/p>\n

Community Incentive Model<\/h3>\n

Using Blockweave data structure, Arweave\u2019s miners only need to store part of the historical blocks to start mining immediately, lowering the mining threshold.<\/p>\n

The endowment pool incentivizes miners to store data for a long time and profit-sharing allows developers to share revenue.<\/p>\n

Data Storage Integrity<\/h3>\n

Innovative integration of DApp front-end and smart contracts into one, front-end data and contract data as a whole.<\/p>\n

The innovative new standard for Atomic NFT allows NFT minting and the actual content is stored as a whole on the chain.<\/p>\n

Node Allocation<\/h3>\n

Arwearve has over 1200 nodes worldwide, with most located in China.<\/p>\n

\"Arweave
Arweave Nodes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Growth<\/h2>\n

The Arweave ecosystem grew to nearly 40 TB of data storage<\/a> in 2021.<\/p>\n

\"Arweave
Arweave Size Chart<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Arweave gateway data usage as a whole is rising month by month, with occasional large-scale data usage.<\/p>\n

\"Arweave
Arweave Data Usage<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Deep Partnership with Solana<\/h2>\n

Solana generates up to 4 PB of data (or 4,096 TB) per year.<\/p>\n

Arweave and Solana have partnered to launch SOLAR Bridge, officially available in 2021. SOLAR Bridge is tailored to enable Solana to store Arweave's permanent network data, thus creating a decentralized, easily accessible, and publicly available storage solution that can handle tremendous scalability.<\/p>\n

Arweave has a similar growth trend<\/a> to the Solana token price by becoming the official Solana storage solution.<\/p>\n

\"Footprint
Footprint Analytics – Token Price YoY Growth Trend: AR vs. SOL vs. BTC<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Token Performance<\/h2>\n

AR, Arweave\u2019s token<\/a>, started from $2.63 at the beginning of the year and grew to $5.38 at the end of 2021, a 21-fold price increase.<\/p>\n

\"Arweave
Footprint Analytics – AR Token Price Peaked at $84.64 in 2021<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Price of Storage<\/h2>\n

To be able to store files on Arweave, developers create a transaction to pay a certain number of AR tokens as a network fee (currently $0.01\/MB) to store data forever. At the same time, the low-end package of Amazon S3 charges $0.000023\/MB per month. It will take 40 years for each Arweave user to break even. That means Arweave users are paying a premium for permanent storage.<\/p>\n

If the token price goes up, the cost of storage will be even higher, with even more time needed to break even.<\/p>\n

Summary<\/h2>\n

Arweave, the Web 3.0 storage infrastructure, is a decentralized cloud storage solution that solves the problem of storing data in perpetuity over time. Its network and application architecture supports development and data storage as a whole, creating a native blockchain data solution.<\/p>\n

What is Footprint Analytics?<\/h2>\n

Footprint Analytics is an all-in-one analysis platform to visualize blockchain data and discover insights. It cleans and integrates on-chain data so users of any experience level can quickly start researching tokens, projects and protocols. With over a thousand dashboard templates plus a drag-and-drop interface, anyone can build their own customized charts in minutes. Uncover blockchain data and invest smarter with Footprint.<\/p>\n