Arweave

What is Arweave (AR)?

Arweave is software that aims to permanently store files throughout a distributed or decentralized network of computers.

Furthermore, the objective is to create something akin to the mythical Library of Alexandria, where a digital archive is made to persist perpetually.

Founders of Arweave (AR)

Arweave was founded by William Jones and Sam Williams while they were still working at the University of Kent for their doctoral degrees. As for when it was launched, that happened in June 2018 on the mainnet.

Investors and Partnerships

In 2019, Arweave managed to raise around $5 million from renowned venture capital businesses or investors such as Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, among others. And speaking of partnerships, the ones that it has managed to accrue are impressive, including the likes of Solana, Polkadot, Avalanche, Cosmos, and NEAR Protocol.

How Does Arweave (AR) Work?

Here, we will be looking at some of the primary components that make Arweave work the way it does.

Blockweave

Arweave is not necessarily a “blockchain.” Rather than this chain of blocks containing data or transactions, the data here is stored within this graph of blocks. This implies that every block is connected to the two preceding it, with the structure forming what’s known as a “blockweave.”

Succinct Proof of Random Access (SPoRA)

At one point, Arweave’s consensus mechanism used to be a hybrid of PoW (proof-of-work). It was known as PoA (proof-of-access) and required miners to offer cryptographic proof demonstrating their access to the blockweave’s recall block if they wanted to mine new blocks.

Since February 2021, the consensus mechanism has shifted to SPoRA (Succinct Proof of Random Access), an improvement on PoA.

SPoRA is more energy-efficient and discourages resource pooling by incentivizing the maintenance of miners’ own nodes instead, increasing decentralization within the network.

Wildfire

Wildfire is responsible for ranking nodes depending on how swiftly they respond to requests for data within the network. In other words, it is an algorithm for ranking that incentivizes nodes to perform better, facilitating affordable access to data within Arweave.

Blockshadows

Blockshadowing entails eliminating transactions from blocks while sending little block data, hence the shadow. This enables nodes to verify blocks and attain consensus without needing to receive the complete block.

Use Cases of Arweave

Within this section, we will be looking at some of the use cases that adopting Arweave can entail, such as its implications for data archiving, smart contracts, and the decentralized web.

Data Archiving

Storing mission-critical information for the long term has obvious benefits, even if the data is no longer in use. Arweave has already massively helped in that regard when it archived around 5 million documents for war-torn Ukraine, generating an immutable historical record of the events that unfolded within the country.

Decentralized Web

Arweave can be thought of as a decentralized and permanent web held within a public ledger. With permanent storage, humanity’s most vital information can be preserved, as we alluded to earlier, and web applications that are provably neutral and completely decentralized can be hosted.

Smart Contracts

This would be where we mention SmartWeave, which happens to be a protocol for building smart contract applications using JavaScript and the AR token. Moreover, it doesn’t operate on a blockchain, but instead on every user’s computer, allowing for a more cost-efficient solution than existing smart contracts built on blockchains.

What Makes Arweave Unique?

Here, we will be going through some of the more unique aspects of Arweave, the ones that may set it apart from its competitors.

Permanent Storage

On Arweave, once your PDFs, wikis, videos, or web applications have been stored, they can be accessed indefinitely as long as there is an internet connection. Moreover, the data cannot be manipulated or altered once it has been stored, which maintains its integrity.

Low Costs

The fee charged to store data is one-time and upfront, and as of now, it’s around $3.25 per GB. This is quite low compared to traditional mediums of storage or even other blockchain-based alternatives.

Speed and Efficiency

Moreover, it is even scalable. Through Blockshadows, Arweave can gain a transactional throughput of approximately 5,000 TPS (transactions per second), giving it that much-needed speed and efficiency.

Ease of Participation

Compared to its other alternatives, joining Arweave can be a lot easier, as miners only require a Linux system that has at least 8 GB of RAM to begin generating new blocks within Arweave.

Comparison of Arweave (AR)

Here, we will briefly delve into how Arweave fares against some of its competitors, like Filecoin, BitTorrent, and Internet Computer.

Internet Computer (ICP) vs. Arweave (AR)

From what we have gathered, due to how ICP has been structured, it might be more scalable than Arweave, and within the world of blockchain or decentralization, that can make all the difference. However, Arweave may still have the upper hand when it comes to accessibility and ease of participation.

Filecoin (FIL) vs. Arweave (AR)

To operate a node on Filecoin, one needs significantly more RAM—around 156 GB, in fact—and processor speed. Arweave, as highlighted earlier, requires substantially less, which may make it more decentralized and cost-efficient.

BitTorrent (BTT) vs. Arweave (AR)

We are all familiar with BitTorrent and how popular a tool it has been for downloading games, movies, and software applications. And that is really it. The fundamental difference between the two is that Arweave focuses on the data that needs to stay up. Storing movies or shows using BitTorrent would therefore be a lot cheaper than Arweave, as the latter focuses more on permanent storage.

Ocean Protocol (OCEAN) vs. Arweave (AR)

The Ocean Protocol focuses more on creating a marketplace where data providers can sell data to those looking for it, than on storage. That is the primary difference between the two, and as for which platform works better, that would depend on your requirements, as they operate in entirely different spheres.

AR Tokenomics

We will now move on to its native token, delving a bit into its roles, distribution, and mining.

Roles of AR Token

Once AR tokens have been bought, they can be used primarily for the payment of retrieving and storing whatever data is on Arweave, and they can even be used for interacting with certain applications on the Permaweb.

Token Distribution

The supply of this token has a maximum limit of 66 million.

55 million of these have already been minted following the generation of the Genesis block at its mainnet launch, and have been distributed to various parties. The 11 million that remained were distributed to miners as rewards for their contributions, with some still left.

Mining AR Token

Miners here do not have to download the complete Blockweave network if they want to begin mining tokens here. So, when these miners start integrating new blocks within the network, new AR tokens start circulating and are then rewarded to these miners.

How to Buy Arweave (AR) on Huobi

So far, if what has been stated has gotten you interested in purchasing the AR token, then we will take a brief look at how you can do that on the Huobi cryptocurrency exchange.

Registering on Huobi

To begin, click the link below to register with Huobi using the Coin Labs referral code. On the registration page, fill in the usual fields, like ones for passwords, email addresses, codes, etc.

KYC Verification Process

You will have to get your account verified if you wish to trade without experiencing hassles. To do that, head to Huobi’s KYC page and enter and upload whatever’s asked of you about your identity, like utility bills, bank statements, etc.

Depositing Funds

Next comes making your first deposit. So, head over to Huobi’s deposit page and select a token and the network for it. Then, paste the deposit address that Huobi will generate into an external exchange’s or wallet’s withdrawal field to initiate the transfer of funds.

Navigating to the Trading Page

After making a deposit, on its homepage, from the Trade drop-down menu, select Spot. On the spot trading page, search for a trading pair that has the AR token in it.

Executing the Trade

After finding the trading pair, select the type of order you’d like, adjust its parameters, and then place it, which may take a while to fill or complete.

Withdrawal to Wallet

After your order has been filled, you might want to withdraw those newly acquired AR tokens to a wallet. So, on Huobi’s withdrawal page, select the AR token and any of the supported networks. Then, paste your wallet’s address into the address field, and confirm your withdrawal after specifying the amount.

Future Prospects

While Arweave doesn’t have its own roadmap, its founder revealed a few interesting details when interacting with certain media outlets, with regard to its future prospects. Archival services for governments or other institutions, Polkadot integration, and funding for approximately 1,000 projects looking to build on Arweave through Open Web Foundry — all of this was hinted at by the founder.

Conclusion

Arweave can be an innovative platform for data storage, due mainly, in part, to how it is based on what’s essentially a blockchain derivative known as Blockweave. Through its unique SPoRA consensus mechanism, it successfully achieves various operational efficiencies while enabling its own Permaweb platform.

We Coin-Labs.com provides only objective information about Arweave.
Therefore, we are not responsible for the investment decision in Arweave and the resulting loss.

Arweave Basics

Here are some factors that investors should consider before investing in Arweave.

Cryptocurrency Features	Arweave (AR)
Publisher or Developers	William Jones, Sam Williams
Headquarters (Registration Number)	London
Symbol	AR
Platform	Blockweave
Published Date (CMC Registration)	2024-11-01
Max Supply	66,000,000 AR

Reliability Score of Arweave in 2024

These are indexes mesuring the investment reliability of Arweave conducted by Coin-Labs.com.

Investment Reliability Rating Items	Scores and Current Status
Company Activation Rate	/ 10.0 CAR
Communication Rate	/ 10.0 CR
Technology Transparency Rate	/ 10.0 TTR
Development Participation Rate	/ 10.0 DPR
Listing Status on the World's Top 10 Exchanges	Listed on 6 Exchanges
Number of Available Pairs Worldwide	172 Pairs
Market Cap of the Cryptocurrency	550,195,810 USD (Rank #105)

The table above shows the result of investment suitability evaluation for Arweave.
Check out how we evaluate cryptocurrencies on the crypto rating description page.

Arweave Price

Here are the price and recent trading volume of Arweave. (Data of 2024-11-02 00:35:00)

Price Items	Price and Trading Volume of Arweave
Arweave Price	15.473 USD
Price Change 24h	-2.55%
Price Change 7d	-15.12%
Trading Volume 24h	33,432,041 USD
Trading Volume Change 24h	-6.07%

Cryptocurrency Metadata

You can check the development status and social media information of Arweave through the links in the table below.

Metadata Source	URL
🌎 Official Website	https://www.arweave.org
📖 White Paper	https://www.arweave.org/files/arweave-lightpaper.pdf
🛰️ Source Code (GitHub)	https://github.com/ArweaveTeam/arweave
🐦 Twitter	https://twitter.com/ArweaveEco
🤖 Reddit	https://reddit.com/r/Arweave
🎺 Message Board	https://medium.com/@arweave

Where to Buy Arweave

Here are the top ten world crypto exchanges where traders can buy Arweave in 2024.

Top10 Exchanges	Listed Status	Page URL
Binance	Listed	https://www.binance.com/en/trade/AR_BTC
Coinbase	Not listed
Kraken	Not listed
KuCoin	Listed	https://www.kucoin.com/trade/AR-USDT
Bitfinex	Not listed
OKX	Listed	https://www.okx.com/trade-spot/ar-usdt
Huobi	Listed	https://www.huobi.com/en-us/trade/ar_usdt?type=spot
Bitstamp	Not listed
Bybit	Listed	https://www.bybit.com/en-US/trade/spot/AR/USDT
Gate.io	Listed	https://www.gate.io/trade/AR_USDT

Frequently Asked Questions