Monday, April 29, 2024
white-and-purple-professional-technology-startup-business-company-presentation-(2).jpg
2024-02-28
By PermaDAO

2023 Arweave Ecosystem Report

Author: Kyle、Marshal Orange

Translator: Kyle、Marshal Orange

Reviewer: Sandy、Webb、0xmiddle

Part I: Preface

2023 was the year of recovery for the crypto market, marking a stark contrast to the darkest moments of 2022. With the optimism brought by the introduction of spot Bitcoin ETFs, the crypto market gradually emerged from the shadows of various tumultuous events such as UST unpegging and the FTX scandal.

DePIN is undoubtedly the hottest topic in the crypto industry in 2023. As one of the leading contenders in the DePIN sector, Arweave saw explosive growth in various data metrics on its network throughout the year, achieving milestone after milestone and revitalizing the vitality and charm of decentralized permanent storage.

Behind the data growth lies the principle of perseverance, innovation, and dedication upheld by projects and contributors within the Arweave ecosystem. Even in the depths of the bear market, Arweave continued to host events such as the Asia Summer Hackathon and Arweave Day in Asia to promote the development of its ecosystem and the adoption of permanent storage. With the sentiment surrounding the 2024 Bitcoin halving and expectations of Federal Reserve interest rate cuts, Arweave is also leading the DePIN revolution for society, which is not only a technological revolution merging blockchain and the Internet of Things but also a business revolution incentivizing the construction of infrastructure.

This article will delve into four aspects to help readers gain a deeper understanding of the Arweave ecosystem:

  • The growth of various data metrics on the Arweave in 2023

  • Introduction of Arweave Segmented Project and their Significant Progress in 2023

  • Arweave Eco highlights of the year

  • Arweave year-end summary and future outlook

Part II: Network Overview

Data Performance Analysis

Transaction Volume

The trading volume on the Arweave network saw an explosive surge in 2023. When examining the monthly trading volume, the overall level in 2023 was significantly higher than that of 2022, hovering around 100 million transactions starting from June. Additionally, transaction volume saw substantial increases in November and December, reaching 321,659,762 and 527,684,498 transactions respectively, representing a month-on-month growth of 160% and 64%, setting multiple historical highs. Looking at the annual transaction volume, 2023 saw a total of 1,759,817,766 transactions, marking the highest annual transaction volume in history with a 427.8% increase compared to the previous year.

Network Storage

In 2023, Arweave’s overall network storage performance was not as strong as in 2022, totaling 32.96 TiB for the year, a decrease of 55.78% compared to the previous year. Throughout 2023, monthly network storage fluctuated between 2–4 TiB, with the lowest recorded in June at only 1.43 TiB. However, after June, the network storage began to increase, reaching its peak for the year in December at 4.61 TiB.

Address Growth

The number of on-chain addresses grew by 47,872 throughout 2023, a 39.54% increase compared to 2022. Specifically, the performance surpassed that of the same period in 2022 starting from April, with a year-over-year growth ranging roughly between 53% and 189% during this period (except for November). In December, there was a significant increase of 7,568 on-chain addresses, marking an 88.3% increase compared to the previous month and the second-highest monthly growth in on-chain addresses historically.

Contract Growth

The arweave network was exceptionally active in 2023, with contract growth being a key indicator. The growth of contracts in 2023 saw a significant increase compared to 2022, with a year-over-year growth of 1063%. Contract growth in the first half of 2023 outperformed the second half, with April seeing the highest historical growth of 1,919,789 contracts, a year-over-year increase of 29531%, and a month-over-month increase of 42%.

Transaction Fees

Total transaction fee revenue for the Arweave network in 2023 amounted to 24,877 AR (equivalent to 176,822 USD), representing a 33.76% increase compared to 2022. Throughout the year, there were 9 months where transaction fee revenue exceeded 1500 AR, with a noticeable increasing trend starting from June and peaking at 4260.32 AR in December. Due to the increase in AR coin price, the slope of transaction fee revenue (USD) sharply increased starting from October, reaching 39,962.48 USD in December, a 53% month-over-month increase.

Endowment Growth

Most of the storage fees paid by users on the Arweave network are allocated to the Endowment to incentivize miners for long-term data storage. Endowment fund revenue in 2023 accounted for 83.3% of transaction fee revenue, thus its trend aligns with transaction fee income. The total endowment fund revenue for the year reached 20,731.26 AR, equivalent to 147,352.47 USD.

Storage Costs

The lowest storage cost for Arweave in 2023 occurred in February, at only 0.156 AR/GiB. From March onwards, storage costs began to increase and remained steady at 0.858 AR/GiB.

Part III: Ecosystem Overview

Ecosystem Landscape

Source: Community Labs

Project Overview

Infrastructure (Gateways, Storage Protocols, and Middleware)

Ar.io

Ar.io is a gateway platform for the Arweave network, serving as an umbrella organization consisting of an increasing number of protocols and applications supporting the PermaWeb. These open-source protocols based on infrastructure include the ar.io network protocol for gateway operators, Arweave File System (ArFS), Arweave Domain System (ArNS), and ArDrive (a file syncing application for PermaWeb).

  • Highlights:

    • In September 2023, Ar.io’s testnet opened registration for Arweave Gate. After introducing the Gateway Address Registry, ar.io announced that there are now over 60 nodes in the network.

    • In November 2023, Ar.io launched the WayFinder network browser extension, with over 100 nodes already added to the Gateway Address Registry.

  • Website: ar.io

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/ar_io_network

KYVE

KYVE is a blockchain storage middleware built on Arweave, providing a standardized validation and archiving framework for blockchain data needs. According to the KYVE team, the project aims to facilitate easy on-chain permanent storage and retrieval of data for various blockchain projects without the need for customized development, enabling infinite scalability for Web3 projects. KYVE enable data providers to standardize, verify, and permanently store data streams, with permanent storage provided by Arweave and data standardization and verification handled by KYVE’s network.

  • Highlights:

    • KYVE mainnet launched, with over ten million transactions and over 2TB of data uploaded.

    • KYVE Academy and Zelay’s activities attracted over 3000 students and 17000 community members within a month.

    • Strategic partnerships with 19 projects were established throughout the year, expanding KYVE’s ecosystem.

    • To enhance KYVE’s User Experience further in 2024, KYVE is planning to hold community growth activities such as hackathons and also maintain good relationships with strategic partners.

  • Website: kyve.network

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/KYVENetwork

Irys (Formerly Bundlr)

Irys is an extended solution for Arweave designed to increase the throughput of Arweave’s permanent data through bundling transactions. It accounts for approximately 79% of the total data uploaded to the Arweave network, holding a leading position among Arweave ecosystem gateways.

  • Highlights:

    • In September, Bundlr completed processing 1 billion transactions in total.

    • On October 5, Bundlr rebranded as Irys. As the sole provenance layer, Irys combats the crisis of accountability by providing a credibly neutral record of data, laying the foundation for a future dominated by trust and transparency.

    • On November 29, Solana Mobile stored dApp Store applications on Irys.

    • On December 6, Web3 gaming platform Immutable partnered with Irys, enabling on-chain game data traceable and providing data availability and user experience for game developers while retaining Ethereum-level security.

    • On December 18, Arweave founder Sam mentioned that irys is considering forking Arweave, which would entail deleting datasets and resetting token supplies. Irys responded, stating that their core work is to provide unrestricted access to permanent data for users, and they remain committed to censorship resistance, open-source, and permissionless technology.

    • On January 4, 2024, Irys founder posted a lengthy tweet for final clarification, and Arweave founder Sam welcomed they finally got right back on track.

  • Website: irys.xyz

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/irys_xyz

ArDrive

ArDrive is a decentralized cloud storage application built on Arweave, similar to Web3’s Dropbox or Google Drive, supporting the upload of various data formats. Users can easily store and manage their data permanently through a one-time payment. Developers can upload public or private files, monitor network operation, and transaction status using the ArDrive CLI tool.

  • Highlights:

    • ArDrive was released to Arweave in February, meaning the dApp is fully decentralized and stored in an immutable form, independent of its core team.

    • ArDrive 2.0 was launched in May, introducing new features such as dark mode, wallet generation, and large file uploads.

    • ArDrive Turbo was released in July, allowing users to pay storage fees on Arweave with fiat currency.

  • Website: ardrive.io

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/ardriveapp

Akord

Akord is a decentralized digital insurance vault protocol built on Arweave. Users can use Akord to permanently store important data, supporting both public and end-to-end encrypted storage, as well as multi-party collaboration and sending private messages.

  • Highlights:

    • Akord newly enabled API keys to visit its API. Akord JS upgraded to v4.23.6.

    • In September, Akord collaborated with digital artist Erik Lundy.

    • In December, Akord supported minting atomic NFTs.

  • Website: akord.com

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/AkordTeam

Sarcophagus

Sarcophagus is a decentralized dead man’s switch application built on Arweave, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Ethereum. Sarcophagus provides users with a comprehensive digital dead man’s switch system, allowing users to upload important files, encrypt them, and store them permanently on the Arweave network. Users can set a decryption time and choose a specific recipient. Before the decryption time arrives, users can either extend the file’s storage time or terminate the service; otherwise, the file will be decrypted automatically for the recipient.

  • Highlights:

    • In February 2023, Sarcophagus v2 officially launched on the Goerli testnet.

    • In June, the mainnet launched on Ethereum.

    • In September, Sarcophagus collaborated with everPay.

    • In October, Sarcophagus v2 was officially launched on the Polygon network.

    • In November, Sarcophagus v2 was launched.

  • Website: sarcophagus.io

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/sarcophagusio

Meson Network

Meson Network is building a decentralized bandwidth marketplace for Web3, replacing traditional labor-based sales models with blockchain protocol models to integrate and monetize idle bandwidth from long-tail users at low cost.

  • Highlights:

    • On September 8, Meson Network partnered with AWS to achieve Web3 infrastructure transformation.

    • On September 14, Spheron collaborated with Meson Network to deploy Meson’s blog, documentation, and tutorial website to decentralized cloud infrastructure, meeting the urgent needs of many Meson partners for one-click deployment services.

    • On October 13, Meson Network partnered with Klaytn. With Klaytn’s strong commitment to transparency and community engagement, coupled with Meson Network’s specialization in decentralized CDN services and bandwidth standardization, this partnership is expected to create a stronger digital ecosystem.

    • On October 19, 2023, Meson Network integrated with Arbitrum, launching Arbitrum decentralized RPC services with high-availability.

    • On November 29, Meson went live on the Goerli testnet.

    • On December 20, Meson Network partnered with Push Protocol to actively support Depin projects, leveraging its electronic communication expertise to enhance Depin’s overall maintainability and functionality.

    • On January 25, 2024, Meson, the decentralized physical network, completed a strategic financing led by Presto Labs, valuing it at $1 billion.

  • Website: meson.network

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/NetworkMeson

RedStone Oracles

RedStone is an oracle providing dApps and smart contracts on L1 and L2 blockchain networks with rapidly updated, reliable, and diverse data feeds. RedStone utilizes Arweave as its data availability layer, greatly reducing the storage costs of data by bundling and uploading it to the Arweave network. Additionally, RedStone not only periodically uploads information to the blockchain but also supports projects in retrieving data from Arweave as required.

  • Highlights:

    • RedStone kicked off on the Avalanche mainnet with “Big DeltaPrime Bang” in 2023 and remained the fastest-growing protocol on Avalanche and Arbitrum.

    • Starting from November, the transaction volume on the Arweave network keeps growing. It is RedStone being the biggest contributor to the surge in transaction volume, accounting for 99.6% of the total network volume. Furthermore, Redstone also performed well in terms of storage volume, which reached 566 GB and accounted for 22% of Arweave total storage.

    • In May 2023, RedStone announced its angel round of financing, including investors like Stani Kulechov (Founder of Aave & Lens), Sandeep Nailwal (Co-founder of Polygon), Alex Gluchovski (Co-founder of zkSync), Emin Gün Sirer (Co-founder of Avalanche), among others.

    • In July, RedStone Oracles supported both Lido’s stETH token and the Venus Protocol. For stETH, RedStone extended to LSTfi Oracle, integrated with many notable protocols such as Swell Network, Stader ETHx, Sommelier, Gravita, Stakewise, and EtherFi, provided accurate pricing to facilitate collaborations with other DeFi projects.

    • In August, RedStone partnered with Angle Protocol and Voltz Protocol, emphasizing the critical role of accurate oracles in integrating real-world assets into DeFi in the RWA.

    • In October, RedStone launched the RedStone Expedition, where participants earn RSG through various activities. The integration of Warpy robots connects Discord activities with blockchain rewards, highlighting the importance of community engagement.

    • In December, Mento partnered with RedStone, enabling Mento to launch a stablecoin factory. The stablecoin factory, centered around its CDP module, creates decentralized stablecoins by leveraging collateral.

  • Website: redstone.finance

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/redstone_defi

FirstBatch (AI Infrastructure)

FirstBatch turns any UX into individually crafted, personalized experiences without even needing user data. This is made possible through the power of embeddings and vector databases. The data of FirstBatch’s AI models is stored on Arweave, which allows users to upload new datasets for indexing and model creation.

  • Highlights:

    • In May 2023, FirstBatch partnered with decentralized social blockchain DeSo.

    • In June 2023, Manta Network established a partnership with FirstBatch.

    • In January 2024, FirstBatch announced the launch of the AI Wikipedia Dria .

  • Website: https://www.firstbatch.xyz/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/FirstBatchxyz_

Mind Network

Mind Network is a decentralized trustless layer (Zero-Knowledge Proofs ZKP + Fully Homomorphic Encryption FHE) and is also a provider of zero-trust data lake solutions, and is one of the investment targets of Arweave SCP Ventures. Its ultimate goal is to protect all data, smart contracts, and artificial intelligence for Web3 users. Integrating a network security technology framework of zero-trust, it operates on the principle of “Never Trace, Always Verify” to ensure the security of end-to-end data flows across L1/L2 chains, decentralized storage, and other public blockchains.

  • Highlights:

    • Participated in three hackathons: won a Silver Award at the Network State hackathon, won first place in the “Deploying Smart Contracts on Linea” competition at Ethereum Singapore 2023 hackathon, which interested Vitalik Buterin.

    • Technical Innovations: Built a zero-trust bridge on top of CCIP.

    • 33 Online Events: Shared insights on platforms like Twitter Space, Binance Live, various live streams, and top industry conferences.

    • Global presence in offline events: EPF Day at Istanbul Devconnect, Messari 2024 Crypto Thesis Event in New York, Smartcon 2023 in Barcelona, Mainnet 2023 in New York, Permissionless 2 in Austin, Texas, TOKEN 2049 in Singapore, and Wanxiang Blockchain Week in Hong Kong.

    • Product Launch: Introduced MindLake, integrating Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) and Zero-Knowledge Proofs (ZKP).

    • In July, partnered with Arweave, integrating its Zero Trust feature with Arweave’s permanent data storage.

  • Website: https://mindnetwork.xyz/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/mindnetwork_xyz

LogStore Network

LogStore is the first project built on the KYVE protocol by the Usher Labs team. Some use cases of LogStore Network include the DeFi protocol underpinned by a data-powered approach where assets can be reallocated, widespread engagement rewards for gamers in Web3, and decentralized identity verification. With the integration of Streamr, KYVE, and Arweave, LogStore is able to transport data from any software environment to the Arweave.

Pokt

Pocket (or Pokt) is a middleware protocol for Web3 relay infrastructure, matching developers and applications with full node operators on the blockchain. Pokt aims to incentivize and coordinate a decentralized network of operators to run a type of blockchain node (an RPC node) that enables applications to read/write to blockchains. Operators can build gateways on top of a robust RPC infrastructure layer. Dedicated gateways also significantly reduce wear and tear when interacting with the main network protocols (Morse, Shannon) while optimizing QoS and bringing new features and services to the ecosystem.

Livepeer

Livepeer is a video infrastructure network for live and on-demand streaming that uses Arweave as the default data storage layer. It aims to give developers the freedom to innovate, creators autonomy from platforms, and viewers a choice in their experience.

Dojima

Dojima is an omnichain EVM layer that acts as a crosschain platform between multiple blockchains, including Layer 1 and Layer 2 (such as Ethereum, Binance, Polygon, Arweave, Solana, Polkadot, etc.), and empowers developers to craft groundbreaking applications.

Backpac

Backpac provides high-throughput RPC gateways for Arweave and Solana blockchains, offering intelligent RPC request allocation and rate limit optimization. It released the Arweave gateway in January 2024.

Moss

Moss is a social file management and sharing platform that advances decentralized file management using Web3 technology. It aims to provide a decentralized alternative of the traditional centralized file management, enabling users to truly control their data while facilitating fast, convenient, and secure file sharing. Moss facilitates secure storage and management of different content types using decentralized storage solutions. Additionally, Moss offers the Mossyland shared community, allowing creators to establish exclusive sharing spaces and interact with fans, thereby promoting the widespread of the quality content to make profits.

  • Highlights: The innovative social cloud storage platform Moss, officially launched by Web3 veteran infrastructure 4EVERLAND, successfully went live on January 9th and announced its seamless integration with Arweave.

  • Website: https://www.mymoss.io/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/mymoss_io

Database and Data Analysis

WeaveDB

WeaveDB is a NoSQL database supported by Warp Contracts on the Arweave blockchain, developed by the decent.land team. It is a decentralized database system that utilizes the Arweave network as its underlying storage layer. It aims to provide a scalable, secure, and fast solution for data storage.

WeaveVM (WVM) is the first EVM-compatible protocol developed by the decent.land team that relies entirely on Arweave for decentralized data storage. It achieves atomicity of source code and data stored on the same ledger, aiming to manage complex large-scale data computations without incurring the high gas fees, typically associated with on-chain state storage on the EVM. WVM incorporates the principles of VACP, which empowers its gasless and more efficient process of complex data structures.

Kwil

Kwil is a permissionless, scalable, and decentralized relational database, which is designed to help developers create diverse user experiences with decentralized structured data storage . The Kwil database operates on decentralized, Byzantine fault-tolerant blockchain networks. Each Kwil database network has its own sovereign blockchain and manages data using SQL.

  • Highlights:

    • Released the public Alpha version of Kwil V2 for testing in March 2023, which introduces a query pricing system. It also allows dApp developers to define their own rules to interact with the database and deploy their databases on the Kwil network.

    • Announced the significant release of Kuneiform in May, introducing a range of new tools and features, including the Kuneiform language, Kuneiform IDE, and SDKs for Javascript/Typescript and Python.

    • Released a data explorer in June.

    • Launched Network Version 0.6.0 in December, turning Kwil into a framework for deploying relational databases as independent Byzantine fault-tolerant networks.

  • Website: https://www.kwil.com/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/KwilTeam

Glacier Network

Glacier Network is an L2 rollup network that enables decentralized applications (DApps) to be built on decentralized databases. It provides a programmable data composability solution supported by ZK-rollup, seamlessly handling datasets on Arweave, Filecoin, BNB Greenfield, etc. using the NoSQL GlacierDB. Glacier Network builds modular, scalable, and intelligent decentralized databases for Web3 and AI, creating trustless data primitives.

ViewBlock

ViewBlock’s mission is to build explorers and various user-friendly tools for public chains to better apply cryptographic technology. The ViewBlock browser currently supports 7 public chains: Thorchain, Arweave, Thundercore, Zilliqa, Starknet, Mixin, and Unstoppable. Arscan, developed by ViewBlock, is an Arweave blockchain explorer.

The Graph

The Graph, the decentralized data indexing protocol, can be used to query data stored on decentralized storage such as Ethereum, IPFS, and Arweave.

Development Tools

Molecular Execution Machine

The Molecular Execution Machine (MEM) introduced by the Decent Land Labs team is a scalable Web3 Serverless Functions platform based on the SmartWeave standard. It provides a MEM function execution environment which is gasless, allowing developers to build and deploy Web3 applications on any blockchain without their own servers.

  • Highlights:

    • In August 2023, MEM collaborated with Kwil to integrate all development tools into a single web application called MEM IDE by the end of the month.

    • In the fourth quarter of 2023, MEM collaborated with creator economy platforms ShardDog, Akash Network, and Akord.

    • MEM Browser was launched in January 2024.

  • Website: https://www.mem.tech/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/mem_tech

Fleek

Fleek offers decentralized hosting, storage, CDN, and other infrastructure for developers to seamlessly build Web3 applications and services optimized for performance. Fleek Network is an open-source edge computing platform for accelerating the development and execution of decentralized web services.

  • Highlights:

    • On April 18, Fleek.co announced plans to fully migrate to Fleek.xyz, with Fleek.co Storage SDK being deprecated in December.

    • The Fleek Node SDK Beta was released on March 24.

    • Fleek.xyz launched its internal testing Alpha version on August 31.

  • Website: https://fleek.xyz/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/fleekxyz

Web3Infra

Web3Infra is an open-source tool suite provided by everVision for one-click building of consensus storage on Arweave. It includes the Golang SDK “goar” designated by Arweave, Arseeding lightweight nodes, data download/upload tools like Arsyncer and Turing, and other components to help developers easily and quickly build applications in the Arweave ecosystem.

Arseeding, incubated by PermaDAO, is an infrastructure for the Arweave ecosystem that provides services such as transaction broadcasting, data seeding, and data retrieval. Users can pay with tokens like ETH and USDC. Arseeding also provides content reading acceleration similar to CDN, empowering applications in the ecosystem significantly, making it a powerful gateway infrastructure in the Arweave ecosystem.

  • Highlights: In November 2023, Arseeding announced the successful development of a Java version SDK, making it the first infrastructure in the Arweave ecosystem to support Java and the infrastructure with the most SDK language versions, including Go, Python, Java, and JavaScript.

  • Website: https://web3infra.dev/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/everVisionHQ

Protocol.Land

Protocol.Land is a decentralized source code control and collaboration platform built on the Arweave blockweave. It serves as a fully decentralized Git on Arweave, ensuring that user data and accounts are never deleted.

4EVERLAND

4EVERLAND is a Web3 cloud computing platform that integrates storage, computing, and networking capabilities. It aims to serve as an infrastructure for millions of Web3 developers and applications, facilitating a smooth transition from Web2. 4EVERLAND Bucket allows each file to be uploaded to Arweave, enabling users to securely, conveniently, and efficiently upload, store, and retrieve files from various decentralized storage protocols.

  • Highlights:

    • In April, 4EVERLAND collaborated with prominent crypto projects such as Scroll, Dechat, DeSire, Segment, MDEX, Bitget Wallet, and Hela.

    • In May, 4EVERLAND integrated everPay for convenient Web3 storage fee payments.

    • In August, PermaDAO, 4EVERLAND, and everVision jointly launched the “Unleash Arweave” storage subsidy program.

    • In December, 4EVERLAND successfully completed its second round of financing, raising $2 million.

    • In January 2024, 4EVERLAND launched the social file management and sharing platform Moss.

  • Website: https://www.4everland.org/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/4everland_org

Warp

Warp is a new solution for data-driven smart contracts built on the Arweave network by Redstone. It allows cross-contract calls, bundle interactions, WASM contract deployment, and generation of verifiable randomness using the Warp stack with opensource SDK and development toolset.

  • Highlights:

    • The Warp SDK introduced features such as EVM key signature support and WASM Rust support, along with various plugins and KV storage options. Additionally, it introduced DRE, Warp Atomic Asset standard, and innovative Contract Constructor.

    • Warp Academy provides a rapid and concise onboarding process for developers, becoming a top-tier education center in the Arweave ecosystem.

    • Warp AI enables smart contract systems to handle big data models.

    • The decentralized Warp Sequencer, currently in the testnet phase, is preparing for mainnet launch in the first quarter of 2024.

  • Website: https://warp.cc/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/warp_contracts

Wallet

ArConnect

ArConnect is a native Arweave wallet extension that provides non-custodial wallet and asset management in your favorite browser. The extension allows Arweave wallet holders to interact with any dApp without sharing their private keys.

Arweave.app

The Arweave Network wallet allows users to deploy permanent data from their browsers, securely connecting accounts to decentralized applications.

Finnie

Finnie is the official companion plugin wallet for the Koii Network, enabling users to mint, store, and manage lasting digital assets (such as NFTs) through the Koii Network and decentralized storage (Koii originated from Arweave but uses IPFS and Filecoin storage now).

ArSnap

ArSnap allows Ethereum users to easily use Arweave applications that provide decentralized storage without directly opening an Arweave wallet.

DeFi

everPay

everPay, a real-time blockchain finance protocol developed by everFinance, operates by locking encrypted assets from various public chains in smart contracts and mapping them to the protocol for real-time payment settlement. It boasts minimal transaction costs, with just 1 USD capable of facilitating millions of transactions.

Built on the storage consensus paradigm, everPay circumvents blockchain performance limitations, with its transaction-per-second (TPS) rate contingent upon application architecture and server performance, providing TPS performance comparable to traditional internet applications.

  • Highlights:

    • In 2023, everPay successively listed native stablecoins $U and $STAMP within the Arweave ecosystem, increasing transactions from 360,000 to 30 million, nearly 80-fold growth, with over 25,000 registered users, nearly 18-fold growth.

    • In February 2023, everPay supported ANS domain name system compatibility.

    • In May, everPay integrated legal OTC service platform Legend Trading.

    • In September, everPay launched the Beta version of EverID for account systems.

    • In December, everPay supported the release of Arweave’s first inscription $ARIS.

  • Website: https://everpay.io/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/everPayHQ

Permaswap

Permaswap is a real-time decentralized trading platform built on the SCP paradigm and the only DEX in the Arweave ecosystem. Permaswap Network is a fully decentralized P2P network, where LPs are self-managed accounts peer-to-peer, and assets are self-managed by users’ keys. Anyone can deploy programs compliant with the network protocol and provide liquidity in the network.

  • Highlights:

    • On March 14, Permaswap launched its first PST token $ARDRIVE.

    • In December, Permaswap held the $AR trading competition, with a total swap volume of over 300,000 involving 2,574 addresses.

    • In January 2024, it launched the PermaDAO native governance token $halo testnet token, and announced the impending open-sourcing of Permaswap.

  • Website: permaswap.network

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/Permaswap

NFT

Pianity

Pianity is a music NFT platform built on Arweave, featuring a diverse range of music styles catering to niche audiences. All music provided is of lossless quality, accessible for free to everyone. Additionally, Pianity offers services for artists to release music NFTs, providing them with a new source of independent income. The platform aims to bring together music artists and their communities for collaboration, sales, purchases, and collections of limited edition songs.

Fair Protocol

Fair Protocol, incubated by Forward Research (Arweave ecosystem development incubator), is the first decentralized marketplace for inference of AI models on Arweave. Currently supporting three inference models for text and image inputs. Anyone can upload their trained models and scripts to Fair Protocol, allowing users to choose preferred models and scripts to execute input commands, generating images or text. These generated images or text are atomic assets tradable on the BazAR marketplace.

  • Highlights: Launches the alpha version of the protocol, splitting fair marketplace and fair studio; Converts content generated by models into atomic assets for easy trading on BazAR marketplace; Releases SDKs for Node and browser; Integrates Stamp protocol to establish a reputation system.

  • Website: https://fair.ar-io.dev/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/fairAIprotocol

everPay NFT

everPay NFT collaborates with various project institutions or artists to release 12 sets of NFT series, participating in everPay auctions. These 12 sets of NFT works vary in style, with each set containing 9 pieces, totaling 108 pieces. Among the 12 sets of NFT works, 10 are Ethereum NFTs (ERC-721 standard), while the other two sets are Arweave NFTs (Atomic NFT standard).

Users holding everPay NFTs can participate in early liquidity mining on Permaswap and become early Router nodes for Permaswap. Additionally, they enjoy benefits provided by collaborating projects.

Who is emily

Who is emily is a native NFT project in the Arweave ecosystem, consisting of digital art pieces depicting a girl named emily, created by randomly combining over 100 different features from 7 core attribute categories. Its NFTs are minted on the Ethereum, but its metadata, image URLs, and image files are permanently stored on the Arweave.

BazAR

BazAR is an atomic asset exchange built on Arweave. As the frontend interface of the UCM protocol, BazAR provides an intuitive and user-friendly platform supporting the purchase, sale, and splitting of various types of atomic assets, including images, videos, audios, web pages, and applications. All assets on BazAR can choose to attach UDL protocol labels, offering flexible asset management and providing creators, developers, and users with more choices and opportunities.

  • Highlights: BazAR’s first NFT series is Permaweb Mfer; Integrates Stamp protocol to establish a reputation system; Integrates Alex (Arweave archive platform) and Fair Protocol (AI model inference marketplace).

  • Website: https://bazar.arweave.dev/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/OurBazAR

RareWeave

RareWeave is a native NFT marketplace in the Arweave ecosystem, where all released NFTs adhere to the atomic NFT standard. Additionally, RareWeave provides users with filters to quickly sift through suitable atomic assets, and users can follow simple instructions on the homepage to mint NFTs and create NFT collections.

  • Highlights: RareWeave introduces the Arweave sub-account protocol, allowing users to create and manage sub-wallets (sub-accounts) under the main wallet; RareWeave launches SocioWeave (social API) and Universal Wallet Interface; RareWeave integrates Fair Protocol.

  • Website: https://rareweave.store/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/rareweave

Koii Network

Koii Network is a scalable consensus protocol built on Arweave, combining attention economics and dynamic NFTs, aiming to help creators permanently own and earn value from their content by rewarding users and creators through attention economics. Anyone can deploy tasks or run Koii Network nodes to gain profits.

Art By City

Art By City is a decentralized art curation protocol built on Arweave, managed and operated by the Art By City DAO (profit-sharing community). Artists issuing NFTs through Art By City have their works permanently stored on Arweave, and the platform can organize exhibitions to involve both collectors and artists in interaction.

Darkblock

Darkblock is a decentralized content protocol aimed at helping creators issue and distribute NFT collections, providing fans with exclusive content to build communities and earn rewards through various emerging business models. NFT collections can be music, art, movies, e-books, 3D files, PDFs, and other multimedia content. Darkblock supports token-controlled access to content while permanently storing collections on Arweave.

Gridacity

Gridacity is a gaming platform on Ethereum, with all data permanently stored on Arweave through ArDrive. Gridacity Arcad serves as the portal for all Gridacity games, allowing players to view tokens or mint new games. The Gridacity team has extensive experience in the gaming field, having created and released omnichain gamings such as Pulsar 79 and Reveries of Ymatar.

Releap

Releap is Sui ecosystem’s decentralized social graph protocol for interactive art, allowing creators to showcase NFTs on personal social interfaces to facilitate NFT trading and community building. Currently, all music NFTs on Releap are stored on Arweave, with plans to store images, videos, and other multimedia NFTs on Arweave in the future.

Sound

Sound is an NFT music exploration and streaming platform on the Ethereum, offering convenient wallet functionalities and channels for NFT trading. All data is permanently stored on Arweave. Additionally, Sound introduces the Sound Protocol, allowing artists to deploy smart contracts and customize NFT royalty income.

Nina

Nina is a music NFT project built on Solana and utilizing Arweave for data storage. It aims to provide artists with a free creative environment and ownership of their works, while audiences can discover, curate, and share music in a new way on Nina.

LiveArt

LiveArt is a global Web3 art platform covering all forms of art, all types of creators, and various collectors. It aims to simplify the discovery, sale, and distribution of art, providing exclusive collecting experiences for a global audience. Additionally, LiveArt offers transparent art market analysis data, allowing artists, galleries, and collectors to interact on the platform, supporting multiple payment methods for transactions.

Metaplex

Metaplex is a decentralized NFT infrastructure on Solana, establishing NFT protocol standards for the Solana ecosystem, with its minted NFTs stored on Arweave. Metaplex develops a range of products (such as Token Metadata, The Candy Machine, Auction House, etc.), providing support for NFT applications, developers, and communities in the Solana ecosystem.

Mintbase

Mintbase is an NFT marketplace platform on the NEAR ecosystem, allowing users to create and sell NFT collections. Additionally, Mintbase provides comprehensive development tools to support users in easily building their own NFT stores and listing minted NFTs for sale. Currently, supported NFT collection types include music, artworks, tickets, photography, memberships, etc., all stored on Arweave.

OLTA

OLTA is an interactive art NFT platform on the Polygon ecosystem, where users can experience novel interactive experiences with art collections. Meanwhile, OLTA provides a series of development tools, allowing creators to easily create interesting interactive NFTs.

WenMint

WenMint is a generative NFT issuance platform, capable of generating NFT collections based on the layers of art works and supporting publishing on Ethereum, Polygon, Fantom, and other public blockchains, with NFT data stored on Arweave. WenMint aims to become a powerful NFT infrastructure, accelerating the development of NFT projects.

SocialFi

Arweave Name Service (ANS)

The Arweave Name Service (ANS), launched by Decent.land, is a decentralized social protocol built on Arweave, serving as Arweave’s Domain Name System. Similar to the ENS, ANS maps and binds Arweave addresses to concise names (format: xxx.ar), allowing combinations of numbers, letters, and emojis. Currently, there are 1,615 ANS domains minted, generating 6,585 AR in treasury revenue.

NameSpace

NameSpace, launched by Decent.Land, is built on MEM and everPay, providing a framework for deploying custom Web3 identities, facilitating the establishment of permanent decentralized identity systems for DAOs, protocols, dApps, or public blockchains.

Metaweave

Metaweave is a decentralized social media platform built on Arweave, where any posts made on the platform are permanently stored and not subject to censorship. Users can tag their tweets with corresponding hashtags (#save, #archive, or #permaweb) on X, and the tweets will be automatically indexed on the Metaweave platform.

Stamp Protocol

Stamp is a content curation protocol built on Arweave, aiming to provide new ways for interactive content engagement on Permaweb. Users can “STAMP” quality content, similar to clicking the “Like” button on social media platforms. This action not only rewards content creators with $STAMP tokens but also helps establish a reputation system to filter high-quality content on Permaweb.

ECHO

ECHO is the first decentralized social interaction protocol built on Arweave, aiming to provide infrastructure for Web3 social interactions. ECHO can be embedded into any website through a Widget, enabling users to freely express their opinions in a decentralized, permissionless, and censorship-resistant environment, as ECHO’s slogan says — Long live our opinion.

  • Highlights: Integrated with permafact (on-chain prediction platform), embedded ECHO Widget for user comments; participated in Gitcoin’s open-source software Alpha round, receiving donations from 1,559 contributors; participated in the Arweave in Denver event.

  • Website: https://0xecho.com/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/0x_echo

AFTR Work

AFTR Market is an on-chain asset management and governance platform in the Arweave ecosystem, allowing users to create their code repositories and store Arweave assets on the blockchain through AFTR’s multi-signature functionality.

Mask Network

Mask Network is a gateway to help users seamlessly transition from Web2 to Web3, connecting Web3 and Web2 mainstream media (such as Facebook, X, etc.) through an open-source browser extension. It supports setting NFTs as social media avatars and uploading files to Arweave via Mask Network.

  • Highlights: Raised $5 million in funding from DWF Labs (Web3 digital asset management company); announced the acquisition of RARA, betting on Web3 social protocols; launched multiple rounds of Web3 Social Grant on Gitcoin to fund Web3 social startup projects; announced investment in TON to further build a decentralized social network ecosystem.

  • Website: https://mask.io/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/realMaskNetwork

Metaforo

Metaforo is a Web3-native forum platform, providing social, voting governance, and tipping features for the Web3 community. All generated data is permanently stored on Arweave, serving as a bridge for startup projects to migrate from Web2 to Web3.

VouchDAO

VouchDAO is a decentralized verification layer built on top of the Vouch (based on ANS-109 data protocol) standard, used to verify users’ or developers’ real identities on Permaweb, providing credit guarantees for interactive applications.

Ella

Ella is a storage platform on Arweave focused on backing up Instagram photos. Users can permanently store photos by linking their Instagram accounts, with 50 free upload credits.

CommunityXYZ

CommunityXYZ is a profit-sharing community management platform built on Arweave, where users can view and create profit-sharing communities on the platform.

Capsl8

Capsl8 is a data storage platform in the Arweave ecosystem, focusing on storing users’ cherished personal or public historical data. It allows users to freely upload personal collections and provides tools for archiving X tweets.

Orbis Protocol

Orbis is a Web3 social protocol built on Ceramic (decentralized content calculation network), aiming to provide open and user-friendly social infrastructure for developers. Anyone can develop their own decentralized, high-performance, and composable social applications or features based on Orbis.

ReadON

ReadON is a Web3 content aggregation and distribution platform, providing valuable content to users by aggregating and filtering massive content. Meanwhile, ReadON reshapes users’ reading behavior by introducing the GameFi reading reward mechanism. Users can earn $READ tokens while reading by holding Catto NFTs. In addition, there is a decentralized content recommendation system to help creators monetize their content.

Lens

Lens is a Web3 social graph protocol on the Polygon ecosystem, aiming to facilitate connections between creators and communities, forming a fully composable, user-centric social graph. Whether it’s text, video, or music, everything can be minted as NFTs, with all generated data stored on Arweave. Users not only own the data but also generate income from it.

Relation

Relation is a multi-chain social application middleware, aiming to be an explorer of Web3 social relationship data. Through standardized protocols, Relation provides rich data and services to ecosystem users and social dApps.

Creator Economy

Permacast

Permacast is a decentralized podcasting protocol built on Arweave, supporting the upload of audio or video podcasts, with each podcast episode being an Atomic NFT. Users can use RSS feeds to transmit Permacast episodes to mainstream platforms such as Spotify, iTunes, and Fountain, or use the Permacast CLI tool to bulk upload podcasts from other platforms to Permacast. In the future, Permacast plans to integrate Livepeer to launch live streaming capabilities.

  • Highlights: The platform supports uploading video podcasts; collaborated with Decent.Land to integrate its open-source social contract PASoM, providing users with features like editing profiles and following podcasts; integrated everPay, introducing tipping features.

  • Website: https://www.permacast.app/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/permacastapp

Alex

Alex is a decentralized archive platform built on Arweave, allowing users to create thematic archive pools to collect relevant information from social media platforms. Anyone can sponsor archive pools they are interested in as storage fees, and the data stored in the archive pools will also be distributed as assets to sponsors. Alex is also known as the “fireproof Library of Alexandria” due to its storage of data as “artifacts” on the Arweave.

Permafacts

Permafacts is an on-chain prediction platform built on Arweave, currently in alpha version. It allows anyone to initiate topics based on news or events for free voting, aiming to restore objective, authentic, and accurate facts.

  • Highlights: Permafacts’ Fact Market supports integration into any website built on WordPress; integrated ECHO, providing comment functionality; integrated Stamp protocol, allowing users to “Like” content to increase its credibility.

  • Website: https://facts.g8way.io/#/

  • Twitter: https://twitter.com/permafacts

Permanotes

Permanotes is a decentralized note-taking platform, currently in alpha version, allowing users to create, store, and share their notes, with all notes permanently stored on Arweave.

PermaPages

PermaPages supports creating and managing permanent web3 personal pages and Permaweb pages built on Arweave.

RSS3

RSS3 is an open information distribution protocol designed to promote the free flow of information on the open network, providing structured and standardized formats for effective information dissemination and communication. Moreover, RSS3, carefully planned, can power a wide range of applications from AI training, social media to search engines.

Wordcel Club

Wordcel is a blogging platform on the Solana ecosystem, using Arweave for permanent content storage. Creators can publish, distribute, and monetize their works freely.

Mirror

Mirror is a decentralized content publishing platform, aiming to make creators and readers co-owners of the platform, providing momentum for a new writing ecosystem. Creators on Mirror can not only publish articles but also build communities based on their works, and fund their creations through selling or auctioning Writing NFTs.

LikeCoin

LikeCoin is a decentralized publishing protocol built on Cosmos SDK (for the LikeCoin chain), aiming to be the infrastructure for decentralized publishing to assist creators in publishing content to the blockchain. Moreover, the protocol is governed in the form of a DAO, with a community consisting of creators and consumers. Furthermore, LikeCoin integrates Arweave to support the permanent storage of content and minting works into Writing NFTs for monetization.

Hey (formerly lenster)

Hey is a decentralized social media application in the Lens ecosystem, akin to Web3’s X platform.

Tape (formerly lenstube)

Lenstube is a decentralized video sharing platform in the Lens ecosystem, akin to Web3’s Youtube or Vimeo platform.

Email

Weavemail

Weavemail is a decentralized email protocol built on Arweave, characterized by being open-source, privacy-focused, censorship-resistant, and never-losing. It works by encrypting messages using RSA-OAEP (Optimal Asymmetric Encryption Padding) and the recipient’s public key in .crypto.js, packaging the sent messages into Arweave transactions, then tagging and submitting them to the network. Receiving involves using ArQL to retrieve messages from the network and decrypting the content using private keys.

MyMail

MyMail is a decentralized email protocol in the Arweave ecosystem, which is an implementation of Weavemail, aiming to accelerate the world’s transition from centralized email to decentralized messaging. Users no longer worry about privacy leaks, as MyMail supports end-to-end encrypted email messages. Furthermore, MyMail plans to introduce tokens in the future and supports payment using various tokens (such as SOL and ETH).

Wevemail

Wevemail is a decentralized, private, open-source email protocol built on Arweave and Weavemail, aiming to be the first email network with an immutable privacy policy, ensuring users’ data is never sold, emails are never read or deleted.

PermaMail

PermaMail is a decentralized email protocol built on Arweave, which connects with Arweave wallets for use, featuring decentralization, high privacy, etc.

Part IV: Key Events

First Quarter: Strong Start

Solana Mobile Chooses Arweave for Hosting

Solana Labs’ subsidiary, Solana Mobile, launched an Android phone — Saga, and the Solana dApp Store is a Web3 app store designed specifically for Saga phones. Unlike the Apple App Store or Google Play Store, the Solana dApp Store does not charge any fees. Additionally, all Android installation packages of apps in the Solana dApp Store are permanently stored on Arweave, meaning they are resistant to censorship, avoiding scenarios where dApps are removed due to censorship regulations.

decent.land Introduces Arweave Name Service (ANS)

decent.land, a decentralized social protocol built on Arweave, introduced the Arweave Name Service (ANS) at the beginning of 2023. ANS maps and binds Arweave addresses to concise names (format: xxx. ar), allowing combinations of numbers, letters, and emojis. Similar to ENS, ANS can be used for on-chain transfers, transactions, and identity verification, with the difference being that ANS ownership is permanent after a one-time purchase.

Keystone Wallet Adds Support for $AR

Before Ledger, Keystone arrived. Keystone Wallet is an offline hardware wallet that announced support for AR tokens in February 2023, becoming the first hardware wallet to integrate AR tokens. Keystone’s code is open-source, supports PSBT multisig, and can be used with smartphones, lowering the user’s operational barriers. Keystone Wallet uses bank-level security chips, allowing users to securely interact via QR codes and store their AR tokens.

Arweave 2.6 Released

Arweave 2.6 was completed on March 6, 2023, with the hard fork activated at block height 1,132,210. Arweave is already a relatively mature protocol, and the Arweave 2.6 upgrade further optimizes the protocol. Specific changes brought by Arweave 2.6 include:

  • Optimized allocation of mining power to reduce energy consumption;

  • Encouragement for miners to use cheaper hard drives, reducing the average cost of Arweave storage;

  • Encouragement for miners to back up more complete data copies, enhancing the robustness of the Arweave network;

  • Introduction of a dynamic pricing mechanism, limiting the maximum hard drive speed to guide miners to store rare and large memory data.

Arweave in Denver Event

Arweave in Denver is an Arweave community event at ETH Denver (one of the world’s largest Ethereum events), organized by ar.io, Forward Research, Community Labs, and Lattice. Arweave in Denver provides the Arweave community with the opportunity to deeply understand the internal and external blockchain worlds. The event includes various formats such as keynote speeches, group discussions, and group meetings. Participants include project founders, investors, and developers from the Arweave community, who gather to discuss the role of Arweave in infrastructure, dApps, communities, growth, and funding.

Permaswap Launches First PST Token — $ARDRIVE

Permaswap, a cross-chain DEX built on Arweave, and currently the only DEX in the ecosystem, launched its first PST token $ARDRIVE on March 14, 2023. $ARDRIVE is the native token of the decentralized cloud storage ArDrive, allowing users to exchange $ARDRIVE on Permaswap or add liquidity for the ARDRIVE/AR trading pair.

Second Quarter: Building Momentum

PermaDAO at Web3 Festival in Hong Kong

PermaDAO, a co-building DAO in the Arweave ecosystem, jointly hosted the Web3 Hong Kong Night event with MoleDAO and BuilderDAO. PermaDAO has always been about collaboration among strangers, and this was its first offline meetup. On April 14, 2023, contributors of PermaDAO gathered at the Unity Building on Connaught Road, Hong Kong, meeting familiar strangers for the first time.

Web3 Hong Kong Night event consisted of three sections: keynote speeches, panel discussions, and games/social sessions. The event had over 20 speakers from various tracks or project backgrounds, and attracted over 400 friends from around the world, providing a dense information output and a flat communication environment for everyone, creating a splendid feast of ideas.

everPay has Bridged Fiat-to-Crypto Channel

everPay, a multi-chain financial protocol in the Arweave ecosystem, announced a partnership with Legend Trading, a US-compliant crypto asset trading company, on May 22, 2023. Through integration with Legend Trading, everPay established compliant fiat-to-crypto services, allowing users to easily use various global payment methods supported by Legend Trading, including bank cards, Swift, ACH, SEPA, FPS, Visa, and MasterCard, to directly exchange cryptocurrencies for USD, GBP, CHF, EUR, JPY, and more than 40 other fiat currencies.

WeaveDB Fellows Hackathon

WeaveDB Fellows, starting on June 9, 2023, is a 6-week online hackathon jointly organized by Arweave, Fleek, Lens protocol, Intmax, Lit protocol, and Mask Network. The hackathon offers multiple awards with a total prize pool of $22,000, aiming to encourage developers to build dApps based on WeaveDB.

Ledger Adds Support for $AR

Following Keystone Wallet, the popular hardware wallet Ledger announced on June 5, 2023, that its Nano S and Nano S Plus devices will support AR tokens. Users can create an Arweave account in the Ledger wallet using the Arweave web wallet, connecting to the Arweave network to store AR tokens. Currently, the most advanced device from Ledger is the Ledger Nano X, a product with Bluetooth functionality, which will also support AR tokens in the future.

Third Quarter: Progressive Stage

Launch of Innovative Protocols UDL and UCM

Universal Data License (UDL) is one of the pioneering protocols in the Arweave ecosystem in 2023, allowing creators to set personalized terms of use for their content (atomic assets) uploaded to Arweave. Simply put, UDL not only enables creators to monetize their content but also allows them to customize their content usage rights flexibly.

The operation mechanism of UDL is very clever. Through predefined tags, creators can programmatically define license terms and attach these tags to atomic assets as “licenses”. These tags cover many aspects, including whether adaptation and derivative works are allowed, whether commercial use is permitted, and the duration of the license.

Universal Content Marketplace (UCM) is another groundbreaking protocol after UDL, serving as an on-chain order book contract for Arweave, allowing atomic assets to be traded on Permaweb without trust. Unlike traditional NFT markets, UCM is not limited to specific types of assets but can also trade papers, domain names, components, and even applications.

UCM not only creates a decentralized and secure transparent trading environment for creators and users but also provides a broad development space for developers. Anyone with programming knowledge can build a front-end UI based on the UCM protocol. BazAR is the first atomic asset exchange built based on the UCM protocol.

BazAR is a decentralized atomic asset exchange built on Permaweb, providing an intuitive and user-friendly platform for buying and selling various types of atomic assets, including images, videos, audio, web pages, and applications.

ArDrive Releases ArDrive 2.6

The decentralized cloud storage ArDrive experienced three version updates in 2023, releasing the ArDrive 2.6 version in July 2023. ArDrive 2.6 is also its most innovative update of the year, with the following updates:

  • Wallet generation support. Simplifies the user registration wallet creation process, allowing users to directly create Arweave wallets within ArDrive according to the instructions.

  • Mnemonic login support. In addition to importing KeyFiles or connecting ArConnect wallets, users can now log in to ArDrive by entering a mnemonic.

  • Introduction of ArDrive Turbo. Through cooperation with payment provider Stripe, ArDrive has launched ArDrive Turbo, allowing users to pay storage fees in fiat currency (credit card or debit card) and access data quickly.

Of course, ArDrive later also launched tools such as ArDrive Pins and ArDrive CLI, further improving the product experience for developers and ordinary users.

everPay Introduces EverID

EverID is an account management system introduced by everPay, aimed at lowering the entry barrier for users into Web3. With the introduction of EverID, users can choose common Crypto wallet addresses or Web2 user-friendly email addresses and biometrics to create everPay accounts. In addition, EverID is based on the WebAuthn user identity verification standard, solving the burden of user private key management, and allowing users to experience the smooth transactions of everPay more securely and conveniently.

Currently, EverID is still in the BETA stage, and its plans include expanding account types (such as social media accounts, phone numbers, etc.), improving account cancellation and retrieval mechanisms, providing SDK services, and implementing cross-platform sharing, etc.

MetaMask Supports Logging into Arweave Wallet

Pianity is an NFT music platform on Arweave, and its development team has developed an Arweave wallet and released it on MetaMask Snap, similar to accessing a secondary Arweave sub-wallet through Snap of MetaMask, thus connecting millions of MetaMask wallet users to Arweave. MetaMask users only need to install Arweave Wallet on the Snap Directory to seamlessly access the Arweave network to experience the charm of permanent storage. In addition, they can also use various functions and services provided by Arweave ecosystem dApps.

ArConnect 1.0 Launches

ArConnect finally got a facelift in August 2023, launching the ArConnect 1.0 version, and the source code was audited and penetration tested by the Spearbit audit agency, becoming the first audited wallet in the Arweave ecosystem. ArConnect is a browser extension program similar to the MetaMask wallet. The 1.0 version has undergone a comprehensive redesign of UI/UX, which is more concise and beautiful than previous versions. At the same time, an Explore page has been added, which integrates the entrances of ecological projects and embeds ecological news. In addition, ArConnect 1.0 also launched two developer tools, ArConnect Devtools and ArLocal Devtools, to optimize the workflow of developers.

Arweave Day in Asia 2023

This year’s Arweave Day in Asia event is the second edition, with over a hundred Arweave ecosystem builders and investors participating, making it the largest offline event in the Arweave ecosystem. Co-hosted by PermaDAO and Forward Research, the Arweave Day in Asia 2023 event was held at The Arts House, Old Parliament House in Singapore on September 12th. The event was divided into morning and afternoon sessions, including ecosystem report releases, keynote speeches, roundtable discussions, and Q&A interactive sessions, and the event was live-streamed on Bilibili and YouTube platforms throughout. It is worth noting that Sam, the founder of Arweave, introduced the Universal Content Marketplace (UCM) and Universal Data License (UDL) protocols for the first time at the event, and also previewed the content about Arweave 2.7.

2023 Arweave Asia Summer Hackathon

The Arweave Asia Summer Hackathon, jointly organized by PermaDAO, Arweave SCP Ventures, and TinTinLand, lasted for two and a half months. During the registration period, participating developers attended ecological project introduction courses, code practical courses, and multiple ecological mentor-sharing sessions from June 15 to September 1. In the end, after screening and judging the submitted projects, 14 projects were completed and delivered. After DemoDAY and multiple evaluations by professional judges and media reviewers, 8 excellent projects were finally selected, namely:

  • Emerging Eco-star Project: Cascad3

  • Projects with Unlimited Potential: ProtocolSign and Soulcial

  • Best Engagement Projects: Public Vector Database, Deschool, Apus Network, Smarter AA Wallet, and FancyLink.

Fourth Quarter: Comprehensive Outbreak

Arweave Network Achieves Multiple Milestones

As of the end of 2023, the Arweave mainnet has been running smoothly for 2000 days, making it a relatively mature protocol. At the same time, the network’s transaction volume in 2023 experienced explosive growth, which began to show in October, with weekly transaction volume breaking through the previous high. The momentum of network transaction volume in November and December was even more rapid, and on December 18–20, it set the top three historical highs for daily transaction volume. With the huge increase in transaction volume on December 19th, the total transaction volume of the Arweave network exceeded 2 billion, and it only took five months to go from 1 billion to 2 billion. In addition, with the rapid development of the Arweave network, there are already over 200 gateways providing data for it.

Arweave Protocol Updated to Version 2.7

After version 2.6, the Arweave protocol completed the upgrade to version 2.7 on October 5, 2023, with the hard fork activated at block height 1,275,480. The 2.7 version upgrade made some minor improvements to the core protocol, mainly including:

  • Flexible Merkle tree combination: improves data packaging efficiency (thus enhancing network resistance to censorship) and reduces computational resource consumption;

  • VDF readjustment: helps maintain network stability and security;

  • Memory optimization during mining: further improves mining efficiency and stability.

PermaHacks Hackathon

Permahacks is a 14-day hackathon event jointly organized by PermaDAO, Community Labs, everVision, Decent Land Labs, Forward Research, and Permaweb News, aiming to inject fresh blood into the Arweave developer team. Permahacks hackathon set up six awards with a total prize pool of $20,000. During the developer team formation stage, daily seminars will be held and mentor guidance will be provided through Discord. In the end, after screening and judging the submitted projects, 6 finalists were selected, namely:

  • Best UDL Video Player Renderer — Elliot Sayes;

  • Best Search for Permaweb — Scott Hendrix;

  • Best Use of MEM — Kay Plößer;

  • Best Educational Video Content — Merdi Kim;

  • ArweaveKit Integration — Joel Mugalu;

  • ArConnect Integration — Elliot Sayes.

Bundlr Rebranded as Irys

The cleverness of the Bundlr name was similar to Bundle (bundle trading technology), and they have achieved their original vision, with over 80% of transactions being processed on Bundlr, fulfilling the mission of expanding Arweave’s data throughput. However, as Arweave’s total network transaction volume reached 1 billion, Bundlr had a new vision and rebranded the brand as Irys, dedicated to becoming the traceability layer of the Web3 field. They want to establish a lighthouse of truth and use Irys’ traceability technology to combat the crisis of information lack of accountability, laying the foundation for building a future dominated by trust and transparency.

Shortly after the rebranding of the Irys brand, its traceability technology was adopted by Solana Mobile. Traceability technology allows data to be permanently stored and accurately determined as the source, solving the problems of composability, security, and ownership of data in Solana Mobile’s Web3 app store.

BTC&Arweave Themed Online Seminar

The themed online seminar of BTC&Arweave is an excellent external communication activity for the Arweave ecosystem, jointly hosted by PermaDAO and Layer Two Labs, and held continuously for two days from October 23rd to 24th, 2023. The event includes theme-sharing and roundtable discussions. Sam, the founder of Arweave, and most of the founders of head projects in the ecosystem participated, and the Bitcoin ecosystem invited six outstanding builders such as Paul Sztorc, founder of LayerTwoLabs, and Andre Serrano, product manager of sBTC. Gathered together to share and explore the concepts and technical applications of decentralization, better promoting the development of BTC and Arweave.

RedStone Launches RSG Points System

The oracle project RedStone previously launched the Expedition activity, and the entire Expedition activity was based on the on-chain points system — RSG. RedStone’s RSG points system is established in its Discord community, and Warp Contracts developed the Warpy tool for the RSG points system, which can be integrated into Discord as a bot. In addition, users can view their points situation through the Dashboard to ensure that their ranking is at the forefront to receive additional points rewards. The launch of the RSG on-chain points system helps the Expedition activity to proceed in an orderly manner, cleverly condensing the RedStone community to promote the community and project’s common development, thus forming a win-win situation.

ArConnect Supports Fiat Currency Purchase of AR Tokens

Onramper is a leading trading service provider in the industry, which has integrated more than 15 trading channel providers and supports over 180 payment methods. ArConnect reached cooperation with Onramper at the end of 2023, allowing users to use various fiat currencies and payment methods to purchase cryptocurrencies through ArConnect, reducing the entry barrier for users into Web3, and also allowing everyone to seamlessly participate in the Arweave ecosystem.

Part V: Summary

The Arweave ecosystem experienced a milestone year in 2023 marked by remarkable performance and breakthroughs in various aspects such as network data, protocol upgrades, technological innovations, and ecosystem development.

Regarding network data, the most prominent aspect was the transaction volume, which totaled 1,759,817,766 for the entire year, representing a staggering fourfold increase compared to 2022.

Additionally, other key network indicators also demonstrated significant growth. Somewhat unexpectedly, amidst overall positive metrics, the network storage volume in 2023 experienced a decline of 55.78% compared to 2022. The signal suggests that Arweave is undergoing a transformation repositioning.

Arweave is no longer merely an infrastructure focused on storage, it has evolved into a vast and dynamic ecosystem. Against the backdrop of a bear market, the demand for storing large files has diminished, thus the decline in Arweave’s network storage volume was foreseeable. However, transaction volume saw an upsurge, attributed to Arweave’s increasing adoption by other blockchains or projects.

Furthermore, development activities on the Arweave network have been remarkably vibrant, with smart contract growth in 2023 surpassing that of 2022 by 1063.43%, indicating a significant boost in the overall ecosystem’s vitality.

In terms of protocol upgrades, Arweave completed versions 2.6 and 2.7, making Arweave more environmentally friendly, stable, and secure. In terms of technological innovation, Arweave introduced two groundbreaking protocols in 2023 — the Universal Data License (UDL) and the Universal Content Market (UCM) protocols — allowing users to customize and trade atomic assets.

In terms of ecosystem events, Arweave hosted multiple hackathons and large-scale offline gatherings, while also witnessing the emergence of many outstanding new projects spanning various sectors such as NFTs, AI, and inscriptions.

In terms of ecosystem project development, irys continues to maintain its leading position, handling nearly 80% of the upload data volume in the Arweave ecosystem. The oracle project RedStone relentlessly integrates and expands its ecosystem, providing power to Web3 from Arweave. Permaswap and everPay are moving towards compliance and simplification, gradually establishing a multi-chain financial system for Arweave. ArConnect wallet has welcomed a long-awaited version upgrade, becoming more aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly. The representative gateway project ar.io has seen an increasing number of nodes joining, evolving into a vast and decentralized network. The social protocol Decent. Land has launched products such as ANS domain names, providing a comprehensive social system for the ecosystem. Storage projects ArDrive and Akord continued to iterate and optimize products, exploring more application scenarios. Database projects WeaveDB and Kwil have successfully released new tools, providing developers with a good development experience. With the promotion of atomic assets, new NFT markets like BazAR, RareWeave, and Fair Protocol emerged. Of course**, we cannot overlook the contributions made by the PermaDAO community over the past year**, with over 400 contributors participating in collaboration and jointly promoting the development of the Arweave ecosystem.

Overall, while some projects in the ecosystem may have stagnated, new projects continue to emerge. The Arweave ecosystem remains vibrant! Emerging projects are developing rapidly, while flagship projects are striving for breakthroughs, pursuing compliance, simplicity, and applicability, thereby driving the process of mass adoption.

DePIN is likely to become a trillion-dollar market in the near future, and Arweave, as the leader of the permanent storage sector, entered a phase of rapid growth in 2023. From the early data metrics of 2024, the momentum of growth continues. Arweave is not only an important infrastructure for Web3, but also a thriving ecosystem. With the favorable factors of the upcoming Bitcoin halving and the warming investment environment, Arweave will gradually manifest due to past accumulation!

🔗 More about PermaDAO ：Website | Twitter | Telegram | Discord | Medium | Youtube

💡 Initiated by everVision and sponsored by Forward Research (Arweave Official), PermaDAO is a “Cobuilding Community” focus on the theme of Arweave consensus storage. All contributions from PermaDAO contributors form the bedrock of data consensus. Let’s embark on a journey starting with data consensus and delve into a novel paradigm for decentralized collaboration — Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs)!

In Arweave
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