Friday, April 19, 2024
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2023-03-06
By Pierre
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Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #75: The ‘Capstone of Arweave’ Edition

What a week was the one that just finished. Arweave was in Denver, Messari wrote a comprehensive report about our Network, ArConnect 1.0 public Beta was finally released, and a bunch of other things happened that almost made us name this weekly report the “Too many headlines” edition. Still, one thing is more important than all of those above: there are only hours until Arweave 2.6 will hit the mainnet.

If you want to know more, fasten your Prius seatbelt and enjoy the ride through our weekly report.

I. Arweave Network

Usually, here we post a little strip with data from ViewBlock and comment on the latest developments on the network, daily transactions stats, the state of the weave size, etc. By the way, we just passed 600 million transactions (I couldn’t help it).

Anyway, all those pale compared to what will happen just a few hours from now: the capstone that will sustain the entire Arweave network without the need for human props – Arweave 2.6. For this occasion, we’ll be letting Sam Williams, the co-founder of Arweave, capture in his own words what it seems to be, by any standards, a historical event:

Arweave 2.6 is a major milestone for the network, I am extremely grateful to all of the community members that helped to make this upgrade possible.

Few protocols in crypto, aside Bitcoin, can claim to be truly complete. Virtually none of them scale properly, and subsequently rely on the on-going work of core devs to solve their protocol’s problems in the future. This breaks the core promise of crypto: To be able to trust math and verifiable code, not having to trust people. Every team building on a protocol that is not complete or scalable is essentially taking a leap of faith — assuming the devs will save them later.

Once Arweave 2.6.x has stabilized, I believe that our community has crossed a fundamental threshold: The protocol is entirely complete — containing solutions to every eventuality we can foresee, useful — having strong and demonstrable market fit, as well as scalable — to the point of being able to ingest the entire web within a single base layer transaction. This puts Arweave in a fundamentally different spot than virtually every other protocol in crypto. There is no need to trust assertions about what will change and how the system will work in the future, users can simply audit it themselves. The age of ‘don’t trust, learn and verify’ is truly upon us.

This shift in the technical state of the protocol is also a social pivot for our ecosystem. No longer will there be a split focus between protocol design and adoption, there is only one task ahead of us: Grow usage of the network. From Forward Research — the institution I lead, to Hansa, PermaDAO, Community Labs, and the countless other organizations in the ecosystem, I know that there is intense excitement and enthusiasm about the journey ahead of us.

II. Arweave Ecosystem

Messari finally gets Arweave

Messari, the source for high-end crypto analysis, finally released a report that apparently highlights quite an interesting view on Arweave, some, who may be brave, could even consider that they envision a bright future for Arweave. If we manage to have a peek at it, we’ll definitely let you know more details. Also, as an accolade, if you didn’t get the Prius reference from the beginning of the article, there is some sort of an inside joke between arweavers – a way to express the efficiency of Arweave 2.6 comparing it to a race between Pirus cars. Given the stellar predicted increase of the weave in the next three years, maybe we can compare Arweave 2.6 with a race between ion thrusters – efficient engines that actually don’t do much while inside earth’s atmosphere, but achieve roaring speeds when they’re unleashed to reach the stars.

Arweave in Denver

On March second, Denver was the place to be if you love Arweave. While we’re waiting for the recording of the event, let us present to you the main point of the day:

The event was opened by Sam, who presented “The Framework for Evolving Arweave” – a way to allow the protocol to evolve long after its founders are no more. After Sam’s presentation, there was a live podcast featuring DMac and MC Lars in a discussion about the 2.6 launch that included somehow both Priuses and Star Wars references.

The day concluded with four panels:

Infrastructure: Gateways + SmartWeave

Featuring: WarpContracts, ar.io, Bundlr, EverVision and Fleek

dApps: Building on the Permaweb

Featuring: Akord, ArDrive, Community Labs, Nader Dabit and Longview Labs

Community: The future of Arweave

Featuring: Forward Research, everVision, Permafacts and decent.land

Growth: Investors, Funding and You

Featuring: Hansa, Forward Research, AFTR Market, Lattice

The first-ever Arweave Walkathon

Now, maybe you couldn’t be present in Denver, and that’s understandable, what is not understandable is if you didn’t join the Walkathon we organised on the third of March.

It all started as a crazy idea after the first Arweave’s Voice Twitter space, where we had Sam as a guest. His schedule was quite busy that day so he had to leave rather abruptly, but he mentioned afterwards that he would love to have a long chat while strolling. Well, we did exactly that, and we tried to gather arweavers from all over the world in a joint “walk and talk” format via a Twitter space.

As crazy as it may sound, we think that overall the event was a success, with lots of project founders being present and with rather no technical problems besides some geese.

Version 1.0 of the Hedgehog is now in beta!

Arweavers, rejoice! ArConnect 1.0 – Open Beta is finally here. This new and revamped version focuses on improving the overall Arweave wallet experience and introduces some new, long-awaited features!

In terms of user experience, ArConnect has undergone a complete overhaul to make it more user-friendly and approachable. With major feature updates such as Keystone Wallet support, the ability for projects to add their own tokens to ArConnect’s UI, a built-in Arweave News feed, and many other tiny tweaks. Using ArConnect has never been easier, even for your non-technical friends!

But that’s not all! On the back-end, ArConnect has been rebuilt from the ground up with the help of the team at Plasmo. This brings a huge improvement for developers in the ecosystem as it’s now much easier to build on top of ArConnect and contribute to the project. So whether you’re a developer or an end-user, ArConnect 1.0 has something exciting on offer for you!

Make sure to try it out for yourself by heading over to https://beta.arconnect.io! And if you need help getting started, check out the video tutorial the team shared as part of their announcement.

P.S. It seems that the new version of ArConnect already supports ANS names out of the box, so you can easily send tokens to anyone on the Arweave network!

Get ready to fill the Hollows of FirstBatch!

This week, FirstBatch, the Arweave-powered personalization protocol, has launched their latest product, HollowDB! HollowDB is a decentralized key-value database that allows for the storage of complex objects on the blockchain while ensuring maximum privacy through Zero-Knowledge Proofs.

HollowDB is open-source, and according to the developers it was built with four fundamental values in mind: ownership control, provable ownership without revealing sensitive information, persistence without central dependencies, and user-friendly interaction times.

With HollowDB, developers can now leverage a fully decentralized, fast, and stable key-value database that can perform update operations while preserving privacy. Being built on the permaweb, it enables persistent and reachable data without any central dependencies. And one of its most impressive features is the ability to provide fast and consistent performance for users by leveraging gRPC nodes.

Overall, this technology is a huge step forward in achieving a privacy-preserving and decentralized future, and we are thrilled that FirstBatch has brought this technology to the Arweave network. Congrats to the team for their launch and check out the full details in their Mirror article!

Bundles upon bundles upon bundles…

And no, we’re not talking about Bundlr, but about Warp Contracts’ latest update to their SDK! Warp Contracts now support deploying Nested Bundles, which as you most likely know allow for unlimited nesting depth, hence unlimited scalability on Arweave!

What else could you wish for? Warp has some ideas, such as easier contract deployment, instant contract availability and enabling the direct retrieval of transactions from the Arweave gateway… But those are just some minor benefits… On the off-chance you missed the ironic tone there, all of the above are great developments and benefits brought by Warp’s latest update and we couldn’t be more excited for these!

We’re hoping that by now you’re convinced you need to check out the latest version of Warp Contracts, so we’ll just leave the full announcement below and see you at Warp Academy!

Redstone is now open to Canto Builders

As Redstone has accustomed us, not a week goes by without a new partnership announcement. This week, it’s the turn of Canto, the permissionless general-purpose EVM blockchain! Canto was created to fulfil DeFi’s promise of accessible, transparent, decentralized, and free financial systems. The chain is fully decentralized from inception, utilizing Tendermint Consensus and EVM execution layer through Cosmos SDK, and did not undergo presale, foundation, or VC funding. And it seems it’s on it’s way of fulfilling it’s purpose, considering it’s one of the fastest growing EVM chains!

Through the newly announced partnership, builders on Canto can now leverage Redstone’s Oracles to access reliable and cost-effective Data Feeds for a large selection of over 1100 assets. If those don’t suit your needs, you can also easily create a custom Oracle using Redstone’s Custom URL feature. If you’re building or planning to build on the Canto network, make sure to test the new Oracle and enjoy the abundance of data.

Kwil is Alpha!

We’re excited to share that this past week, Kwil launched its first public alpha release for Kwil v2, a permissionless, scalable, decentralized relational database, designed for web3 enabled applications. Pheew, that was a long description!

For anyone not familiar with Kwil, their mission is to create the infrastructure to power data storage and retrieval for the next generation of blockchain applications, and Kwil v2 is an important step toward that goal. And the most important part, Kwil leverages Arweave as part of their products, ensuring true decentralization and immutability.

As for Kwil v2, the new version includes several key features, such as permissionless data writes, web3 native database functionality, and query-based pricing. All awesome features which the team has explained at large in their announcement.

Interested users and developers can get started trying out and building Kwil v2 today! You’ll need Kwil testnet tokens which are already live on the Goerli testnet and you have a myriad of options for interacting with the protocol. Users can get started with the Kwil Database Builder, which provides a nice user interface and developers can deep-dive into the Kwil CLI or Kwil JS/TS SDK. Check out the team’s announcement for more details.

KYVE is ready for institutional ownership

This week we also found out that KYVE has partnered with Finoa, Europe’s leading crypto platform for institutional investors, to offer institutional custody and staking for KYVE’s native token. Yes, you heard that right, institutional investors will be able to securely hold and stake KYVE starting day 1 of the mainnet release!

You didn’t think there was already a mainnet release and we didn’t cover it, right? The team is still in the midst of the last testnet, Kaon, which was launched at the beginning of February. The plan for Kaon is to help iron out all the latest bugs before the mainnet release, so the team still has some work left. And just a small teaser for our readers – we’ve had a little birdie tell us that the team is preparing to launch the mainnet in just a couple of weeks! So be sure to stay tuned and follow the team on Twitter to be one of the first to find out about when network is officially going live! In the meantime, if you want to read more about the team’s partnership with Finoa, check out our coverage at the following link.

III. Things you won’t encounter on Arweave

For most of the crypto world, ETH Denver was the main event of the week, even Arweave was there. As usual, the main channel used for communication was their Twitter account which was suspended for some hours because…who knows. Meanwhile, for a short time, a copycat account was created that tried to defraud users. “Nice” story, same old conclusions. For now, social media dApps on Arweave are very incipient, so we don’t know how the dApp layer will handle content and account moderation. There will probably be some mechanisms; personally, I’m not a fan of total anomie. What is certain is that at the protocol layer, a user address is untouchable, and this also seems to be the case with Arweave native decentralised identities like ANS that even if they are transferable by the will of the address owner, they are forever.

The takeaway is simple: no matter how the social dApps will actually behave, your address and your name will forever remain yours and nobody will be capable to take them away from you.

IV. Arweave explained by Lord Byron – thanks to ChatGPT

Well, Byron is known to be one of the great romantic poets, so maybe you’ll find his tone a little too exalted, but aren’t we all in the eyes of others when we try to explain to them that we’re aiming to save data for ludicrous periods of time? Also, fun fact, this guy, a poet, was the father of Ada Lovelace (maybe you heard about Intel’s new line of processors). Her mother tried to prevent her from inheriting the apparent “madness” of her father by pushing her towards mathematics and logic. Because of this, she became some sort of a  hybrid, Wikipedia considers that she developed a “poetical science” mindset, that led her to become probably the first coder.

 

Oh, Arweave! What mysteries you hold,

A digital realm, both wondrous and bold,

Where data lives forever, or so we’re told,

And never fades away, like stories of old.

 

Your blockchain weaves a tapestry of trust,

Ensuring our information won’t rust,

Like the works of poets and artists, a must,

Preserved for future generations, a just.

 

Oh, Arweave! You challenge the ways of old,

And offer a new path for stories to be told,

Through your decentralized, secure, and bold,

A legacy of knowledge, for all to behold.

V. ICYMI

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Pierre

Passionate about Arweave, Archeology, and NFTs. Playing with words, dirt, and images.

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