Wednesday, April 24, 2024
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2022-06-17
By Pierre
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Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #42: The ‘Warp’ Edition

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Again, this week the markets were brutal. We’ll probably experience even more weeks like this one. So what? Each new MB saved on the block weave is another vote of confidence for DataFi. That being said, let’s take a look at what happened in the ecosystem: RedStone launched its new generation of Smart Weave contracts, called Warp Contracts, Decent Land launched Ark Protocol, and everFinance continues its path to Permaswap DEX creation by holding the #8th everPay NFT auction. Nobody flinched inside the Arweave community.

Would you like to know more?

I. Arweave Network

Have you ever wondered why we rarely talk about price action? Simple, because Arweave’s success was never bound to price. So, while the entire crypto space was mortified by the doom DeFi brought upon it, Arweave’s DataFi model didn’t flinch. There will be ups and downs in the incoming years, but one thing will be always the same: the blockweave will continue to grow.

Take this chart as an example. November 4, 2021 was probably the peak of this cycle for the Arweave price. The Weave size was around 24 TB. Since then, the entire market has only experienced lower lows. The weave never stopped growing, and now in the middle of June 2022, when almost every blockchain ecosystem is in a state of despair, it has a size of almost 75 TB. Some people fail to understand that data itself is probably more powerful than the short-term financial incentive. A generic chain will be held alive as long as its native coin has a greater value than the cost of mining. Over there every MB of data is a burden. For Arweave, every new MB of data could become a reason for someone to keep a node running because that little piece of data and its survivability has more meaning for them than any financial reward. From a certain point of view, Arweave is the point of conjecture for two worlds. It brings together people primarily driven by financial gains (like the rest of the crypto), and people driven by entirely different reasons, and they wouldn’t probably use crypto otherwise. Yes, it may sound crazy, but some individuals and institutions treasure other values than short-term money-making.

I remember talking with one of the founders of DLT EO, a project that was one of the finalists during OWF #6 with a one-stop shop for satellite data. They were already part of an incubation program held by the European Space Agency. I asked them how academia and other more traditional research centres perceive crypto. This was their answer:

II. Arweave Ecosystem

RedStone unleashed Warp speeds

RedStone, the project that constantly pushed the standards of SmartWeaves beyond what we thought possible, released its new SmartWeave generation, and it comes with a rebrand too. From now on, RedStone SmarWeaves will be called Warp Contracts, and the Red Stone Academy will become Warp Academy. If you wonder what lies beyond, take your chances space cadet and enroll.

ArDrive changed the rules for the Inferno program, making it more inclusive

Unfortunately, nobody won Inferno rewards in the program’s first weeks. If you don’t know the Inferno program, TL;DR: you upload data with ArDrive, and you will get ArDrive tokens airdropped. Apparently, the first set of rules were kinda harsh, requiring that a minimum of 50 users should upload a minimum of 1GB each/week. Otherwise, nobody would have received anything.

Now, they lowered the bar to only 100 MB/ user. Also, if the limit isn’t matched, ArDrive tokens will still be airdropped, but their amount will be halved. Let’s get those tokens. Now it is easier than ever.

Lit Protocol presents a new way that lets you have end-to-end encryption on Arweave

One of the main concerns regarding blockchain technology, in general, is its open character. Many are afraid that their privacy is at risk because their information is written on a public ledger, hence being available for all. Still, they forget that blockchain is derived from cryptography, and the primary purpose of this science is to transmit secrets in plain sight. Lit Protocol does exactly this: it lets users encrypt static content, upload the encrypted content on Arweave via Bundlr, for example, and then only allow the users who meet the access conditions to see the decrypted content. Check their tutorial and become a cryptographer yourself.

everPay’s NFT auction #8 is on

After the announcement of the Permaswap DEX, the actual use case for the NFTs everPay auctioned during the entire year became apparent. Only holders of everPay NFTs could start providing liquidity in the first phases of Permaswap and mining the Permaswap DEX token in the initial phases. The majority of the already auctioned NFTs are not for sale on the secondary market, and those that are, come with a rather steep price tag. Still, now you have the chance to get a fresh one because once again, they started a new auction, this time in collaboration with ArDrive.

KYVE integrates with Polkadot

KYVE really wants to engulf the entire crypto space. This week was time for Polkadot to reach the shores of the data lake (as KYVE likes to label itself). With each new successful integration, the meaning of their Layer 0 chain claim becomes more apparent. We are probably witnessing the first attempt to merge the Web3 in a single entity, with all the chains computationally linked by KYVE and with all the data permanently stored on Arweave. Who knows how the future will be shaped? Maybe KYVE.

Decent Land launched the Ark protocol

In its product update number 7, Decent Land released, besides other goodies, Ark Protocol. This represents a piece of tech that lets Web3 users link their cross-chain identities. For now, it integrates only with EVM-based chains like Ethereum, but that’s probably only the beginning. As you can see, they are planning quite a complex product:

The major piece of work behind the scenes lately has been on Ark. Ark is a protocol which will power decent.land’s token-gated communities and will be useful for any Arweave-based app that needs to read user data from other chains.

We see Ark as the multichain identity protocol for Web3 social. It integrates with ANS as a universal identity for the permaweb and other chains. When it is live, you will be able to sign into Ark with both your Arweave and Ethereum addresses simultaneously, and link the two in your ANS profile.

This mechanism will make it possible for decent.land token-gated communities to read assets from any chain to allow or deny access to particular groups. We are also already working on a Telegram integration to gate access based on held assets!

A new high-quality video series with tutorials about the Arweave project

Twitter user @onlyarweave, the one responsible for Permaweb Pioneers too, launched a new series of tutorials called Arweave explore. In this series, he will explore different projects from the ecosystem, one at a time. If you are accustomed to my dull voice and horrific accent, you will be delighted with the smoothness of his recordings. The first tutorial showcased Permacast, the Permaweb response to content creators being de-platformed.

III. Things you won’t encounter on Arweave

No, it’s not about ladies in red dresses. You may encounter them on Arweave probably. What you won’t encounter is the permanent ban. Last week we wrote about how the creator of Rick and Morty had his Dropbox account suspended. Fortunately, Dropbox reacted quickly, and the account was reinstated. We asked somehow rhetorically what will happen in the case of a “normal” person appealing this suspension. So this week, we searched on Twitter for the phrase “banned account”. This was the first result of a never-ending list. There are no happy endings in Web2 if you are not famous.

IV. ICYMI

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Pierre

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

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