Overview
Arweave was founded by Sam Williams and launched in 2018 to address the challenges of reliable, permanent data storage. Unlike other storage systems, it offers long-term availability through a unique blockchain structure called the blockweave. This network combines economic incentives and decentralized technology to ensure data permanence, which makes it especially suitable for storing valuable or immutable information.
Through Arweave’s permaweb, users can store websites, applications, or digital content permanently, eliminating issues like censorship or data loss. It is often compared to IPFS, though with key differences: while IPFS requires regular payments to pin files, Arweave guarantees data permanence with a one-time fee, enabling a different economic model suited for archival use cases.
Architecture and Consensus Mechanism
The blockweave architecture underpins Arweave’s network, where each block connects not only to the previous one but also references older blocks at random. This structure ensures distributed redundancy and faster data recall. Arweave employs a
