Arweave

Arweave is a decentralized storage network designed around permanent data storage. Its central proposition is a one-time payment model: users pay once to store data and it remains accessible indefinitely, rather than paying recurring fees as with conventional cloud storage or with rental-based decentralized storage networks.

How Arweave works

The network uses a data structure called the blockweave, in which each block links both to the previous block and to a randomly chosen earlier block. Its consensus mechanism, proof of access, requires miners to demonstrate that they hold that randomly selected historical data in order to produce a new block. This makes storing the full history of the network economically rational for miners rather than a cost they would prefer to avoid.

The permanence model works through an endowment. Part of the one-time storage fee is placed into a pool that pays out to miners over time, with the calculation based on the historical trend of storage costs falling. If storage continues to become cheaper, the endowment can fund storage indefinitely. AR has a maximum supply of 66 million tokens, with roughly 65.65 million already in circulation.

Role in the ecosystem

Arweave has been used for archiving web pages, storing NFT metadata and images, and hosting application front ends where permanence matters. It is also the settlement layer for AO, a computation system built on top of it. Its approach is distinct from Filecoin and other networks that use contract-based rental models, and the two are often compared as the main alternatives for decentralized storage.