Arweave Community's Reaction to Irys' "Fork Drama"

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Author: Kyle @ Contributor of PermaDAO

Translator: Kyle @ Contributor of PermaDAO

Reviewer: John Khor @ Contributor of PermaDAO

The Beginning of the Fork Drama

On December 18, 2023, at 6 AM Beijing time, Sam, the founder of Arweave, tweeted about the "fork drama," causing a stir in the crypto world.

Sam got straight to the point, preparing some crypto drama for everyone, accompanied by popcorn emojis.

In the tweet, Sam mentioned that irys is planning to fork Arweave, which involves deleting the datasets and resetting token supply. Sam believes irys's forking behavior is an antisocial act driven by greed. Additionally, Sam added that there are still services like ar.io network and everVision (Arseeding) in the ecosystem that can offer fantastic hosted bundling services.

Two hours after Sam's tweet, irys's official response came.

Irys expressed regret about Sam's actions, as he attempted to detach irys from the Arweave ecosystem, while Arweave's vision is for open-source and permissionless software. Finally, irys emphasized that their core mission is to create unrestricted access for users to permanent data, continuing their dedication to censorship-resistant, open-source, and permissionless technology.

How does the Arweave ecosystem community perceive this drama?

🧵 Tweets are sorted by the time of publication.

DataOS: irys's fork undermines Permaweb's fundamental principles.

DataOS is a protocol for AI-generated applications built on an open data lake, aggregating Arweave network data into dashboards for everyone to view.

After the forking drama, DataOS quickly announced discontinuing the use of irys, considering irys's practice of discarding existing data forking undermines Permaweb's fundamental principles.

ar.io Founder Phil Mataras: Shocked to hear but not surprised by the results.

ar.io is a decentralized gateway in the Arweave ecosystem, and its founder Phil Mataras stated: Integrity and transparency of data in Web3 are crucial, and ar.io network can achieve that.

Community Labs Founder Tate: Hopes irys forks correctly.

Community Labs, a software development company and venture studio in the Arweave ecosystem, praised Sam's efforts and hoped that irys would fork correctly.

PermawebNews Editor Pierre: The story feels bitter.

Uncle Pierre stated that everything is for a better outcome, mentioning ar.io network and everVision (Arseeding) once again, which can provide services similar to irys.

Decent Land Labs Founder Darwin: Project will cease integration with irys.

decent.land, a Web3 social protocol for decentralized identity, DAO governance, and building social networks, will stop integrating with irys, but it won't affect data storage on Arweave.

everVision: Bad news, we will continue contributing to the ecosystem.

everVision is a Web3 infrastructure service platform based on Arweave, aiming to provide solutions for large-scale blockchain applications. Its products include everPay, Permaswap, Web3Infra, and PermaDAO.

everVision emphasizes that it has open-sourced several self-developed tools, including the bundling tool Arseeding, and has been contributing to the ecosystem.

Arweave Ecosystem Core Developer DMac: Sam preemptive, trying to guide users away from irys.

DMac dislikes Sam's preemptive action, attempting to guide users away from irys. Despite Sam claiming it's to prevent other projects in the ecosystem from taking similar actions, DMac believes the reality is different.

everVision Founder outprog: Drama is drama, technology is technology, marketing is marketing.

outprog expresses: "Drama is drama, technology is technology, marketing is marketing.

Pursuing Win-Win: Arweave's Antifragility

Arweave's network has been running smoothly for 5 years, boasting a mature consensus mechanism and establishing a globally strong consensus community and ecosystem, which is gradually growing.

In this forking drama, we can observe three voices within the community: those supporting Sam, those supporting irys, and those remaining neutral. Most projects and members are in a wait-and-see mode. Regardless of the outcome, in the face of uncertainty, the community needs to unite, adopt an optimistic attitude, and take positive actions.

As Nietzsche said, "What doesn't kill me, makes me stronger." This forking drama is a test for the Arweave network and community. With five years of turbulent experience, Arweave should possess antifragility like Bitcoin. Let's watch and see.

Of course, the situation is still evolving, and irys has not made the final decision. Our hope is that this drama will be handled properly, turning a mutually damaging situation into a win-win. Drama keeps unfolding in the crypto world, but what remains unchanged is Arweave's mission—to provide irreplaceable permanent storage services for everyone.

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