Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #13: Hard Fork Edition
Core improvements are being made to the Arweave protocol this week. It’s just 5 days until the upcoming hard fork will come into effect, re-balancing block difficulty and profitability. As we look to the future, we’re also reminded of our past. The contents of the Arweave genesis block from 2018 have been unearthed and – very fitting with 2021 – published as an NFT.
Along with this, we’re seeing improvements to Arweave’s block explorer, new partnerships, podcasts and funding from every corner of the ecosystem. Let’s take a deeper look at the week’s impressive selection of news.
I. Arweave Network
Arweave 2.5 introduces a hard fork at block 812,970
The core Arweave protocol will be upgraded at approximately November 17th at 11am UTC, or on the 812,970th block. The hard fork aims to lay the way for the 2.6 release, where hard-drive mining will become the most profitable method. The 2.5 release will introduce a sharper curve to mining difficulty, but the effects will be felt gradually.
Read the full changelog and inspect the code here.
The announcement was also broadcast by Binance:
#Binance Will Support the @vechainofficial $VET, @ArweaveTeam $AR & @vitelabs $VITE Network Upgrades & Hard Forkshttps://t.co/zkqxXprjOK
— Binance (@binance) November 11, 2021
Contents of the Arweave genesis block published as Koii NFT
Sandy from everFinance extracted data from the first ever block mined on Arweave and published it as an NFT on Koii. The contents were crowdsourced from early adopters and are now immortalized, both on-chain and in an NFT.
I pulled txs data in the arweave genesis block and distributed to arweave using @KoiiNetwork .
I'd say @ArweaveTeam is a bit cute.
BTW I can't guess your message in the Genesis block @samecwilliams 🤣.https://t.co/1po1ZHUZns— Sandy 🐘 (@SandyA911) November 10, 2021
ViewBlock upgrades to display Arweave node count and bundled transactions
Arweave’s block explorer, ViewBlock, shipped an upgrade this week to display the true number of Arweave nodes in the network statistics panel at viewblock.io/arweave.
As well as this, bundled transactions are once again supported and it’s possible to expand bundles to see their internal transactions.
At the time of writing, the transactions within bundles are also being retroactively added to the main stats page for daily transaction count. When the script finishes running, we’ll surely see an even more dramatic growth spike than before.
The Open Web Foundry publishes guidance on testing WIP Arweave dapps
The latest Open Web Foundry deep dive looks at how to test Arweave dapps with ArLocal. For the full list with all deep dives and community spotlights, check the Arweave YouTube channel.
II. Arweave Ecosystem
The first Permaweb Pioneers panel goes live
Permaweb Pioneers, a decentralized podcast hosted as a collaboration between Only Arweave, Arweavers, and arweave.news, has just released the first in its series of panels. Contrasting last week’s episode with Akord, the panel is a more freeform discussion between core Arweave community members and developers. This edition explores what the permaweb needs to reach base feature parity with web2.
1/ The first Permaweb Pioneers PANEL is live!
Listen here: https://t.co/EyvgzS5Lwr
Panel discussion between @Arweavers, @ArweaveNews @Hlolli + @TateBerenbaum explores @vertoexchange, @BundlrNetwork, and gateway projects in the Arweave ecosystem
A 🧵of key takeaways 👇
— Only Arweave (@onlyarweave) November 11, 2021
Arweave, ArDrive and Akash team up for a permaweb hackathon
Akash Network, a “cloud platform that offers containers with ephemeral storage” has just announced a new hackathon, in partnership with Arweave and ArDrive, which will offer $AKT and $AR tokens in reward for challenges completed.
“We are very excited to see support for Arweave and ArDrive grow in the Akash ecosystem. Persistent state between VM executions is a critical issue in the space — and we are thrilled to see this being addressed with Arweave”, says Arweave founder Sam Williams.
🚨Permaweb Challenge🚨@ArweaveTeam, @ardriveapp, and Akash are teaming up to bring you several challenges where you can win some $akt and $ar. Bring your A game
More details ⬇️https://t.co/5334rTzBQI pic.twitter.com/S3JXbqyUUL
— Akash Network (@akashnet_) November 9, 2021
KYVE on stage at the Breakpoint Solana conference
Fabian Riewe and John Letey gave a talk about KYVE at Lisbon’s Breakpoint conference this week and then a follow-up interview with Journal Du Coin, a clip of which is available here.
@RieweFabian and @johnletey on stage at @SolanaConf! Thank you to the audience for the engaging talk! #BreakpointLisbon pic.twitter.com/YrHR8yWvIJ
— KYVE is hiring 💫 (@KYVENetwork) November 8, 2021
DeSo protocol adds support for Arweave uploads via Python
DeSo, a social-focused L1 protocol, has enabled Arweave image support via its Python SDK. This means it’s possible to mint DeSo NFTs using Arweave as the storage layer in just a few lines of Python.
The DeSo python SDK now supports Arweave Image upload and you can create NFTs on @desoprotocol with just few lines of #python code 😎
Minting fee: $0.04 of $AR + < $0.01 of $DeSo
This 20 lines of python code can do wonders 👇
🔗https://t.co/gwgN0J0lrc
🔗https://t.co/8yBdwlnhYd pic.twitter.com/hIzzV7hG36— ItsAditya (@ItsAditya_xyz) November 11, 2021
For technical details, check the GitHub repo.
everPay calls on Arweave PST communities for collaboration
As part of establishing a new standard for cross-chain PST bridges, outprog of everFinance has called on PST founders to come together and collaborate on the specifics that will enable Arweave DAO tokens, or profit-sharing tokens, to be bridged to Ethereum, improving liquidity and availability.
PSTs cross-chaining is ongoing. We want to create a group to communicate with all PSTs projects.
About PSTs on @ethereum naming and decimals. For more technical details about our cross-chain, please contact me.@samecwilliams @TateBerenbaum @al_koii @RieweFabian https://t.co/oMegavSDe8
— outprog.eth 🐘 (@outprog_eth) November 8, 2021
Sarcophagus closes $1.8m in funding
Sarcophagus, the Arweave-based dead man’s switch and first of its kind, has just closed $1.8m in funding in a round led by Placeholder Ventures.
“There is plenty of money floating around crypto land right now”, the founders note in an announcement post, going on to say, “there are very few people that truly understand what is happening under the surface. We optimized for expertise and experience, not valuation or round size”.
Instead of a community fundraising approach, Sarcophagus carefully chose a selection of knowledgeable VCs that will help guide and support the vision in the future.
Sarcophagus DAO closed $1.8m in its initial funding round, more to come and more info here: https://t.co/LM0FRP9hYI
Huge 🙏🙏🙏 to @placeholdervc @Greenfield1One @blockchain @coraldefi @licuende and @kaiynne pic.twitter.com/FO53y0dBK1
— Sarcophagus 𓂀 (@sarcophagusio) November 8, 2021
1,000 AR on the line for Puzzle Weave #3
Puzzle Weave is one of the Arweave network’s oldest projects. A set of hand-drawn riddles, 8 panels and 16 characters, resolve to the passphrase needed to transfer 1,000 AR to a wallet of the cracker’s choice. Puzzle Weave #3 is still uncracked!
Who’s interested in a ~ $65,940 USD puzzle to solve (1,000 AR atm)?
Yes, 1,000 AR awarded to whoever can solve this 👀
View on the Permaweb: https://t.co/s1FuK9vMXp pic.twitter.com/NNQxA6FZFm
— Only Arweave (@onlyarweave) November 12, 2021
KYVE officially announces Solana as the next pool to archive
KYVE, a decentralized network of archival nodes which is seeing wide adoption for ledger storage, has just released news that the next pool to be added to the app will be Solana. This will provide an alternative to the revolutionary yet centralized SOLAR Bridge.
As well as Solana, KYVE now archives Avalanche, Cosmos and Moonriver. Read more about the future of Arweave as a layer 0 here and here.
🎉This week, it's all about #Solana! We are happy to announce that our next pool will be none other than @solana!
🗓️You will be able to start running your nodes on it starting from November 17th! #NewWeekNewPool pic.twitter.com/GJXHnYhsV2
— KYVE is hiring 💫 (@KYVENetwork) November 10, 2021