Thursday, June 20, 2024
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2022-08-05
By Pierre
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Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #49: The ‘Talk About the Truth’ Edition

While people dealing with Web2 are falling for a meme, Arweave’s community is considering plunging in #TruthTech. Now it is only a little more than a debate, but who knows what the future reserves for permanent data.

Also, ArDrive and Decent Land released new features and Permaswap just teased all of us with a sneak peak of their UI. Is this all? Of course not. Plunge in our weekly report if you want to know more.

I. Arweave Network

We caught an interesting thread on Twitter. Viewblock entered into a discussion about the actual number of Arweave nodes. For some the bare statistics compared with Ethereum’s or Bitcoin’s number of nodes could be considered daunting. Apparently, there are currently only 60 nodes. Is that all? Well, obviously no. There is a simple catch. There are two pools that are counted only as one node each. ViewBlock considers that if one will take the data self-reported by those two pools, the actual number of nodes is around 300.

Still, is this enough? If you are trying to calculate in terms of normal blockchains, you will be wrong. The entire size of Ethereum is under 1TB, and their constant effort is to keep it as light as possible. Arweave has the opposite approach. It expands with several TBs monthly, and it demands nvme 4.0 SSD cards from a node operator in order to be efficient. It makes more sense, when talking about Arweave, to think in terms of a distributed data centre. 300 nodes mean that your data will be redundantly stored on quite a lot of servers. How many backup servers offer centralised counterparts for your data? One, maybe two? Even in this incipient stage, Arweave delivers much more secure data storage than a centralised storage provider could ever dream.

II. Arweave Ecosystem

Let’s have a true talk about the truth

This week a discussion started among Arweavers. The potential creation of a permanent dApp that stores new articles, detects facts and ranks websites through their fact score. Of course that the implications are vast and the potential to “play” the algorithm or to create a dictatorial machine should be thoroughly scrutinised. Still, something is quite clear, as Sam Williams pointed out:

We observe the world around us with eyes designed in the 16/1700s. We can do better.

My Kingdom for a list

We already wrote about @nicolasverlhiac initiative to map all the projects on Arweave in our previous weekly reports. Now we can enjoy the first iteration of his map of the ecosystem. As he stated very clearly in his disclaimers, the list is still at the beginning and many other projects still need to be added. So why not try to make his task a little bit easier and point him some Arweave projects that are still not included?

It’s just a list, why should it be considered important? Think about it. Arweave’s ecosystem is not only one that grows fast, but projects are transforming and integrating with other chains and technologies that it makes increasingly difficult for almost anybody to follow all of this in real time. A well designed list would help not only make it simple for users to navigate the ecosystem, but even projects to better understand their position inside Arweave’s constellation and to help the further collaboration between them.

Olta is in beta testing

Many months ago we encountered Olta, a collective of true digital creators and tech enthusiasts that wanted to provide an immersive NFT experience ruled by immutable code. Now they announced the launch of their beta version dedicated to digital performance artists. They are using Polygon, Graph Protocol and Arweave in order to offer an unprecedented flexibility in terms of what an artist can actually do through a smart contract, linking data and art and storing it forever. If you are interested in becoming one of the first artists of the new wave of digital art, apply now to become a creator on Olta.

How decent can it get?

As always, another week, another Decent Land update. This week they continued their integration series:

Ark Protocol integrated with Optimism (one of the Layer two solutions promising to unclog Ethereum), broadening the range of crosschain identities linking even more. Also, they integrated ANS (Arweave Name Service) with ViewBlock, Arweave’s explorer. All those little integrations are starting to reveal the bigger picture and it appears that it’s already visible. After the listing of Ark Protocol in dappradar, they already ranked on #25 position in social dApps on launch day.

 

This is not all, the next week the first Ark NFT called the Cryochambers will be auctioned in the already well known auctions conducted by everPay. If you are curious about what kind of special treats will unlock owning one of those NFTs, go and take a look on our past weekly reports, you may get some hints.

ArDrive aims for the devs

ArDrive updated the capabilities of ArFS (Arweave file system), greatly improving the choices for those power users who want to customise their experience with ArDrive as much as possible. What is ArFS?

ArFS is a data modeling, storage, and retrieval protocol designed to emulate common file system operations and to provide aspects of mutability to your data hierarchy on Arweave‘s otherwise permanent, immutable data storage blockweave.

What can one do with the help of those new features? Well, we recommend to read the following thread and to consult their github in order to grasp the in depth knowledge. If you just want a quick TL;DR, here you have it: your ArDrive uploads can get there at the same time an IPFS CID[…] and this is just one of the potential use-cases.

Sneak peaking into Permaswap

Permaswap is one of the most anticipated projects from the entire ecosystem. Their ambitious white paper combined with the groundbreaking developments they achieved while teaming up with Safeheron in terms of secure and speedy key management, made the project a potential example for the entire crypto space when it come to true DeFi implementations. Now they released a quick preview of the UI Permaswap will be using, but, at the same time, this could be a sign that the grand opening is coming soon.

 

III. Things you won’t encounter on Arweave

We have to admit that the take of this week is more a projection of a potential future. Yeah, we are still not there and theoretically this kind of messy outcome can happen on Arweave because this case it’s not about the network, but more about the sources and those who’ll validate them. However, Arweave is one of the sole Web3 Networks that are unequivocally debating the idea of #TruthTech, not only in the thread we highlighted above, but in many other circumstances. If one blockchain endeavour will manage to achieve the difference between what’s true and what’s a lie, that will be Arweave.

IV. ICYMI

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Pierre

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

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