Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #53: The ‘New Angles’ Edition
This week we tried to start thinking outside the Web3 box when it comes to Arweave, and we encourage you to do also. Just ask yourself what Arweave really does, and then put aside the first three obvious answers that come to your mind. Now, if you don’t like the proposed mind-bending technique, it’s fine; you’ll still find a lot of down-to-earth news in the current weekly report: ArDrive will go mobile, RedStone closes its seed round, and hackathons are all over the place.
For those and more, just dive into our 53rd edition.
I. Arweave Network
Permanent transparency
Today we won’t show you charts. We will talk about the network but in a different way. Forget about the size of the weave, the block count, the TPS numbers, forget about all of that. Let’s talk about what this network really does. What else is permanent storage enabling? Even if the mechanics are the same, it does pretty different things when you take into consideration the point of view of different types of end users. We are accustomed to understanding what Arweave brings for normal citizens: censorship resistance. Ok, but what does it do in the case of a totally different user, let’s say a state? Besides others, it brings permanent transparency. A product for which any democracy should aim. Until Arweave, there was a huge asymmetry between the state and its citizens when it came to enforcing true data transparency policies.
Maybe arweavers are aware of this, but what about the states? Let’s start to think bigger than the current mindset of Web3. Arweave’s goal should be to integrate the states of the world into its decentralized storage paradigm. It’s time to act, not to wait until you are forced to react.
II. Arweave Ecosystem
ArDrive goes mobile?!
ArDrive, one of Arweave’s powerhouses when it comes to offering easy-to-access Arweave storage, is preparing something big, apparently: an ArDrive mobile dApp. Until now, Arweave native mobile dApps stage is almost nonexistent, with the most known Arweave-based wallet – ArConnect, being available for now only as a browser extension. As you may already know, the entire Web3 mobile section is still incipient, with a user experience that’s way behind the one you encounter on desktops. This will change over time, and ArDrive already signals that they are in the avant-garde of this change.
🔜🔜🔜 https://t.co/mLUoquTupl pic.twitter.com/2rJcgssXKy
— 🐘🔗ArDrive.arweave.dev (@ardriveapp) September 1, 2022
RedStone just closed its seed round
RedStone concluded en fanfare the week. Not only did they present their tech at ETHWarsaw, but they closed their seeding round by raising 7 million $. If you want to know more about this news you can check our dedicated article here. This entry is not trying to reiterate the info that you can already find in our article; it is meant only to evidentiate a single thing:
Remember the Web2 startups from the last decade? How they were obtaining millions with an MVP (minimal viable product) that was more a sketch than an actual product? RedStone’s seeding round represents the opposite. Yeah, an Arweave native Web3 project looks more serious than cohorts of Web2 startups. They have worked on improving their products for the last two years, constantly pushing tech for an entire ecosystem, never trying to milk the hype. Only after they were an established brand did they do their seeding round. Food for thought for any naysayer that shoots statements about Web3 based only on the rotten apples.
1/ We are thrilled to announce our $7M Seed Round 🎉
The funds will be used for further development of our cross-chain Oracles and @warp_contracts, a data-processing Smart Contracts platform on #Arweave 🐘
Details below 🧵👇 pic.twitter.com/FXqojeYV76
— redstone.finance (@redstone_defi) August 30, 2022
Ocean Protocol will pay anybody who’ll integrate them with Arweave
Ocean Procol, the Web3 project that aims to create an incentivized layer for AI datasets, launched a hackathon-kind initiative that’s called “Shipyard Storage Initiative”. The goal of this initiative is to integrate Ocean Protocol with four data storage providers, one of them being Arweave. We believe that this represents a good opportunity for Arweave developers to show the entire Web3 how the permanent storage works. What are you waiting for?
✅4 individual grants with varying amounts will be awarded, each covering work for the integration of one specific data storage technology out of Filecoin, Arweave, WSS and StorJ.
✅Successful recipients will receive tech support and guidance from the Ocean engineering team.
— Ocean Protocol (@oceanprotocol) September 1, 2022
PermaDAO launches the Web3Infra hackathon
Speaking about hackathons, everFinance just announced one launched by PermaDAO, which is dedicated to all the builders that want to improve the Web3Infra. Web3Infra represents the latest toolset released by everFinance, a toolset that helps developers easily operate Arseeding. What is Arseeding? Well, it’s a pivotal piece of infrastructure for Arweave. It offers extended capabilities to interact with the network; think of it more like a gateway-like structure on steroids, or even better, don’t think of it and just start to directly learn about Arseeding here. As you can see, the event benefits from the presence of some big names among the supporters and sponsors. The single one that misses is yours among the participants.
🐘First #PermaDAO #Web3Infra hackathon is now live!
It's a #hackathon for Web3 and even Web2 developers.
What #Web3 Apps can you build using #Arseeding (Open source light nodes by #everFinance)? Come earn $ or @ArweaveTeam grants!
👇Enter Now belowhttps://t.co/FaE6GcJuVk pic.twitter.com/mXxKDmhrPO
— everVision🐘 (@everVisionHQ) September 2, 2022
iAssets is using Arweave as their storage solution
The certain perks that Arweave brings to the NFT industry didn’t remain unseen. NFT marketplaces are starting to implement Arweave storage as the natural choice in their solutions. The last one that did it is iAssets. The project that was formerly called BlackMarket is undergoing a major upgrade and seems that it will use Arweave storage in at least two of their initiatives: iAssets.Market and iAssets.Social. We only wonder what will represent for the entire NFT market the foreseeable proliferation of atomic NFTs, the single NFT standard that stores in a single place the token, the metadata, and the art file.
https://twitter.com/iAssets_org/status/1565078468471160832?s=20&t=wfuLK9WNSQRIt8a7Apmi8A
Apex Foundation announced a new storage platform that leverages Arweave
Apex foundation just announced ApexCloud. A storage platform built on top of Arweave. While we are not exactly certain that they are the very first decentralised solution with a Fiat on-ramp solution for Arweave storage (from what we know, Akord already offers a Fiat payment solution for Arweave storage), they are certainly among few that are providing this kind of payment and there is definitely a need for more Fiat on-ramp solutions. May the weave forever grow.
https://twitter.com/ApexFoundation_/status/1565071507554009089?s=20&t=ZfsjRIdCzMJmzgk3sEd0HQ
III. Things you won’t encounter on Arweave
Did you ever wonder how moderation is conducted in states with “strong” regimes? Inside this one-hour podcast, you’ll find the testimony of a former TikTok content moderator. Allow us some spoilers if you didn’t figure it out already: it involves more than moderating NFSW content; it goes for anything that is slightly misaligned with the state narrative. Censorship at its finest, conducted through all the possible means: from AI algorithms that are looking for certain faces or certain voices to around 20k human operators working in content moderation, only for TikTok. This kind of censorship won’t ever be possible on Arweave. The moderation process that’s happening on Arweave is also decentralised. Through shepherd, each node can choose what type of content it doesn’t want to store.
This week on Layer Zero:@zengjiajun_eth!
JJ worked on the Content Moderation team at TikTok's parent company ByteDance
His story shows how content moderation actually works in China
Spoiler: It's bad🙈
Get an inside peak at China's censorship machinehttps://t.co/jlONvmz0he
— DavidHoffman.bedrock 🏴🦇🔊🏴 (@TrustlessState) August 30, 2022
IV. ICYMI
- Web3 Weekly #2
- How to easily embed NFT sales into your website using Universe
- Let’s Shed Some Light on Usher
- RedStone raises $7M seed round led by Lemniscap
- Twelfth auction is here! Feat. Pianity and BirdSong Project Charity
- More Insights About Execution Machine, Directly From Its Founder – Andres Pirela
- Gitcoin’s GR15 New Matching Partners To Support Web 3 Security, User Experience And China’s Ethereum Community
- KNN3 Network Cooperates With EverFinance’s Web3Infra To Store Its Data On Arweave
- Movie distribution using NFTs – Darkblock and MoviePlex
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