Thursday, June 20, 2024
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2022-10-14
By Pierre
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Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #58: The ‘Fair Forks’ Edition

Arweave in Lisbon Day is closing in. It’s time to start packing. On the network side, Fair Forks paved the road for truly decentralised governance in the long, long run. How long? We don’t know, but it will definitely let your grandchildren further innovate on Arweave.

On the ecosystem side we have the usual, Bundlr sealed another partnership with a fast Layer 1 chain and Akord introduced another feature that further expands the real-life use cases that can be covered while using it. Of course, these represent only samples of what happened on Arweave this week. For more just dive into our weekly report.

I. Arweave Network

Yesterday Sam Williams, the founder of Arweave, and Abhav Kedia published a paper called “Fair Forks: Towards Incentivized Protocol Governance” and presented it to the public in a Forward Research event. What’s so explosive about it? 

To summarise, they are exploring ways to ensure social cohesion during protocol changes without the need for catalysts, like a foundation. Citing the paper, they want to avoid cases like this:

In the case of Ethereum, the reversal of the “DAO Hack” led to contention surrounding which version of the chain is appropriate to call “Ethereum”. This crisis was largely resolved by the decision of the Ethereum Foundation to support the forked version of the protocol as the canonical one, exemplifying the outsized influence of a conventional centralized institution in the governance of a “decentralized” protocol.

This alone could be the arch stone of the entire construct represented by Arweave. For what good does one create an Ark that safeguards the passage of humanity’s knowledge through time if the Ark can not be steered without losing social cohesion after its founders are gone? 

II. Arweave Ecosystem

Akord brings Web3 Digital Signatures to their vaults

The vault technology perfected by Akord will probably play an increasingly important role in the Web of Value economy. On top of that, Akord is constantly pushing the boundaries of what can be done on Arweave by integrating more and more real-world use cases. This week they implemented Digital Signatures. One can send a PDF to Akord and sign it with @Dedoco_official’s solution. One more step into transforming Arweave into a friendly permanent storage alternative for companies all over the world. The extra perk that a company will gain, besides their normal interaction with their flow of documents, is that they will become the true custodians of their documents, in a secure manner, without the need to own actual hardware for storage.

Another integration for Bundlr

Bundlr did it again. Another fast Layer 1 chain partnered with Bundlr to use Arweave storage for the metadata from Aptos protocol dApps. Given the fact that both us and Bundlr are biased when it comes to the benefits of using Arweave via Bundlr… let’s allow one member from the Aptos team – @moshaikhs tell you why they need Bundlr:

Projects within the Aptos ecosystem require the ability to store and process large amounts of data in real time. Bundlr solves for this need by providing the ease-of-use and flexibility that our developer community requires to build successfully in the long-term.

Warp Contracts conquers ERC-20 standard

Warp Contracts, the entity responsible for offering the underlying technology for smart contract interactions for a lot of Arweave-based projects, brings to our attention the Warp ERC-20 token standard. Basically, the Warp SDK allows anybody to create via Rust ERC-20 compatible tokens on Arweave. As they highlighted in the below thread, the sole apparition of ERC-20 standard inside Arweave could fuel a new age of increased liquidity and capital inflow, given the fact that both CEXs and developers are quite accustomed to this fungible token standard.

Somehow we are presented with two options:

  • Option A – Let’s stay and see if this will happen
  • Option B – Let’s start and build using Earp ERC-20 and see what will happen

Permacast V2 UI sneak peek

A new down is looming for Permacast. This week they released the second UI version in private beta, and while it still needs little twitches, it appears that overall they nailed pairing the form with the functionality. Now, we may have a little extra knowledge about where Permacast is heading, and we have to admit that the UI makeover is one of the smallest upgrades you’ll encounter in the future. Expect Permacast to become an integral part of Arweave.News.

Lately, a lot has happened on Arweave, Abhav delivers a recap

As Abhav highlights, a lot of new concepts appeared on Arweave in the last months. All of them are a part of the Web of Value. But what is the Web of Value? Well, spoiler alert, we’ll just show you:

The Web of Value refers to a monetization layer on top of the new web being built on Arweave, enabled by atomic association of media and its contract data using tags. It consists of:

  1. Content published to the network: Videos, images, memes, podcasts, blogs.
  2. Vertical ownership tables: Smart contracts that contain ownership data for the content.
  3. Horizontal protocols adding revenue across the monetisable web: Protocols that reward all owners of assets proportionate to their ownership. A first example is STAMP protocol (detailed below).
  4. Networks and platforms for discovery/trading of content: The user-facing layers for interacting with, consuming, aggregating, creating and trading data assets.

Now, you have the very definition of the concept, but don’t you want to know more? Access the full read here or through the link provided in the thread below.

Arweave in Lisbon

We already told you that Arweave would be in Lisbon during the ETH Lisbon event. What we didn’t tell you is that there will be two very special days when you can connect with arweavers from a lot of projects (including us, yeap, we’ll be there also). So, if you want to meet with Arweave Team and well-established projects from the community like Akord, RedStone, or Bundlr, you can do it on 29 October, during the Arweave Ecosystem x DevDAO Happy Hour and during the Arweave in Lisbon Day, on October 31.

Stay put and check our socials for the registration link. Hope we see you there.

III. Things you won’t encounter on Arweave

The thing with billionaires that might suffer from the savior syndrome is that they are unreliable in the long run. Humans, being humans, tend to respond to outside stimuli in unexpected ways. Take this example. Elon Musk delivered his Starlink system to Ukraine at the beginning of the Russian aggression, and apparently, this was of great help to the Ukrainian side. After what seemed to be more like a casual quarrel, Elon Musk decided that he would no longer be able to offer a free service. Is the decision based only on hard metrics, or is it just the result of a mood change?

Of course, it is totally in Elon’s right to do what he pleases with his property, but a question should occur: is it safe to rely on the benevolence of leaders of centralised institutions when it comes to critical infrastructure? Can protocols replace moody leaders and deliver a more predictable flow of services?

Well, you’d probably have already guessed what’s our answer. Arweave doesn’t have moods – it will simply deliver what it was programmed to do.

IV. ICYMI

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Pierre

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

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