Arweave Ecosystem Weekly Report #87: The ‘Celebrating Five Years With $U’ Edition
Almost on time this week, heh? Well, I suppose that it matters less than what we are covering in the current report: Arweave will celebrate next week five years of being alive and pumping with its big distributed heart block after block. Let's take a glance in the past explore Arweave's genesis block.
When you're done, come back because we have to present you with the future, also: a token for $U and everVision's making the Permaweb the intersection point between DeFi and tradFi.
I. Arweave Network
Almost five years ago:
Yeap, on 8th June 2018, history finally found a way to be appropriately written in the digital age: the first block of the Arweave Network was written. It carries 314 TXs, representing messages engraved by the very first arweavers. We actually encourage you to check them. One of our favourites is this one:
The misery that is now upon us is but the passing of greed
The bitterness of men who fear the way of human progress
From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me,-
The woodspurge has a cup of three.
Ad maiora. Ad infinitum.
It represents basically a mix of a part from the final speech from Charlie Chaplin's "Great DIctator", the last stanza from the poem The Woodspurge By Dante Gabriel Rossetti and a Latin saying. Somehow it encompasses the idea of the composable web Arweave aims for today.
And there are others, with their own flavour also:
The start of a new future for Dr and Dr Lakhoo, as our new child is due in 11 days - I mark this in the Internet Archive of the future :)
Fantastic idea son! Loving the digital adventures you are taking me on! Love always your proud mum X...
I throw my coin into this wishing well. good luck to this new currency.
Don't waste your time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead sometimes you're behind; the race is long but in the end it's only with yourself.
I wasn't around back then, but some of you were, so maybe it will be cool to share your thoughts on what your expectations were. Five years ago, Arweave was more of a promise - a longing for a better way to safeguard humanity's memory. I want to believe that now Arweave represents for everyone a fulfilled promise already. From some text messages containing at most several hundred bytes, to transactions that weigh GBs, to virtually no capped blocks, Arweave has proved itself already.
What's the next leg up? Well, you can find out in Berlin on the seventh of June. Arweave started in Berlin and it will celebrate its birthday there:
Arweave Day Berlin 2023 brings the Arweave community together to discuss and ideate on a number of crucial topics, all while gearing up to celebrate the 5th anniversary of the launch of the Arweave network
Sebastian Campos Groth, COO, Forward Research
Stay put and follow the ecosystem on social channels for further announcements.
II. Arweave Ecosystem
everVision's grand week
Since some days ago, Arweave can boast of being on the very border between DeFi and TradFi, functioning as a bridge between these two worlds. All thanks to everVision's efforts. In a pretty tight time frame, they launched Fiat services on everPay, integrated a stablecoin issued by a traditional bank and bolstered their security by partnering with Slow Mist, a blockchain security company that, according to their own website, had as clients a lot of big names from the industry, including Binance, Crypto.com, Huobi, and 1Inch, to mane only some.
There is a lot to talk about all of these since usually only one of these announcements would have been enough for an entry in the weekly report, so let's take them gradually (rest assured, mostly we'll redirect you to stand-alone articles because otherwise, this report will have only one and very long entry):
As we already told you in the last weekly report, on 22 May everPay launched the capability of purchasing crypto with Fiat, and we provided a half guide, half review on how to use this new functionality and what to expect from it that you can access here. Well, they just announced that until June 22nd, they would support all the fees that would normally occur on using this feature, so, until the 22nd it's the free season of buying crypto with fiat on everPay.
Now, this service is meant to use Fiat for buying USDC and then changing it for various crypto. But, in a world that is continually changing, and quite chaotic sometimes, is it wise to keep all your stable eggs in the USD basket? everVision aimed to solve this, and thanks to a partnership with a trad bank, they added the $ACNH asset to everPay. $ACNH represents a stablecoin pegged to $CNH. According to their announcement:
CNH is an innovative digital asset that is fully regulated and meets the legal and compliance requirements. Each ACNH issuance is backed by 100% equivalent real assets, including cash, cash equivalents and short-term government bonds denominated in RMB, thus ensuring a 1:1 anchoring ratio of ACNH to CNH.
Now, whenever you start to assault both DeFI and tradFi world is better to have somebody o help you with all the tedious but very important work of keeping the customers' assets safe, and indeed everVision did exactly this, by creating a couple days after the launch of $ACNH on everPay, the partnership with Slow Mist we already mentioned of.
You can say whatever you want, but there were some pretty busy days on the part of everVision, the team that almost singlehandedly puts the Permaweb on the map of crypto financial services.
Just $U
Remember $bAR (burned Arweave)? Well, think of $U as a $bAR, but cooler and with a straight forward name: $U means unit and it can be divided into 1.000.000 $SU, you guessed it, subunits. Anyone can obtain $U at any time by sending $AR to the endowment. The ratio is 1:1. You can get it at https://getu.arweave.dev/. Now, what's even more interesting is that adding some tags to any Arweave TX will get u the $U equal to the amount of $AR your TX sent to the endowment. What does this mean? Anybody can get a "discount" for uploading data to Arweave. Gradually, claiming $U will probably be introduced to the majority of Permaweb's dApps and arweavers will passively accrue $U only by spending $AR in their interactions.
What it's good for? IF $AR unlocks the possibility of permanent storage, $U unlocks the possibility for countless interactions at the Permaweb layer. Being a SmartWeave token it can be used for smartcontract-level interactions opening the possibility for app-to-app (smart contract to smart contract) interactions. While time will pass expect that more and more Permaweb dApps to adopt in a form or other $U, each bringing it's own utility to the token.
Now, this is mostly my interpretation, derived from my limited knowledge and understanding, so, let's better see what its creator, JShaw has to say about it:
$U is intended to be the Unit of Account for the permaweb, it was built to avoid some potential issues with the bAR contract. We are now able to control which functions are run on which layer of the tech stack (L1 vs L2). Mint (burn) is only allowed on L1. So yes, it's meant to replace bAR.
Additionally, we have added a function to the Foreign Call Protocol called "reject". Contracts / wallets can now create, claim, and reject transfers.
We also talked Rakis, another Permaweb Dev that was close to the $U creation, and he came up with a great summarization of what $U is:
It is decentralized, no evolve, locked in, permanent with transparent rules, and with the new ability by warp to only allow functions to run on L2, this means that transfers, and locking functions are instant and reliable.
So, what are you waiting for? Go and use the Permaweb, even if you don't want to swap $AR for $U yet, you'll end up receiving some, because a little bit of $U is/will be in every TX you will make.
Timbre aims to transform consumer interactions
This week marked the launch of a new project in the Arweave landscape - Timbre, an on-chain review platform poised to revolutionize the consumer-brand dynamic. Utilizing the immutable and trustless properties of the permaweb, Timbre aims to transform the very fabric of consumer interactions and feedback.
The team believes that over the ensuing decade, a significant shift in consumer behavior will occur, with customers becoming more than passive consumers - evolving into active brand evangelists and community architects. But despite this transformation, they argue the fundamental pillars of consumer decisions - quality, experience, and trust - will remain the same.
And to prepare for this shift, the team takes aim at the plagued mechanisms that allow for the proliferation of fake reviews in the web2 space. That’s why the team is building a platform for users to be able to provide their genuine reviews and experiences on the blockchain, linked with their social identities across both web2 and web3. And by leveraging Arweave, Timbre can ensure users' words and feedback remain their own - uncensored and authentic.
For those interested in being part of the shift towards consumer empowerment, Timbre invites you to join their waitlist at the following link. It's an opportunity contribute to a fresh paradigm of transparency and trust, and also help the community around you. So be sure to follow the team and make your opinion known on their new platform!
(8) Timbre on Twitter: "Today, we're thrilled to unveil Timbre, the verifiable on-chain review platform and guardian of the Web3 consumer. 🧵1/7 https://t.co/TnDHq0Sqwv" / Twitter
Rareweave launches subaccounts
RareWeave, the NFT marketplace built on Arweave, has made a significant announcement this week with the introduction of the Subaccounts Protocol! The protocol represents a novel approach to the traditional wallet experience, one that enables permaweb applications to manage and use user keys in a more secure and efficient manner.
In short, the Subaccounts Protocol allows users to create and manage sub-wallets under a primary, or master, wallet. Importantly, the association of each sub-wallet with the master wallet is designed to be verifiable, providing an additional layer of security. In principle, this offers developers the ability to provide enhanced user experiences by eliminating the requirement for user confirmation for actions, while maintaining almost full isolation from the main account. This results in a flexible, user-friendly, and highly secure mode of interaction with keys.
Now, for a more technical view, the underlying concept of the protocol is that each sub-wallet functions as a new Arweave wallet. However, the private key for each sub-wallet is encrypted using the public key of the master wallet. The encrypted sub-wallet private key is then stored securely on the Arweave network. Furthermore, the sub-wallet signs a message declaring its association with the master wallet. This signature can be verified using the sub-wallet's public key, serving as proof that the owner of the sub-wallet's private key is acknowledging the connection with the master wallet.
Overall, the introduction of the Subaccounts Protocol means that Arweave users might soon experience a more effortless interaction with dApps by reducing the amount of wallet interactions required. And who doesn’t want less wallet pop-ups which require you to sign endless transaction confirmations? Make sure to follow Rareweave and be the first to find out when other dApps will take advantage of this new feature!
RareWeave🐒🐘 on Twitter: "We're thrilled to announce Subaccounts Protocol, new way for permaweb apps to manage and use user keys. Flexible, secure, no wallet popups Read docs 👇 https://t.co/9H6xENfCic" / Twitter
Community Labs is hiring!
The team at Community Labs has had a busy week! The team has released a redesigned landing page to provide a better experience to those first learning about Community Labs. And as a follow-up to that, they’ve also announced that they are now hiring!
Now, before we go into the juicy part of the actual projects and roles, there are some things you should know about the Community Labs team. The team has an unwavering belief in the transformative power of permanent data storage and they believe the Permaweb is one of the most impactful yet undervalued advancements in human history. And they’re hellbent on proving that to the world through the various projects they undertake. The way they put it, they’re a bunch of curious folks with a collaborative spirit that quickly iterate on ideas in search of the best solutions for the Web3 ecosystem. So if you find some resemblance in yourself, keep on reading.
In terms of personnel, Community Labs is on the hunt for engineers who aren't afraid to question the status quo, who have a passion for creating incredible user experiences, and who thrive on solving complex problems. As far as projects go, the team is currently working on some ambitious initiatives such as the development of wallet-less crypto apps, on-chain source control (that is easier to use than off-chain alternatives), and trustless cross-chain communication infrastructure.
If you're still reading and you’re someone who relishes the idea of pushing the boundaries of what's possible in the web3 space, this is an opportunity you won't want to miss. So check out the job description at the following link and make sure to apply through the form on Community Labs’ website!
Adot is here to replace Google
In the realm of decentralized storage, we’d like to think Arweave has already proven itself as one of the best permanent, secure and transparent storage mediums. However, efficient aggregation and querying of the decentralized data on Arweave still remains a concern, especially considering the growth of the ecosystem and of the permaweb. We’re all familiar with tools like ViewBlock and Arweave GraphQL that are being used to query data on the permaweb, but with more and more use cases being developed everyday, there’s always room for more efficient and easy-to-use data retrieval tools.
Enter Adot, the project that aims to be the one-stop shop for web3 search engine. Over the past two months, the team has been developing a search tool for the Arweave ecosystem that provides full-chain data retrieval service for developers and users, bringing features such as tag search, full-content search, structure parsing, and AI labeling to the table. As per the team, the beauty of this new search tool is that it can also be integrated into any dApp using Arweave storage to provide an enhanced user experience.
Through Adot’s partnership with WeWeave, an Arweave powered content storage and sharing platform, the search tool is already being deployed in the ecosystem. In WeWeave’s case, the integration with Adot aims to give users easier access to any files and content stored on the platform and the entire Arweave network, with added filtering, tagging, and other functions to make your data retrieval experience a breeze.
Which means, that you can both rest assured that your data is forever safe in the comforting hands of the permaweb and always have it available at your fingertips through a simple search. Now, from what we understand, the integration between WeWeave is not yet live but the teams are working hard and expect to release it soon. Which means we still have to wait to see how well decentralized storage and decentralized search like each other, but if you’d like to be one of the first to test it out, make sure to follow to the team on Twitter for the latest updates!
(8) Adot丨Test waitlist is opening now 🔥 on Twitter: "@ArweaveEco @ArweaveSCP @permaweb_news @ArweaveNewsCN @samecwilliams How to search for data on Arweave as a user or a developer and which tools you can choose❓ This article will answer you.🚀#arweave #storage #search #Adot #WeWeave #Web3 #data https://t.co/DZuczuw7Lv" / Twitter
Arweave solves the internet’s ambiguity
Did you know that 97% of the internet exists in a state of license ambiguity? We neither until we listened to Sam William’s latest keynote at the Disco Summit 2023! It seems that whenever you stumble on to your next favourite thing on the web, chances are that in 97% of cases, there won’t be a clear license or information on whether you can share it, re-use it or alter it in any way. And an internet where we don’t know if we're allowed to share the latest cat meme, is not an internet we want to live in…
Luckily for us, as Sam explains in his keynote, they have collaborated with Creative Commons, the international non-profit focused on increasing the availability of creative content for legal use and sharing, on producing a set of clear license standards built on top of Arweave. Hence, the creation of the ANS-105 spec to provide a clear and straightforward way of licensing items on the permaweb. As a high-level overview, the specification creates a framework for adding appropriate tags to Arweave transactions to inform the world of how that particular piece of data can be used.
We know we can’t explain it better than Sam, the mastermind behind the collaborative efforts with Creative Commons, so we strongly encourage every one of our readers to listen to the keynote at the following link and learn more about the licensing mechanism built on top of Arweave.
(8) Web3 Working Group on Twitter: "📷Did you know 97% of the Web is license ambiguous?📷(97% chance of uncertainty for reuse). Fear not, @samecwilliams discusses @onlyarweave's approach to fixing that problem using Creative Commons licenses! It's open for anyone to add & refer to. #LicensingStandard #Arweave https://t.co/hTzaCeJKdJ" / Twitter
Are you ready to create your new archiving pool?
Alex. was at it again this week! This time, they’re breaking the archival barriers with their latest update - a completely refreshed Pool Creation UI. Users looking to start their archiving journey now have an effortless way to start new pools, attract contributions, earn $AR, and join in the mission of preserving human culture and history.
Feeling uninspired? Fear not, because Alex. has got you covered with a host of pool ideas to spark your creativity. Whether you're passionate about sports history, fascinated by the evolution of fashion, or deeply invested in the progress of climate science, there's a wealth of untapped opportunities waiting for you. And the new UI makes everything just a bit easier and more pleasant for the users.
But it looks like the team is not resting on its laurels. They are determined to continually refine and perfect its tools to serve the archiving community better. To that end, they're eagerly seeking your feedback. Think something's amiss? Got an innovative idea? Alex. wants to hear from you.
To make your voice heard, you can drop a line in the replies of their announcement, or better yet, join the Alex. Discord community. It's your one-stop-shop to connect with fellow archiving enthusiasts, keep up-to-date on the latest project developments, and actively shape the future of archiving. After all, at Alex, archiving isn't merely about preserving the past - it's about paving the way for a more informed, enriched future!
(8) Alex. on Twitter: "1/ We have a huge update! 🚨 Those looking to start an archive on Alex, can now do it through our new create a pool UI. Here is a demo of the process👇 https://t.co/wX5sQSSkVt" / Twitter
III.Things you won’t encounter on Arweave
Some months ago, Twitter started the trend of messing with their API, trying to find a way to maximise the gains accrued through it. Now Reddit follows that trend. Apparently, in an attempt to capitalise on the rise of bots that are extracting data for training AI models, since June 19th, they will raise their API pricing. Until the moment of publishing this article, we didn't find sources that would disclose the official new rates, but there are claims that 50 million requests will cost 12.000$.
Now,the price itself, it's just partially relevant. Indeed, a steep one can shut down businesses relying on Reddit's data set. While the immediate effects could be devastating for some entities, the reason that is allowing this to happen in the first place is problematic for even more individuals - probably the entirety of the Web2 users: the model that couples the data and the platform, stripping off any trace of ownership from the users that created the data in the first place, this represents the "source of the evil".
I don't say that there couldn't be attempts to recreate some sort of moats on top of Arweave, (a platform, instead of uploading the data open on Arweave, or encrypted with the private keys of the users, could encrypt all the data that sends to Arweave and keep the keys for itself); what I'm trying to say is that Arweave's design favours a real decoupling of data from the platform. It is beneficial for all the Permaweb dApps to act as "uploaders of some and retrievers of many", each dApp being able to tap into the entire data set of Arweave. In a system like this, any moat creation will be subdued by design.
Put on top of this the Open Data License that's almost ready I believe, and we are in for a ride!
IV.Arweave explained by Dante Gabriel Rossetti – thanks to ChatGPT
Well, this time, the prompt didn't ask the AI "to explain", but rather "to catch the essence" of Arweave. Did it succeed?
Upon the vast and endless tide of Time,
An Ark of thought sets forth, to realms sublime.
Arweave, the harbinger of Truth, unwinds,
An eternal tapestry of human minds.
No parchment lost to Time's relentless maw,
No wisdom fades, no truth withdraws.
In blocks of data, sequenced, it unfurls,
A universe, in endless twirls.
Of decentralization, it does sing,
Each node, a voice, in harmony it brings.
Security, its steadfast knight's refrain,
Ensuring trust in this domain.
Yet, how to scale this vast emprise,
That beneath the digital ether lies?
Transcending trilemma's iron-clad bands,
In the mines of data, Arweave stands.
Transactions, mere atoms in the cosmos, seem,
Yet contain multitudes, as in a dream.
From one byte to the universe in span, I
n Arweave's realm, it began.
One-time endowment, a foresight keen,
For centuries of data, pristine.
No token drawn since genesis morn,
A testament to the oath sworn.
In this grand narrative, etched in line,
Arweave and Time, forever entwine.
A realm where Past and Future meet,
In the hallowed halls of Arweave, so sweet.
V.ICYMI
