Essential Tools for Arweave Beginners

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In this article we look at essential tools and resources for Arweave beginners. These tools will be helpful in starting out and getting to know the ecosystem’s basic building blocks.

ArConnect

ArConnect is a browser extension which serves as Arweave’s wallet management and login pass for apps. It lets you view and transfer assets, manage your balance and see your latest transactions of all of your wallets. It also allows you to interact with many Arweave applications (or dApps). 

Since transaction signing and encryption works in the background via the extension rather than the application, your keyfile can’t be stolen. It is a more secure solution than uploading your keyfile, as transactions happen locally on the clients side. 

They do not charge fees for AR or PST transfers inside the extension but they do charge a small fee when interacting with dApps. When a third party application uses ArConnect, a small tip is charged which goes to a randomly selected VRT token holder.

You can download the browser extension from their site arconnect.io.

ArDrive

ArDrive is a decentralised, community owned data storage platform offering storage that lasts forever. It offers storage of NFTs, personal photos and videos, documents,  and even archives to webpages. ArDrive offers multi-file uploads, secure and public, as well as censorship-free sharing of files. People use ArDrive to share articles, books, recordings, photos and code.

ArDrive offers a “pay-per-life” payment plan rather than a subscription based one meaning you don’t have to pay recurring fees to store and access your data. It also ensures that all data stays with you regardless of the company’s terms and services, for example, in case your account is inactive for a long time. 

Since ArDrive lets you store your data on the permaweb, your files will be stored no matter what, you will have full access and control of them even if ArDrive goes out of business. 

Follow the signup process for ArDrive here. 

Arweave Dev Discord

For support with permaweb development, it’s worth joining the Arweave Dev community. It has the core developers of the Arweave team and ecosystem. It’s a useful server for developers to give and get help with issues concerning development. There are also channels for app ideas, SmartWeave help, gateways, testweave and more.

Join the server here.

Arweavers Telegram Community

Another tool to get for community engagement is Telegram so you can join the Arweaver Telegram community. It’s a less technical chat, focusing more so on prices and general utility of the protocol. The community even had a meetup this year in Lisbon.

As well as speculation chat, you can ask for information on how to buy AR, how to upload data, where the miners are located and other similar types of information.

Join the chat here.

Arweave Web Extension

Arweave Web Extension works as a wallet, as well as a web archiver. With Arweave Web Extension you can archive web pages and online pdfs, videos and anything that could become a victim of the dreaded 404 error. 

It also allows you to manage your AR token wallet directly in your browser, export the wallet history and download it as a CSV file. It has multi-wallet support that you can easily switch between. You can send and receive AR tokens and generate new AR wallet keys.

They offer guides for archiving and using the wallet so it’s easy to start with. Follow the instructions on how to start here. 

arweave-js

The JavaScript library for interfacing with Arweave – arweave-js – is the main way to build custom apps on the permaweb. With support for both client-side JS and Node servers, arweave-js is an invaluable library for JavaScript developers.

The library makes it easy to generate a new wallet, transfer AR, sign and post data to the network, and more.

Check the project’s GitHub here.

everPay

everPay is a real-time payment protocol for both Arweave and Ethereum. Its aim is to provide a trusted, decentralized payment application for everyone, as well as an SDK for developers to make it simple to build DEXs.

Since everPay transactions aren’t packaged, the transactions are uploaded to the chain within minutes. The everPay protocol currently supports Ethereum and Arweave, and is even coming to support Arweave profit-sharing tokens (PSTs).

To start with everPay click here. 

Finnie

Finnie is the Koii wallet browser extension. You can use it to mint NFTs and store them forever (for example, you would use Finnie to get the evolving Atomic Zombies). You can also use it to store your NFTs and collect KOII from engagement.

After downloading the Finnie browser extension you either make a new wallet or add your existing one. You can then get a small amount or AR and KOII token to start.

To get Finnie click here.

Verto

Verto is the universal exchange for Arweave profit-sharing tokens and NFTs. Swap AR for any of the ecosystem’s various PSTs which represent shares in products like ArDrive, decent.land, PermaBot, and Verto itself. Verto Space also acts as a gallery for all Verto-minted NFTs including articulate.eth’s Bark Blocks series.

Visit Verto here.

ViewBlock

Every blockchain needs a way for the public to monitor transactions, addresses, blocks and network statistics – ViewBlock serves this purpose for Arweave, as the permaweb’s major block explorer. To monitor whether a currency transaction has been mined into a block yet, or whether a SmartWeave contract interaction has failed, ViewBlock is very handy. You can also get stats on the total size of the blockweave, number of daily transactions, locations of nodes, and more.

Visit ViewBlock here.

Wrapped AR

Wrapped AR, or wAR, is an ERC20 token created by everFinance. An ERC20 token means it derives from the Ethereum standard. Every wAR token has 1:1 value with AR token and they’re a way for Arweave token holders to interact with the Ethereum ecosystem.

Just like if you hold AR you can swap it for wAR, you can also get wAR and swap it for AR. With this everFinance has created a way to obtain AR token in a decentralized way.

You can get wAR on Uniswap.

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