Arweave

Decentralized Storage Networks

Permanent, pay-once decentralized storage network built on a blockweave data structure, where miners are incentivized through Succinct Proofs of Random Access (SPoRA) to store rare data perpetually. Hosts the 'permaweb' — an immutable, censorship-resistant web of permanently stored applications and data.

Fully P2P Foundation Low capture risk
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Details

License Libre
Dev Status Released
Owner Minimum Spanning Technologies Ltd. / Sam Williams (CEO)
Country UK; globally distributed network
Start Year 2017
Stack Erlang
Funding VC, ICO
Last Investigated Mar 10, 2026

Use Case Domains

Platform Evolution & Sovereignty Co-Creation & Knowledge

Affordances

Local-first storage Provenance tracking

Decentralized Storage Network Attributes

P2P Architecture Public blockchain (blockweave with SPoRA consensus)
Overlay Network Global
Content Addressing Yes (transaction IDs are SHA-256 content hashes)
Local-First N/A (miners replicate; clients are ephemeral)
E2EE No (data is publicly readable by default; encryption is opt-in at app layer)
Byzantine Fault Tolerance Yes (SPoRA consensus; democratic content policy for node-level moderation)
Signature RSA-4096 (wallet signatures); SHA-256 content hashing
Permissions N/A (fully public by default; access control at application layer)
Semantic Web Compatability N/A
Smart Contract Yes (via SmartWeave / Warp contracts on-chain)
Protocol Stack Position Application-layer (built on TCP/IP)
Asset / Value Embedding Native (AR token embedded at transaction/block level; storage fees paid in AR)
Protocol Maturity / Standardization De Facto Standard (stable, widely adopted permaweb; no formal standards body)
Update Policy Immutable / Append-only (data written to blockweave cannot be deleted or modified; IPNS-like mutable pointers available via SmartWeave)
Storage Proof Mechanism Proof of Access (PoA) / Succinct Proofs of Random Access (SPoRA) — miners must prove access to a randomly selected historical block to mine new blocks, incentivizing wide data replication
Economic / Incentive Model One-time endowment (permanent storage model): upfront AR token fee funds a storage endowment; interest from endowment pays miners indefinitely as storage costs decline
Retrieval Guarantee Best-effort (incentivized but not formally guaranteed; data persistence depends on endowment viability and miner participation)