Overview
Arweave is a network that offers permanent data storage and hosting services in a decentralized manner. It utilizes an open ledger system that’s similar to Bitcoin, ensuring a stable and mature protocol that’s been widely adopted. This results in a fully decentralized ecosystem that’s perfect for preserving crucial data and hosting web applications and offers countless opportunities for learning, using, and building on the platform.
History
Archain was founded in 2017 but later rebranded itself as Arweave in 2018 during the Techstars Berlin mentorship program. The company aims to deliver affordable permanent storage solutions through the Arweave network – a block-based data structure also known as “blockweave”.
Arweave is a platform based on blockchain that supports the Arweave permaweb, which includes various data, websites, and applications hosted on the Arweave blockchain. This network can be accessed via modern web browsers such as Brave or Google Chrome, which are built on top of the HTTP protocol. Arweave’s primary objective is to store data on the network indefinitely, and individuals can store their data on the Arweave blockchain by exchanging it for AR tokens. As the cost of storage is expected to decrease in the future, Arweave uses a formula to calculate the cost of storing data, which you can find more information about in its yellowpaper.
In June of 2018, the Arweave mainnet was launched with a select group of 1800 participants across various countries. Prior to the launch, the Arweave team held an initial token sale that was restricted to whitelisted individuals.
In November 2019, Arweave managed to secure an impressive $5 million from a group of venture capital firms. As part of this funding, the company offered $5 worth of Arweave tokens to its investors. Six months later, the team was able to raise another $8.3 million through the sale of AR tokens. However, after this funding round, they announced that the new funds would be utilized to incentivize community adoption and growth.
