The Storage Opportunity
Most blockchains treat data as an afterthought. Ethereum, Solana, and other computation-focused chains optimize for execution speed, not storage capacity. Storing even a small image onchain costs hundreds or thousands of dollars in gas fees.
The result is that most "onchain" applications actually store their data offchain: on AWS, Google Cloud, or IPFS with pinning services that can stop at any time. The blockchain only holds a hash or pointer to data hosted somewhere else entirely.
Arweave's Approach
Arweave was designed from the ground up as a storage protocol. Where Bitcoin introduced permanent financial ledgers, Arweave extends the same principle to arbitrary data. Transactions on Arweave carry real payloads: images, videos, web applications, databases, documents.
Every piece of data uploaded to Arweave is replicated across a decentralized network of miners worldwide. There is no single server, no hosting provider, no recurring bill. You pay once, and the data persists as long as the network exists.
How the Economics Work
When you upload data to Arweave, you pay a one-time fee in AR tokens. This fee is calculated based on current storage costs plus a conservative buffer that accounts for decades of future storage.
Approximately 95% of each upload fee goes into a protocol-enforced storage endowment. This endowment is designed to pay miners for storing and serving data long after the original upload. As storage costs decline over time (they have dropped roughly 30% per year historically), the endowment's purchasing power grows.
The remaining 5% goes directly to miners as an immediate reward for including the transaction in a block.
What Lives on Arweave
The range of data stored permanently on Arweave is broad:
- Websites and applications: Full web apps deployed to the permaweb, including this site
- NFT metadata and media: Over 130 million NFTs stored via Metaplex on Solana
- Blockchain history: Terabytes of validated chain data archived through KYVE
- News archives: Thousands of articles from Apple Daily preserved against censorship
- Social media: Decentralized social platforms like ArConnect and Lens Protocol posts
- Academic research: Scientific papers and datasets stored permanently
- Legal documents: Timestamped, tamper-proof records
Compared to Alternatives
| Approach | Persistence | Cost Model | Decentralization |
|---|---|---|---|
| AWS S3 | Until you stop paying | Monthly recurring | Single provider |
| IPFS + Pinning | Until pin service stops | Monthly recurring | Depends on pinners |
| Filecoin | Contract duration (typically 6-18 months) | Time-limited deals | Network of providers |
| Arweave | Permanent | One-time payment | 500+ independent nodes |
The distinction matters. A "permanent" NFT stored on IPFS disappears if the pinning service shuts down. A website hosted on AWS goes offline the moment the credit card expires. Arweave removes the ongoing dependency entirely.
The Permaweb
The full collection of web-accessible data stored on Arweave is called the permaweb. It functions like the regular web, served through gateways that translate Arweave transaction IDs into standard HTTP responses. Images render as images, HTML pages render as web pages, and applications run normally.
The difference: nothing on the permaweb can be modified, deleted, or taken offline. Every piece of content has a permanent URL backed by a transaction ID on the Arweave blockweave.
This is not theoretical. The permaweb contains millions of live pages and applications used by real people every day.